Karl Rove: "That Ho Hottie Totally Cost Us The Election!"

Karl Rove, quoted above, (special JMG translation) continues to deny his responsibility in steering his party right up the pointy bedsheets of racists and dominionists and out of its plurality in Congress. More literally quoted, Darth Voldermort includes Mike Jones among his short list of ills that undid God's Own Party, telling Time Magazine, "The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected. Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass." (via - Columbia Journalism Review. Emphasis motherfucking mine.)

Speaker of Rove's ho hottie, I've had a couple of chats with Mike Jones since yesterday's post went up, and he has asked me to relay his deepest appreciation for our little class project. To the readers of JMG, he simply says, " I really do not know the words to thank you by." While it's often hard to get an accurate read on someone without meeting them face-to-face, so far I find Jones to be a guileless Everyman, almost charmingly naive. I almost wonder if he would have even known who Karl Rove was, had he been asked before all this started. He seems like a totally regular, amiable guy who had this big honking Howard Beale moment, and acted on it, probably without much consideration of how he might be deepening his own woes. A playah, he does not appear to be.

Mike has been diligently responding to everyone that donates, via a personal thank-you email. He tells me that yesterday's donations have allowed him to get caught up on his car payments, his utilitities, and even more importantly, as he put it to me, " I can eat again." Less happy was Mike's news that rumors have reached him warning that his landlord is working to have him evicted, presumably because of the bad press. I'm gonna wager that a few threatening phone calls might have reached that landlord, as well. And the police have come around Mike's place again, doubtlessly charged by the tithes-laden mujahadeen of Jeebus to leave no rimseat unturned until loving Christian vengeance can be thrust into Mike's heart, via the Holy Spirit or a pointed stick, whichever is handy.

But things ARE looking up for Mike Jones, overall (I hope), and that's at least partly due to the generosity of the JMG readers and the readers of all the other bloggers who have given Mike Jones' story the visibility it deserves. It's not over for Mike, not yet, not by a long shot. But the PayPal fund is keeping his head above water for the moment. Hopefully, as word continues to spread about what you folks have started here, donations will come in until Mike's employment situation, personal safety, and legal worries have been improved.

Please visit the blogs linked in the post below and read their varied and interesting takes on the Jones-Haggard affair. And how about that Dan Savage, coming to bat for Mike Jones? Maybe his next column can tell us how to get santorum out of pastoral robes. Bah dum dum!

Kidding aside folks, if you haven't yet made the decision to stuff a few bucks into Mike Jones' virtual g-string, here's how I stated my case on Dan Savage's blog last night: "Hey, I tip my bartender a dollar for moving a bottle of beer two feet across the counter for me. Mike Jones had a hand in moving the entire country for me. And I always tip generously for excellent service."

Yeah, I still like that comparison.

Special Open Thread Thursday

It was at this time last week that the last bell finally rang on the 2006 election, delivering the House, the Senate, and the majority of state governships into the hands of the Democrats. The map is blue again. And so is the sky. My face is sore from smiling and my feets are aching from all this happy dancing.

And playing a possibly vital, perhaps pivotal role in this triumph was not a politician. Not a party strategist. It was a private citizen. It was a gay man. A man who although he was risking his personal livelihood, risking his arrest, and surely risking his physical safety, he came forward and did the right thing at the right time.

That man is Mike Jones.

Regardless of your personal opinions regarding Jones' chosen field of work, you cannot ignore his unprecedented accomplishment of almost completely upending the Republican Party's last minute campaign to divert the nation's attention from the true issue of the election: the Iraq war.

Talking Heads: "The terrorists have just blah blah....gay marriage referendum blah blah....stem cell legislation blah blah...millions of illegal immigrants blah blah. Um, wait a minute. We have a breaking bulletin: Pastor Ted Haggard! Head of evangelical movement! Homosexual! Prostitution! Crystal meth! Close to the President! More! More! More! More!"

Repeat on every channel.

Headlines on every paper.

For five days.

The five days BEFORE the election.

All the billionaire George Soroses in the world could not have more effectively eclipsed the Republicans' usual last minute diversionary tactics. It was pure delicious serendipity. It was kismet. And most of all, it was KARMA, baby.

We'll never know the exact impact that Mike Jones' revelations had on the national election. He came forward specifically because Ted Haggard was hypocritically supporting Colorado's anti-gay referendum. That referendum passed, anyway. And Jones probably didn't fathom that his story would balloon into a national media orgy and image nightmare for the RNC and President Bush. Jones could not have predicted that his little sex & drugs scandal might have spun unknowable numbers of wavering digusted red staters over to blue country.

