I Didn't Say It ...

Elton John, on his friendship with Drug Rush Limbaugh:

"I’ve been sober for 24 years now, and one of the best lessons it taught me is to listen. When it comes to people like Rush Limbaugh, or people who might enrage you sometimes, dialogue is the only way. You have to reach out....Better to build a bridge than a wall."

But, Elton, has Limbaugh listened? Has he changed his rhetoric about the GBT community?

You might be thinking you’re building a bridge but in reality you’re just talking to a wall.

Chris Rock, on the Billy Cosby rape allegations:

“I don’t know what to say. What do you say? I hope it’s not true. That’s all you can say. I really do. I grew up on Cosby. I love Cosby, and I just hope it’s not true. It’s a weird year for comedy. We lost Robin, we lost Joan, and we kind of lost Cosby.”

Sadly, though, we lost Robin and Joan through no fault of their own, but we 'lost' Cosby due to his own ALLEGED actions in the past.

James Manning, "pastor" at the Harlem Hate Church, ranting still about Starbucks:

"If you're drinking Starbucks, watch out if you're a woman. You might just get pregnant by drinking Starbucks. Because they've got some pretty potent semen in their drinks. And you will go home and tell your husband that you're pregnant and he'll say, 'But we haven't had sexual intercourse in years! Where did you get pregnant? Is it an immaculate conception?' NO! It was one of Starbucks' lattes that impregnated you!" 

Um, “Pastor”? I’m a gay man, been Team Gay since birth, and haven’t ever had sex with a woman, but even I know you can’t get pregnant drinking a Latte.

Sam Smith, on why he decided to come out before he released his debut album:

“I came out when I was, like 4 years old. My mum said she knew when I was like three. So I didn't have to actually properly come out...So I came out at a very, very young age. I kind of felt like I just had to mention it before I released my record. Just so people knew who the record was about. And it felt like a brave thing to do, as well. I wanted to do it before because if I did it afterwards people probably would have thought I was lying just to sell records, which wasn’t the case."

Except that when you came out — before the record release which actually brought considerable notice to your music — you said you didn’t want to be The Gay Singer, or the Spokesman for The Gays.

I get it: be The Singer, not The Gay Singer, and if you want to speak up for LGBT rights, or for any group, then do that, but all this talk now just sounds too much like sales promotion to me.

Prince Harry, on those nude pictures from his Vegas vacation:

“It was probably a classic case of me being too much Army and not enough prince. It’s a simple case of that.”

Or, you’re much more of a King to me after seeing those photos. But I’m loving your explanation for how, and why, it happened.

Random Musings

You know, last week when the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that discrimination against The Gays re: marriage was just fine, I loved the wingnuts coming out of the woodwork — the Bryan Browns, and the Brian Fishers and the Tony Perkins, and all those religiously-named Hate Groups — praising the judges on the bench for making the ‘right’ decision.

Funny, though, when the judges rule against them these asshats call them activists and unelected judges. Be careful boys, your hypocrisy is showing … again.

Speaking of rightwing loons, over there at Breitbart is a report that US Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch should face tough questioning before the Senate over her role in the 1992 Whitewater hearings:

“The prosecutor has a long career built of some high profile cases but there is one case Lynch was involved in that few are talking about. Lynch was a part of Bill Clinton's Whitewater probe defense team in 1992.”

One slight problem though. They’re talking about the wrong Loretta Lynch. The Lynch that was part of the Clinton defense team is on the right, and Obama’s nominee is on the left. 

It’s like they’re twins, right? So easy to get them confused.

I am not much of a fan of these action hero movies. I liked Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy because it was dark and edgy and, well, Christian Bale. I saw the first Iron Man because of RDJr; I haven’t seen a Thor or an Avengers because, well, it’s just not my cup of tea.

I did watch the new Superman on cable one night because, and again, well, Henry Cavill.

Do you blame me? I mean, sure, some of that body is the suit, but he is freaking hot and adorable.

Shoutout to Viktor at Maybe It's Just Me for first posting the pictures.

Hottie of the Week: Raza Jaffrey. He played Dev on Smash before they tried to reinvent that show between seasons and now he’s Aasar Khan on Homeland. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? We don’t know; we just know he’s delicious.

Bob Geldof is putting the Band Aid back on.

