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UPDATE: There’s a petition you can sign to object to the firing.

Led by born-again Republican Mary Black, the City Commissioners of Largo, Florida voted to fire City Manager Steve Stanton. Stanton had been City Commissioner for 15 years, but once his intention to get a sex-change operation become know the good Republicans and Christians of Largo couldn’t bear to let him be employed a moment longer.

According to local activist Peggy Schaefer of the First Baptist Church of Indian Rocks:

I don’t want that man in office. I don’t think we should be paying him $150,000 a year when he’s not been truthful. We have to speak up. Of course, we don’t believe in sex changes or lesbianism. They have their rights, but we do, too.

And according to Ron Sanders, pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church of Largo:

If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he’d want [Stanton] terminated. Make no mistake about it.

From TampaBay.com:

LARGO — City commissioners ended one of the most tumultuous weeks in Largo history Tuesday night by moving to fire City Manager Steve Stanton following his disclosure that he will have a sex-change operation. […] Commissioners voted 5-2, with Mayor Pat Gerard and Commissioner Rodney Woods in dissent. […]

“I’m going to be embarrassed if we throw this man out on the trash heap after he’s worked so hard for the city,” Gerard said before the vote. “We have a choice to make: We can go back to intolerance, or we can be the city of progress.”

Until last week, [Stanton] had served 14 years as the city manager, generally to good reviews. Last fall, commissioners raised his salary nearly 9 percent to $140,234 a year.

But on Feb. 21, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Stanton was undergoing hormone therapy in preparation for gender-reassignment surgery — a plan known only to a small circle of people, including his wife, medical team and a few top officials at City Hall.

Stanton and his friends had written an eight-page plan to help make his decision known in June, when he said his 13-year-old son could be out of town and shielded from the publicity.

Instead, the news came out before he told his son. Outraged residents swarmed commissioners, demanding he be ousted.

“It’s just real painful to know that seven days ago I was a good guy and now I have no integrity, I have no trust and most painful, I have no followers,” Stanton said.

There’s not much to say other than: Disgusting.

* * *

So who is this Mary Black, the commissioner who led the movement to fire Stanton because she hates transsexuals? She is (of course) a born-again Christian Republican with a chip on her shoulder about queers. Here’s what she said about firing Stanton: “I do not feel he has the integrity, nor the trust, nor the respect, nor the confidence to continue as the city manager of the city of Largo.”

A few facts about Mary Black you may not already know:

* Black is anti-abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She has said that abortion could be okay if the mother will die otherwise. (St. Petersburg Times, 10/2/1992).

* “Mary Black ran for city commissioner for one reason. She has been extremely clear about that before the election, during the election and now after the election. Her one and only goal is to stop the ‘gay agenda’ by forcing her biblical beliefs on all of us.” –St. Petersburg Times, letter to the editor, 6/14/2005

* Mary Black has a reputation for being an obstructionist and (frankly) a bit weird. From an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times (also picked up by the Largo Times and the North Pinellas Times) (6/10/2005):

She has refused to meet with the city manager or city attorney, implying there is something unsavory about doing so. She stays away from City Hall. She conducts her city business out of her home, on her own computer. She communicates with the city by e-mail memos. She seems open only to the counsel of unidentified supporters she says asked her to run and represent their concerns.

When she gets to City Commission meetings and discovers that other commissioners know things she doesn’t, she acts like there is some conspiracy to deny her information. When she asks the city manager to put an item on a meeting agenda for her and it isn’t constructed as she had intended, she blames him or the staff rather than her own refusal to communicate openly. She eschews the advice of the city attorney and writes her own legal opinions, though she is not a lawyer.

City Commission meetings have become torturous sessions where other commissioners and staff members try to figure out what Black wants […] If Black’s intent when she entered office was to keep city government so tangled up that it could not accomplish the people’s business, she is doing that very well.

But as bizarre and hateful a figure as Mary Black is, it’s not just about her. It’s about the mob of locals, like Peggy Schaefer, who hate anyone who isn’t just like themselves, and can’t even bear the idea of a transsexual having a job in government. It’s about the four other commissioners — Andy Guyette, Gigi Arntzen, Harriet K. Crozier, and Gay Gentry — who said “me too” to bigotry. And it’s about the voters who will probably reward the five hatemongers for their prejudice.

I hope that Steve Stanton (who plans to become Susan Stanton) lands on her feet. And I hope that Peggy Schaefer, Mary Black, Andy Guyette, Gigi Arntzen, Harriet K. Crozier, and Gay Gentry all learn to find the shame they are so desperately lacking.

Via Jay Sennet and AngryBrownButch. And as Autumn points out, this case illustrates why anti-discrimination legislation needs to include transgendered people.

April sent me a link to this CNN article titled “Is black America Ready to Embrace Obama?”  I just wanted to point out the absurdity of the “story highlights” listed at the top of the page.  There seems to be an assumption that black people should like Obama and vote for him because he’s black–as if his other policies don’t matter at all. 