But it happened. Just barely enough to win by a tiny margin. But it was enough.

[EDIT: Even Karl Rove agrees that Mike Jones had a hand in the Republicans' undoing, telling Time Magazine, "The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected. Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass." (via - Columbia Journalism Review. Emphasis mine.) ]

I've been in contact with Mike over the last week. He tells me that the major gay rights organizations have extended nothing but ten-foot poles. He is unemployed and I imagine that for at least the short future, he is unemployable. He is facing the potential of huge legal bills. He has received death threats from Haggard's followers and other peace-loving Christians.

Gentle readers, you and I owe Mike Jones a debt of gratitude. It's a different country than it was seven days ago, and even if you think that Mike Jones had only the tiniest part in effecting that change, we OWE him. Remember those last two Senate seats were decided by just a few thousand votes each.

So please, show your thanks.

Go to PayPal's Send Money screen and throw some love to our unlikely hero, using his email account: "massageandmuscle@aol.com" If you ran into Mike Jones in a bar, wouldn't you insist on buying his drinks? There's thousands and thousands of you out there in JMG-land, and I'm willing to bet that you too have sore faces from smiling and aching feet from all that happy dancing. Show some appreciation to the man who might have helped put that smile on your face and the blue back on that map.

If you don't have a PayPal account, they are free and take less than 1 minute to set up. You can send cash directly to Mike from your ATM or credit cards. Send him the $10 you would have spent buying him drinks, if you ran into him in a bar. Send him the $20 you would have spent buying his dinner in a restaurant. Send him $50, $100, maybe more, if you think that maybe, just maybe, Mike Jones had a hand in changing the political landscape of our nation, and possibly, just possibly, a war.

And even if you don't buy any of the above, if you don't think what Jones did had ANY effect on the election, you should thank him. Thank him just for the sheer entertainment of the last week. Thank him for exposing the ugly hypocrisy of the evangelical movement. That alone, is worth a ten-spot. At least.

Bonus: As reward for helping Mike Jones, here's a special new vocal recording of that instant classic, Supertelevangelistic Sex-and-Drugs Psychosis, lyrics by M. Spaff Sumision, vocals by Robert Lund. Download that to your iPod and throw some bucks to Mike Jones while you laugh.

SPECIAL NOTE: I don't think I've ever asked this before, but I humbly encourage my fellow bloggers to tell their own readers about the Mike Jones PayPal Fund. It's not often that we get an unlikely hero like Mike Jones, especially one that really could use our help. Send me the URL of your mention and I'll link back to you here.

UPDATE: 43 Bloggers joining in so far:

Gumbo Pie, Manhattan Offender, OutZone TV, Becoming A New Yorker, Let Me Get This Straight, Ethical Slut, Where I'm Going, Bent Blog, Pam's House Blend, Gay Men Rule, Living In The Bonus Round, One Good Move, MediaMutt, Boysbriefs, Angst In Middle Age, TGI Paul, Dan Savage, Alexander Chee, Proceed At Your Own Risk , Towleroad, Evil Ganome, Calling Shenanigans. Habitat 67, The South Beach Bum, Someone In A Tree, Queerty, Mark Kane, This Space For Rent, Valley Of The Vapors, Moncrief Speaks, Mistress Matisse, Big Ass Belle. 3 Dollar Billy, Scott_Evill, Boy Culture.

Two NSFW Bloggers joining in so far: Roids And Rants, Naked Workshops.

UPDATE II: DailyKos is on this, via one of their Diarists. If any of you folks are registered DailyKos commenters, the linked post needs a certain number of "recommendations" from registered commenters in order for it to be moved onto the DailyKos homepage, which would be MAJOR.
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Verdict: Extra Guilty

How kind some of you are, sending me alarmed emails, concerned that the day had nearly expired without a post. Y'all are sweet and we are totally BFF.

My morning was spent downtown, due to a "Failure To Respond" juror subpoena. I went seeking bureaucratic absolution, half-fearing I was *this close* from being thrown into the Tombs, as I tried to sort out what seemed like a pretty official "we are SO not kidding" threat to arrest me for "willfully evading my lawful civic duty", or whatever the Head Clerk Of Chastising And Disdainful Looks called it, as she charged the collected group of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells assembled with me.

