No Outrage Over Gay Slurs At NV GOP Event, On NPR?

Let's play a little game.

Suppose that at the Nevada Republican Party's annual convention, the speaker appearing between the candidate for U.S. Senate and the GOP's national party chairman called Barbara Mikulski a bitch. Or Brian Sandoval a bean bandit. Or, even, Barack Obama, say, a Negro.

Would be kinda a big deal, right? Would probably lead the news, no?

Here's a startling passage deep, deep, deep inside Laura Myers' account in the Review-Journal of the GOP confab at Green Valley Ranch:

Between Angle and Steele, impressionist Rich Little entertained the crowd with an act that included a George Burns impersonation, lots of Harry Reid jokes and a gag with a punch line that referred to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is gay, as a "queen".

And that's it. Myers didn't think it necessary to ask the GOP leadership if that was appropriate or offensive speech. She didn't think it was worth breaking out as a sidebar or moving up in the story as you know she would if any of the three examples I provided earlier had occurred.

According to Steve Sebelius' Tweet, the hilarious Rich Little quip went something like: "I performed for a queen. Barney Frank." Nevada News Bureau editor Elizabeth Crum, herself a conservative, nonetheless also seemed appalled in this Tweet: "Rich Little on stage. Cracks joke about Barney Frank that I will not repeat. Tweet. Whatever. #nvgop"

Except it's NOT a "whatever." It's a WTF? This is still OK? I wasn't there, but I betcha Steele and Angle and the rest of the room roared in laughter. That's funny, those queers, err, I mean queens.

And, yes, I call liberals to task when they refer to Rush Limbaugh's girth. That's not acceptable or relevant either. Remember back when Wanda Sykes and everyone else who laughed at her got bashed for wishing Limbaugh would die? So the fact that Little is a comic -- and that's quite a generous term for Little these days -- does not absolve him or his amused audience.

This doesn't yield an apology from Nevada Republican Party Chairman Mark Amodei? Or from the party's titular leader of the moment, Sharron Angle? Or any follow-up from the mainstream media? Can you imagine if the same sort of thing was said about ANY OTHER GROUP?

P.S. My partner, Miles, has been wanting me to note that this week NPR's Fresh Air goddess Terry Gross aired a clip -- unbleeped -- from comic Louis C.K.'s TV show containing five instances of the use of the word "faggot." Gross and the comic use the word five times each in their conversation, too. The sequence goes from 11:51 to about 19:00. As Miles notes, it's fine to have a discussion of an offensive word, but if this were nigger, it would have been bleeped in the clip and the talkers would have said "the 'n' word" instead of the whole slur.

So NPR's conduct, too, is pretty outrageous. And one way you know Miles is right is that in the TRANSCRIPT of part of the sequence on Fresh Air's website, the word "faggot" is removed for "[the slur]". So it's OK for broadcast but not for writing on the Web? Huh?

Wanda Sykes @ LV Gay Rally: "I’m Proud To Be Gay"

(UPDATE: Hear Wanda's speech and a brief interview by clicking here or right-click here to download the file. Also, hear our July 17 interview with Wanda on The Strip Podcast by clicking here.)

Dozens of rallies were held around the nation on Saturday to protest the passage of California's Prop 8, which re-banned same-sex marriage and sparked a fury. But only one that I know of featured a prominent celebrity coming out of the closet, and that would be the one here at the GLBT Community Center. Here she is...


I've just filed a few lines about it for tomorrow's New York Times, but I've also posted the audio of Sykes' remarks and my brief interview with her in the podcast feed. It adds up to about 8 minutes and you can hear it by clicking here or you can save it to your computer by right-clicking here. (The file also contains a brief chat with an 18-year-old UNLV student about why he was so fired up over Prop 8's passage.)

Here's a little bit of what Sykes said. She started by talking about how exciting it was to her to see Obama elected:

"I thought, man we are moving in the right direction. And then at about 11 o’clock I was crushed. We took a huge leap forward and then got dragged 12 feet back. I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked, our community was attacked. I got married Oct. 25, I don’t really talk about my sexual orientation, I felt like I was living my life, I wasn’t in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody who knows me personally, they know I’m gay. And that’s the way people should be able to live our lives, really. We shouldn’t have to be standing out here demanding something we automatically should have as citizens of this country. ... They pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we shouldn’t have to settle for less. Instead of having gay marriage in California, no, we’re gonna have gay marriage across the country. When my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York. ... I’m proud to be a woman, I’m proud to be a black woman and I’m proud to be gay."

In my interview with her, she said this: "People shouldn’t have to talk about their sexual orientation, we shouldn’t have to do it, but with the legislation that they passed, I can’t sit by and just watch. I just can’t do it."

Sykes also disputed the much-reported claim that 70 percent of black voters in California voted to ban gay marriage. Several prominent writers, including Dan Savage here, have railed against homophobic blacks. Wanda said the exit polls were wrong and admonished me, "Please stop spreading that 70 percent of African-Americans voted Yes on Prop 8 because it’s just not true."

After the speeches, the very large -- figure more than 1,000 people -- crowd lined Sahara Avenue with signs. This gives some sense of how immense this was.

Show is UP (already!): Wanda Woman

Whoa! We're posting this week's show early because we had no show last week and I know some of you are suffering S&M withdrawal. You can read Steve's LA Times piece on Wanda Sykes here, by the way. Click on the date to hear it or right-click to download the show and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here:

July 17: Wanda Woman

She told Jane Fonda to f--- off in "Monster-in-Law," had her portrait snapped by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair magazine and, this fall, is expected to marry Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the sitcom “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” Those are some of the highlights of Wanda Sykes’ illustrious career. The comic-actress, who performs stand-up twice in July and twice in August, speaks to Steve this hour about all that and some of the less thrilling moments – can someone say Pootie Tang?

In Banter: The Vegas Podcast-a-Palooza is coming up, a WSOP marathon night, BLT Burger rocks, Rub less so, MGMGrand.Com has troubles and more.

Links:

Get seats for Wanda Sykes' P-Ho shows in 7/18-19 and 8/8-8/9 here
Wanda Sykes' website is here
Steve's AFP piece on the WSOP finals is here
Find out more about the Vegas Podcastapalooza here
Read about WSOP finalist Craig Marquis' father here
The kerfluffle over the MGMGrand.Com is all over the blog here
The site for BLT Burger at the Mirage is here
Read Steve's LVW column on the Trump here (after 7/17)
Hear the full version of Wanda's porn-related phone prank and others here

The Strip is LIVE on 7/15 @ 7 p.m.

Join us Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. PT in the chat room and listen to the webstream at LVRocks.Com for the live version of "The Strip." Comic Wanda Sykes talks to Steve about Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jane Fonda, Barack Obama and a whole lot more. She's playing at the Planet Hollywood on July 18-19 and again in early August. Plus, we'll discuss the MGM reservation mess, the Vegas Podcast-a-Palooza, the World Series of Poker and much more.

Come on down -- or wait till Thursday for the podcast. Your call. We love you either way.