The article starts with highlights:

• In a new poll, Obama leads Clinton 44 to 33 percent among black voters
• Some blacks doubt that Obama understands their experience
• Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, is the Senate’s only black member
• Polls say blacks are less likely to believe America is ready for a black president

Are you missing the irony here?  The title seems to imply that Black Americans are skeptical of Obama, but then points out that 44% of Blacks favor Obama, in a race where there are a bazillion candidates.  He leads everyone else, but people are questioning whether or not Blacks are loyal to Obama?  The doubt angle is reiterated in the second “highlight,” and then the last highlight seems to reinforce Black Americans’ doubt in Obama, which is expanded in the text:

Blacks, in part, may be slow to warm to the candidacy of Obama because, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll suggests, they are less likely than whites to believe that America is ready for a black president.

The poll, conducted December 5-7, 2006, found that 65 percent of whites thought America was ready, compared with 54 percent of blacks. The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 5 percentage points.

I think they are missing the point here; just because people may think the US is not ready for a Black candidate, doesn’t mean that they are not willing to vote for a Black candidate.  My perception is that the vast majority Black Americans are ready for a black President, but most Black Americans believe that many White Americans are not ready for a black President.  (I tend to agree.)  So I think reporters are confusing skepticism about whites willingness to accept a black President with skepticism about Obama himself.

The article goes on to suggest that Black Americans are skeptical of Obama because:

Part of Obama’s problem with black voters is that he is viewed by whites as the first black candidate with a legitimate shot at the White House.

“When white America has embraced a candidate — as they have with Barack Obama — there is a certain amount of distrust that goes with this among a number of African Americans,” Wilson said

In an interview with National Public Radio, Obama acknowledged the dynamic:

“In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community,” Obama said. “By virtue of my background, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.”

I am sure that there are a few blacks who feel this way, but I think this is an over-generalization that has been perpetuated by many media outlets.

This is the same problem we see time and time again with the media coverage of Obama and Black voters.  Many people seem to be perplexed as to why black voters are not flocking to Obama in droves, and then they are shocked that black voters are deliberative, taking time to analyze Obama’s positions. 

Imagine the tables were turned, and we were talking about John Edwards or Hillary Clinton.  I personally would hope that we would see the same “highlights:”

• In a new poll, Edwards/Clinton leads Obama 44 to 33 percent among black voters
• Some blacks doubt that Edwards/Clinton understands their experience

Why am I not seeing those stories, particularly for Edwards and the other white male candidates (and to a lesser extent Clinton)?  Maybe that’s because people are surprised that Barack Obama isn’t automatically getting Black support (although as Black voters learn more about Obama, he is garnering more support), but the recent statewide elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland should have shown that black voters don’t just run willy nilly to the first Black candidate that comes along.  Maybe these reporters believe only whites have to prove themselves to black voters.  Would we ask similar questions to white voters–why are you skeptical of John Edwards; do you feel he’s not white enough? Why are you voting for Obama when there are several other white candidates.  Either way the assumption is really unfair, and it reveals some unfortunate racial double standards.

I wish the mainstream media could just accept the fact black voters don’t automatically vote for Black candidates.  Perhaps black voters care more about policies than they do about a candidate’s racial identity.  Now isn’t that a novel idea, voting on policy.

[This post was originally posted on September 6, 2002. It disappeared from the archives at some point or other, so I’m now reposting it. –Amp]

The excellent legal blogger Sam Heldman writes “It’s easy to disprove the thesis ‘all daily strips with talking (incl. thinking) animals are pure genius’. (Garfield. QED.) But is it possible to disprove the thesis that ‘no daily strip without a talking (incl. thinking) animal has ever been pure genius’?”

I got into an argument with Scott McCloud about this years ago; Scott had made some sort of compendium of the important comics genres, and although he included “superheros,” he hadn’t included funny-animal comics. Yet if you consider artistic worth, funny-animal comics - Krazy Kat, Pogo, Mutts, the Barks Uncle Scrooge, the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and if you stretch the genre a bit Barnaby, Bloom County, Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes - have been at least as important as superheroes in the history of American comics. Even my current favorite daily, the perennial exception-to-the-rule Bruno, has a cat that thinks aloud.

Anyhow, to answer Sam’s question, there’s a lot of non-talking-animal genius if you include soap opera and adventure strips. There were no talking or thinking animals in Terry and the Pirates, for example, or in Little Orphan Annie (I don’t think Sandy saying “arf!” counts). Truthfully, though… as brilliant as the classic soaps and adventures were, they also generally suffer from clichéd, stock characters. The best strips feature a level of humanity and characterization which the soaps and adventures strips - due, I think, to their extreme emphasis on plot - can’t match. I think Sam could argue that none of these arise to the “pure” genius level.

There’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, of course - but that’s a weekly, not a daily.

I’d argue that at its best, Polly and Her Pals is as good as any comic strip ever done - but Polly’s best was always the Sunday strips, not the dailies.

Some folks would argue for the original Dennis the Menace, but I’ve always thought Dennis was overrated (although undeniably beautifully drawn).