The thing is, I had responded. I responded to the first notice, and then I responded to the second notice. The confusion may have something to do with my moving one building over on my street, although the mailman has no problem forwarding me my issues of Watchtower. (Thanks, by the way, to the person who did that. Oh, my sides.) However, the juror duty issue appears to be settled now, and I expect to be called any day, hopefully for one of those juicy Law & Order-esque icy-bitch-trophy-wife-bludgeons-zillionaire-husband, sort of trials.

iPod Sad Face

Friday I dropped my iPod mini on the subway stairs. More accurately, it was knocked out of my hand by a woman who couldn't wait until she reached the top of the stairs to open her umbrella, lest her precious 'do get damp. Subway staircase umbrella etiquette is one of those petty topics I once pledged to never blog about, but still - da bitch slapped my iPod down 20 stairs and now my vintage cool metal mini is no mo.

Still, with today's release of the Zune, I do have the opportunity to shed the one Apple product I was gifted with two years ago and leave the whiteplasticcultofmac behind forevah. Initial reviews of the Zune are decidedly mixed, but as far as I can tell, the downsides are all for product features that I wouldn't have much use for anyway. I shall mull my decision for a few days. If anybody out there already has a Zune, feel free to post your first impressions here.

Real Bad Gives Real Big

Last night the organizers of Real Bad, the Folsom Street Fair closing party that I raved about this year, donated a record-breaking $115,000 to the two beneficiaries of this year's party: PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) and Men's Inner Journey. That's an amazing amount from a single event (100% of ticket revenues) and congratulations are due to Grass Root Gay Rights/West for their dedication and tireless work. (And for one kickass party!) Next year's Real Bad is Sunday, September 30th, 2007. Start planning your outfits.

The Goodbye Song

Today is a sad anniversary.

In 1994, Jimmy went into the hospital again. He'd been in and out of Broward General a dozen or more times over the last couple of years, and it was getting harder for his friends, including me, to maintain the usual matching levels of panic and hope that most people experience when a friend is very sick.

It didn't help that Jimmy was a terrible patient. When he was able, he'd leave the hospital grounds and walk across to the convenience store to buy cigarettes, which he'd smoke in the hospital stairwell, striking a ghostly figure in his gown, under the emergency lighting. He cursed the nurses when they confiscated his smokes, and he cursed the housekeepers for cleaning his room while he was watching tv. He cursed his friends for not visiting enough, and he cursed us for waking him up when we were there.

And of course, we forgave him continuously.

"This isn't Jimmy," we'd say. "Not OUR Jimmy." Then we'd blame the illness, or the medications.

But in fact, Jimmy hadn't been Jimmy since Barney died, in 92. Barney had been a core member of my inner circle, ever since college. And ever since college Barney had barreled through our lives with an everchanging series of 'husbands', all of which had their arrival heralded as Barney's 'One.True.Love.' It became a running joke.

"Who's that with Barney? This week's One.True.Love?" And then we'd snicker.

And one week, in 1990, it was Jimmy. That week stretched into a month, which lasted through the summer, which became a holiday season spent in a whirlwind of parties with Barney and Jimmy, the likes of which none of us had seen. Looking back, I think we were all subconsciously speeding up the timeline of our world.

Go more places. Throw bigger parties. Love each other harder.

The biological clock was real for us, man. And that fucker was counting down fast.

Barney and Jimmy had less than three years together. The first year, Barney bought a dilapidated bungalow in Wilton Manors, which they quickly turned the showplace of the neighborhood, largely thanks to Jimmy's home repair skills and Barney's amazing gift for ornamental landscaping. It wasn't very long before real estate agents were driving unconvinced home shoppers past their house.

Their second year together, Barney landed a huge promotion at his company, and with his Christmas bonus, he bought Jimmy a cherry-red Jeep, stunning us all. Jimmy had wanted a Jeep ever since he was a little boy, and Barney told us that Jimmy had sobbed uncontrollably when he saw it in the driveway on Christmas morning.

In '92, Christmas fell on a Friday, and most of us scattered to spend the weekend with our bio-families, planning to regroup for New Year's Eve. At their home, on Christmas Eve, Barney went to bed with a fever and a terrible cough. In the morning, Jimmy could hardly wake him. Barney was transported by ambulance to Broward General and was put on a respirator. The doctors said it was the fastest moving case of pneumocystis they'd seen since the 80's.

Jimmy made an uncomfortable call to Barney's parents in Pensacola, who made immediate plans to fly to Fort Lauderdale in the morning. The hospital refused Jimmy's request to be at Barney's bedside, forcing him to take a vigil in the vending machine room.

In the morning, Jimmy was buying his breakfast from the candy machine, when a hospital administrator tapped on his shoulder. Barney had died a few hours earlier. He'd choked to death. Barney died alone, with his One.True.Love standing 100 feet away.

The next weekend Barney's parents arrived with a U-Haul and took away all of Barney's possessions, including all the household items that he and Jimmy had owned together, from appliances and linens right down to the artwork off of the walls. Jimmy watched helplessly as they hitched up the red Jeep, which for some reason was in Barney's name, and towed it away.

