Even when it looks as though Queer Channel Media is critically analyzing the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia, it still shills.
Kevin Naff whineth:
HRC certainly shoulders some of the blame for the painstakingly slow progress on federal gay rights legislation — a frustration I share with Sullivan — but it is overly simplistic and unfair to blame HRC alone.
No it isn’t.
Everything comes back to the Scampaign - because the Scampaign-oids have made sure that it does. They seemingly try to take credit for everything (just wait; when the cure for AIDS finally materializes, a press release will emerge from Rhode Island Avenue that will at least imply that the Scampaign had something - perhaps everything - to do with it) and they are as incapable of accepting responsibility for fuck-ups as the coke-snorting, draft-dodging treason-mongering rich brat who hangs out over on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Lets face reality: Not only are trans people worse off in 2008 than we would be had HRC never come into being, but so are the vast majority of non-trans gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The only people who are better off are those who personally benefit financially from the Scampaign’s continued existence.
BTW - Naff was playing Alice Dreger to HRCs J. Michael Bailey over an anti-HRC piece by Andrew Sullivan, in which the ordinarily-worthless defender of rich gay male elitism reiterates his view of the Scampaign as being
a tool of the Hillary Clinton campaign. But the scale of the group’s enmeshment with the Clintons is revealed by Michael Petrelis’s research into the campaign contributions of all its major figures. The final tally? Drum roll:
Hillary Clinton: $4,300
Chris Dodd: $3,000
John Edwards: $ 750
Bill Richardson: $ 500
Barack Obama: $ 0In the end, they couldn’t even fake it. When Obama got the nomination, the news of HRC’s endorsement was made on the HRC website by a college intern! The trouble, of course, is that the fusion of gay rights with the Clinton machine - fatal to gay equality in the 1990s - has not exactly given the lobbying group much cachet with the next potential Democratic president.
Meanwhile, Solmonese’s record on Capitol Hill is, despite his breathless promises a while back, non-existent.
Naff…
It is also inaccurate to say that Solmonese’s record on the Hill is “non-existent.” In fact, the House of Representatives in November passed ENDA, marking the first time either chamber of Congress has approved a gay employment rights bill since it was first introduced 33 years ago.
And the number of statutes enacted?
Zilch.
Try again, Gnaff:
And then Sullivan pokes fun at HRC for recruiting Christian Siriano to design a T-shirt for the group, a silly gripe that undermines the seriousness of Sullivan’s concerns.
No it doesn’t.
It highlights what the Scampaign’s real priorities are: insular acts of substanceless self-aggrandisement which ensure that money travels in every direction except those which stand any chance of benefiting any real gay, lesbian bisexual or trans person.