It was announced this week that Geldof will re-record the iconic charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas" to raise funds to fight Ebola. And some new voices will join some of the old ones, like U2; Sam Smith, will be there; Cold-meh, er, Coldplay, too. One Direction, yawn, and the incomparable Adele.

I’d suggest letting Adele do it solo, but that’s just me.

UPDATE:  Last week I posted about several North Carolina magistrates who quit rather than perform same-sex marriages after not one, but two federal judges said the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

And now, Judge John Smith, the chief administrator of North Carolina’s courts, has told Senate leader, Republican Phil Berger, that magistrates are duty-bound to perform same-sex marriages because it’s their job; and, he added, there is no federal law or rulings exempting the asshatted judges based on their personal religious leanings.

Of course, though, Berger and some two dozen other Senate Republicans have asked Smith to revise his directive, calling  it “at best incomplete and at worst misleading” by failing to take into account constitutional religious freedoms and federal civil rights laws for workers and government employees. But Smith countered with a 1991 Supreme Court decision that he says excluded state judicial employees from the definition of protected employees on the basis of religious beliefs because they are federal employees and cannot use their religion as a discriminatory weapon.

Then, as Republicans are apt to do, like rabid stupid dogs with a bone, Berger says he’ll introduce a bill next year protecting state officials who refuse to issue marriage licenses or perform weddings for same-sex couples.

Because discrimination is perfectly okay if you couch it in religion and use it against The Gays.

So, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the “Harlem Hate Pastor, James David Manning from ATLAH [All The Land Anointed Holy] Church. He’s the man of God who said The Gays should be stoned, er, put to death.

Now, though he’s gone even nuttier. Last week he claimed that Starbucks is “ground zero” for the Ebola outbreak because, ahem, "upscale sodomites" frequent the joint, and this week he upped the ante by claiming that Starbucks is using "sodomites' semen in lattes."

He says the reason that these “upscale sodomites” and "untoward types" hang out at Starbucks because the semen "flavors up" the coffee "and it makes you think that you're having a good time drinking that cup of latte with the semen in it."

Yes. He did. And he has a church. And he has a congregation. Seriously.

More stupid people? Okay ...

Megyn Kelly, one of Fox Now’s Talking Blonde Bimbos recently introduced Fox News’s Mike Huckabee as a guest on her “news” program The Kelly File with a casual mention to his show, only she called it, wait for it, it’s perfectly suited to a wingnut like Mike, she called it Fuckabee.

Oh, but she did.

More stupid people? Okay ....

Khloe Kardashian, whom I once thought of as the smart one — not saying much for that family, I know — has sparked a bit of outrage on Instagram after posting this meme on  featuring herself and her sisters Kim and Kourtney:

Khloe simply captioned the photo, “True.” While some fans found it funny, most found it racist and offensive and called her out on it; then after it received more than 400,000 ‘likes’ — from stupid racists, ALLEGEDLY — and 26,000 comments, Khloe deleted the picture from her page.

Like I said, I once thought she was the ‘smart’ one but she’s just as big a media-whore as the rest of that lot.

So, it looks like Joan Rivers should never have died.

A new Department of Heath report on her death confirms that, while undergoing an endoscopy at the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic, there were multiple failures in protocol which occurred after her trachea closed up while she was underwent an unauthorized laryngoscopy by her personal physician:

Rivers never signed off on that procedure, which was performed by a doctor who was not authorized to operate at the endoscopy facility.

Rivers was possibly given too much anesthetic because she was not weighed before the procedure, which is standard practice.

The facility lacked the basic medication that could have been administered to open her trachea and quickly save her life.

As a result, Joan Rivers suffered irreversible brain damage.

In addition, there were stories about someone in the room while Rivers was under anesthesia taking selfies of him/herself with the comic; Yorkville Endoscopy states that the staffer taking the photos has been fired, as has the physician who performed Joan’s endoscopy.

While I am not a person who sues, if this was my mother, I’d sue the pants off the clinic and both doctors.

Joan Rivers was 81, but she showed no signs of stopping, or, hell, even slowing down before she went in for a routine endoscopy.

Sad. Sad.

As I've said, I wake up with a song in my head every day; something old, sometimes new, sometimes something I had no idea I even knew.

This week it's The Byrd's "My Back Pages."