Still, there is one strip - kinda halfway between being a gag strip and an adventure - which inarguably had “pure genius” in its peak years. And although I can’t say for certain, I don’t recall any talking (or thinking) animals. Thimble Theatre (which most folks think of as “Popeye”) is about as good as comic strips get.

There’s one more strip I’d argue for - the perennially-underestimated Doonesbury. It’s now past its prime, but at its peak (which lasted a couple of decades) Doonesbury was consistently fresh and funny, with excellent characterization and reasonably good drawing (Trudeau isn’t a natural at the drawing board, but he works hard, and has his own distinctive style). It doens’t rise to Pogo or Peanut’s level, but it deserves more credit than it generally gets.

I know there’s stuff I’m forgetting; I’ll probably get tons of emails pointing out this or that classic daily with no talking animals. But for now, I’ve gotta say - damn, Sam’s question is difficult to answer! The heirarchy of daily strip genres is now clear. All other daily strip genres must bow down (chanting “we’re not worthy! we’re not worthy!”) before the talking possums, kats and beagles.

(Edited long after the fact to correct my embarrassing reference to Sandy saying “woof,” when everyone knows Sandy mainly said “arf.”)

I wrote about this particular poll for TAPPED last week. It is a biased poll, intended to produce biased answers. Glenn Beck has used it and now Fox News is using it, too:

On the February 27 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, anchor Bill Hemmer cited the results of a "new poll" by Public Opinion Strategies that 53 percent of voters say "victory in Iraq is still possible." Hemmer failed to acknowledge that, as noted by Media Matters for America (here and here), POS has described itself as a "Republican polling firm," and a Republican pollster has reportedly stated that the question Hemmer cited was worded in a "completely unprofessional" manner.

The POS poll, conducted February 5-7, asked voters to rate their level of agreement/disagreement with the statement "Victory in Iraq, that is creating a young but stable democracy and reducing the threat of terrorism at home, is no longer possible for the US." Media Matters has noted that, according to blogger Greg Sargent, Republican pollster David E. Johnson, CEO of the Strategic Vision polling firm, criticized the poll as, in Sargent's words, "leading and designed to elicit the answers they got." Johnson also asserted, according to Sargent, that the wording of the poll's statement was "completely unprofessional" because "[i]t's designed to confuse the respondent. People are being asked whether two different things can be accomplished -- establishing democracy in Iraq and reducing the threat of terrorism at home -- and doesn't clarify which one people are talking about."

The danger I see in all this is a total corruption of polls as at least partly useful strategies for learning about voters' preferences. If the right-wing is going to start praising biased polls on purpose it will not be very long when the left-wing must do the same or lose the game. And the overall result is that nobody will trust any polls at all. Part of the return to the faith-based times?

Actually, this trend has existed for a while. The conservative think tanks have been spewing out biased research (research without the proper anonymous refereeing of academic papers or the tournament of seminars where it is ripped apart if it is bad) for a long time, and this research has been given the same respect as research that came out of the peer-review system. I'm sure similar examples can be given from the left if one digs deep enough.

This is dangerous, because it removes another leg from the stool of reasoned arguments on which we all try to sit. (And yes, I did have the mental image of all people jostling to try to sit on the same stool. My sense of humor is quite sick.)

I’m going off radar for a bit, though any of you subscribed to feeds for this blog may be confused to see possibly dozens of new entries showing up. That’s because I’m going to be (ever so tediously) migrating old blog entries (those from Blogger that didn’t get migrated to TypePad, and/or from there to WordPress for whatever reasons) to this client, since it looks like I’ll be sticking around here for good. (What a concept.)

I’m also going to be doing some troubleshooting with the template. God knows I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone/ refraining from “fixing” things that ain’t necessarily broke.

Meantime, feel free to check out items from the blogroll (note: if you’re viewing this entry on its own, outside of the main page, you’ll have to go back there to view it or almost anything else in the sidebar, which is one thing that peeves me about this otherwise satisfactory template). I’ll be visiting all my usual haunts (albeit on something of a delay), and responding eventually to comments here, so I’ll see y’all around.

Tag: blogging

Check out this amazing piece by The Lovely Jaclyn Friedman at Women's eNews, "Drinking and Rape: Let's Wise Up About It."

Here is a very good article about weathering the winds of change, by The Butterfly Temptress, posted at EdenFantasys.

She was diagnosed with cancer, and she talks about how her life has changed since the diagnosis. She talks about how relationships evolve due to the changes between the partners. Her husband-to-be gave her lots of support, and of course that is a good thing.

He loves Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. We call them "Reesie Cups".

He's not going to be happy with the possible recall of Reese's Cups due to the salmonella scare. He loves the little bite-sized cups. I do, too. I won't turn away a Reesie Cup.

I couldn't have said it better myself. (delagar, this one's for you.)

USA Today reports that one in four U.S. women become infected with HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer.

Researchers have estimated that 20 million Americans have some form of HPV. The study concluded that 26.8% of U.S. women are infected, a figure that is comparable to earlier estimates using smaller groups.

"We expected the prevalence of any HPV infection would be high and that's what we found," said CDC researcher Dr. Eileen Dunne, the study's lead author.

You can find the report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.