Blatant Hatred No Longer Favored by Majority!

Apparently voters are not quite as enticed by hard-core hate speech and violent homophobia as they were just a few years ago. How touching! Salon article on the GOP's attempt to court libertarians by being more subtle with the hate (a strategy American politicians have learned over many years of couching anti-black racism as "economic" or "tax" or "family values" concerns). Sad that it's supposed to be heartening that many Americans now want to keep their hatred for LGBT folks on a low simmer instead of a full boil. I don't think it's so much a sign of growing "tolerance" (I hate that word!) as much as it is a sign that many right-wing voters currently want to focus the full blast of their hatred on undocumented laborers and pretty much anyone who looks like they weren't born in the U.S....or, to make it easier, just anyone non-white. Since middle-America's image of gay people is typically the flaming white guy from New York who is now the staple sidekick character on countless movies and TV shows, this puts homophobia slightly under anti-immigrant xenophobia on the scale of Which Group Do We Hate More at the moment? These are still the two major civil rights issues of our generation, and I think, much like the rape case indicated yesterday, we're going to keep seeing a growing backlash after a brief period of liberalism and seeming cultural openness.

On another topic entirely, I beat a large group of LSAT students with my giant formal logic stick last night. That just sounds dirty, but it's the most appropriate metaphor for what happened. They were like deer in headlights. I felt bad for them and kind of wickedly enjoyed it at the same time. Now I need to beat up these midterms today. Formal logic goes back in the drawer, because using that standard...weeeelllll, let's just say they'd pretty much all fail. I'll just use my consistency twig and my accuracy wrist-slap. They still better watch out! Happy Friday!