It was about two years after Barney died that Jimmy had started to have problems himself. It was PML. Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy. Dizziness, disorientation and memory loss quickly took over Jimmy's ordinarily effusive personality.

During Jimmy's final hospital stay, he shared his room with an older man, also with AIDS. I'd seen this man and his lover around the leather bars of Ft Lauderdale over the years, the two of them always in complete leather gear, no matter the occasion. Once, we saw them in the downtown supermarket, shopping in leather chaps. They seemed completely devoted to each other, and somehow we thought they were cute, and spared them our usual withering scorn we probably would have heaped on someone we'd seen shopping in assless chaps.

My roommate and I were headed down the hall to Jimmy's room one evening, and as we approached his door, we could hear singing. A single, low voice gently singing a familiar song. We stopped outside his room and could see that it was the lover of the man in the other bed. He was dressed in his finest leather, and he was standing just inside the curtain that was drawn around his husband's bed, singing him a song we'd heard many times in the clubs.

We'll always be together
However far it seems
Love never ends
We'll always be together
Together in electric dreams

After he finished the song, he walked past us without a glance, his shiny boots clicking loudly down the hall.

We tried not to look around the curtain as we walked over to Jimmy's bed. Jimmy was sitting up and looking out the window. He didn't acknowledge our presence for a minute, which we'd gotten used to. Finally he looked over at us and said, "Did you hear that guy singing? What a waste of time, his husband died hours ago."

"Oh...really," I said.

Jimmy laid back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

"I don't know, maybe it wasn't a waste of time, who knows? Do you think Barney can hear us?"

"I don't know, honey."

"I wonder what I would have sung to Barney if I had been...," Jimmy said, his voice trailing off.

Jimmy reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, an instinctual move really, because not only did he not have cigarettes, his dressing gown didn't have a pocket. He made a frustrated noise and looked back out the window, dismissing us with a wave of his hand.

He died the next day.

Gay Money Sinks NY Republican

Several readers have tipped me off to an interesting story in today's Daily News regarding the congressional race in New York's Westchester County. Newly elected John Hall (D-NY, left), formerly the frontman for 70's pop rock band Orleans, squeaked by his opponent after Adam Rose, a wealthy gay private citizen, enraged by Republican incumbent Sue Kelly's opposition to gay marriage, donated $500,000 to Hall's campaign.

The relatively unknown Hall beat Kelly with a tiny 2% margin, undoubtably aided by harsh last minute tv and radio attack ads funded by Rose. Adam Rose had previously hosted Sue Kelly at his 47 acre ranch, where she pledged to balance her opposition to gay marriage by supporting the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell", saying that Kiryas Joel, her local strict Orthodox Jewish constituents, prevented her from supporting same-sex unions. That wasn't good enough for Rose, who immediately cut that huge check. Ironically, Kiryas Joel also decided to support John Hall, who supports gay marriage.

Trivia: Hall made news in 2004 when he loudly protested the Bush campaign's appropriation of Orleans' biggest hit, Still The One, as Dubya's entrance music at election rallies. That's Hall in the middle of an album cover that oddly thrilled your narrator during his teen years.

HomoQuotable - Elton John

"I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people." - Elton John, speaking to Music Monthly Magazine. "Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. From my point of view, I would ban religion completely."

I'd like to imagine no religion too.

Morning View - The Ansonia

At 73rd & Broadway is the Upper West Side's Ansonia, a grandly ornate Parisian-styled apartment building. Built in 1880, the Ansonia is rife with gay history, as its basement was the site of the Continental Baths. It was there, in 1972, that Bette Midler famously made her debut to gay audiences, with Barry Manilow accompanying her on piano.

The Continental Baths was so famous in New York, with an endless stream of celebrity patrons and performers (Melba Moore, Manhattan Transfer, Peter Allen), that Bloomingdales even sold a souvenir bathhouse towel emblazed with the Continental logo. Ironically, it was the lavish shows that did the Continental Baths in, as gay men preferred to actually have sex in bathhouses, rather than watch shows. So, after several years as the most famous gay bathhouse in the world, in 1977 the Continental became even more notorious as Plato's Retreat, a bisexual/swinger's sex club favored by the Studio 54 crowd.

The apartments in the Ansonio have famously thick and soundproof walls, and thus drew the residency of musicians and singers who were able to rehearse in their homes without annoying their neighbors. The Ansonia counted Toscanini, Stravinsky, and opera star Geraldine Ferrar among its tennants. In 1992, the Ansonia was converted into condominiums.