Monday, September 24, 2012

JMG Quote Of The Day - A.A. Gill


"Viewed from the pews, weddings are theater produced by straight amateurs using their own money. The resulting spectacle is what a dog show would be like if it were organized by the dogs. When gays remake weddings, the lighting will be the first thing to improve. Secondly, no one’s going to think that a fatless steak fryer is a suitable pres­ent, and the flowers won’t look ordered for a clown’s funeral. The music will also be classier; you won’t have to walk down the aisle to Meatloaf singing, 'I would do anything for love / But I won’t do that.'

"The history of queer culture shows us that gay men are the trailblazers. Where they go, heterosexual women follow, dragging reluctant straight men behind them, who in turn bring Texans. That’s how civilization and musical theater evolve. Not to mention catering. The cake has got to go. The original wedding cake was a biscuit broken over the bride’s head to represent what was about to happen to her hymen. But that’s vulgar. Today the happy couple jointly hold a very phallic knife and together force it through the virginal white icing into the soft, moist sweetness, and in America, for those who are slow at symbolism, they then push cake into each other’s face as a sort of cakealingus." - A.A. Gill, in a Vanity Fair piece titled Can Weddings Be Saved?  (Tipped by JMG reader Amanda)
 
Reposted from Joe

JMG HomoQuotable - Andrew Sullivan


"If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats’ Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery. To be sure, the Obama recovery isn’t likely to have the same oomph as the one associated with Reagan—who benefited from a once-in-a-century cut of top income tax rates (from 70 percent to, at first, 50 percent, and then to 28 percent) as well as a huge jump in defense spending at a time when the national debt was much, much less of a burden.

"But Obama’s potential for Reagan status (maybe minus the airport-naming) is real. Yes, Bill Clinton won two terms and is a brilliant pol bar none, as he showed in Charlotte in the best speech of both conventions. But the crisis Obama faced on his first day—like the one Reagan faced—was far deeper than anything Clinton confronted, and the future upside therefore is much greater. And unlike Clinton’s constant triangulating improvisation, Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left." - Andrew Sullivan, in the cover story of the latest issue of Newsweek.


Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 24, 2012

Fruitful Failure

My failure to accomplish or attain any of what I had hoped I would when I set out on the Buddhist path is, I think, the thing that has most enriched my practice.
- Andrew Cooper, "My Bad"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection through September 26th, 2012
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