Rob Portman Comes Out

So today one of my Ohio Senate representatives on Capital Hill is a changed man. Today he favors gay marriage, where yesterday, he was agin it. Yesterday, he voted in favor of amending the Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, thereby relegating gays and lesbians to permanent second class citizenship. Today, Rob Portman tells CNN, the Columbus Dispatch and everyone else who'll listen that he favors repealing DOMA, that marriage is for everyone, straight or otherwise.

What a difference a day made. Well it's not that it's a different day or even daylight saving time or he had a V-8. No, it's the fact that his Yale attending son, Will, has come carefully out of his velvet-lined closet, to the surprise of his ultra conservative and religious parents. Young Will actually came out two years ago, but it took Dad a while to sort out the possible consequences to his political career.

In other words, do I tell Mitt that my kid likes boys now that he wants me to be his VP? Portman says he told him, but it had nothing to do with Romney switching horses in mid stream to run with Lyin' Ryan, the pariah from Wisconsin.

So now because Will is queer, the world needs to be made to fit his perception of privilege and equality, or so says his power broker Daddy.

I can just see Portman now, “tradition and religion and the GOP be damned! I'm gonna make this world safe for my homo son! And if he wants to make me a grandfather down the road, I'll pretend to be as happy as a good father can be!”

Whoopie! We the people have been given yet another glimpse into the lives of the rich, famous and white of America. If the world doesn't fit your perception, change it. Trickle down equality works as well as trickle down economics, right?

Well, no it doesn't.

Equality is a right garnered at birth. It is not predicated on the size of your bank account, color of skin, social station or what church you attend. It is a human right to be equal to every other human being on the face of this planet.

This is what the Rob Portmans of the world don't understand. Will's coming out was a personal situation for the Portmans. However, even if he had stayed securely strapped in the closet and “straight-acting” for the comfort of his parents, Rob Portman should have supported equality from jump. He should never have voted in favor of DOMA. He should never have supported Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He should be jumping all over, showing his support for ENDA.

His son's sexual orientation should never have mattered in the first place. It's about doing the right thing, as Christians and conservatives like Rob Portman always claim to do. It's that compassionate conservatism thingey.

So forgive me, if I don't jump up and down and congratulate the junior senator from Ohio for finally doing the right thing. 

All  I can say is, what took you so long?

Hostage II

I left the news world back in 1999. I was burned out and quite frankly, didn’t like the turn away from “real news” and toward “infotainment,” which was taking place in the industry. Now, if you miss the first four minutes of the newscast, you’ve essentially missed the newscast. It’s over, except for the recap in the closing 30 seconds. The rest of the time is taken up with features, gossip and weather.

But even though I got out physically, my desire to know has never left. And up until a few months ago I still managed to start my day reading several newspapers (the internet makes it easy). I still read several magazines on both sides of the current issues, in my desire to find all sides of the issues.

I write a blog that most of the time reflects what I’ve read in the newspapers, magazines or heard on CNN or MSNBC. Still can’t stand to watch FOX. It drives me nuts. I ended my career working for the local Fox and a news director who thought that the perfect reporter was one who left the station with prescripted questions written by her or the assignment desk and stuck to script while doing the interview. She actually voiced that opinion in the daily news meeting. I told her point blank that, that would be the day I quit, and it was. She got fired shortly after I quit. It was okay, I needed a change....I needed to write without the constrictions of alleged news gathering, that was no longer happening. But I still carried on my personal search for information...reading and reading and writing and writing, as if I never left the business.

Lately, for the first time in my adult life, I’ve been tuned out of the noise. I mean really tuned out...no newspapers, cancelled my magazine subscriptions, watched less TV news, and I don’t feel all that guilty about unplugging. Haven’t been writing either. I do feel twinges of guilt when I don’t update my blog.

But, hell, I have to remind myself that I created the blog for me. Not for anyone else. I created it to keep in practice with my writing. If I don’t use it, I lose it, understand?

I love to write, it’s just that by creating the blog, I felt an obligation to write every single day, every time I had a thought. That’s good, but there are other things to my life. I play golf. I love to play golf. If I had discovered the game earlier in my life, I might have tried to be a pro. I love being outside, especially this time of year. I have a lawn that needs tending. I have flowers that need love. I have dogs that need exercise. I have me, that needs exercise. I have a car that needs washing. I have a house that needs fixing. I have travel plans to make and trips to take. I need to check out the local flea markets. I have friends and lovers that I need to see. I have wine that needs drinking and food that needs eating.

I have a life outside of my blog and I should never, ever feel guilty about living.

Everything I do and experience comes out in my writing. It will eventually come out in my blog...just not everyday. Maybe not every two or three days. But it will come out, when it’s ready.

So I will get back to politics and the war and having opinions about something. But only when I feel it. In my own time, period.

9/11 Looking Back

It has always been my habit to turn on the news when I get up in the morning. I’m a former television news reporter. It was my way of catching up on what may have happened overnight as a way of preparing me for what I might have to deal with when I went to work.

I was no longer a reporter on Sept 11, 2001. I had retired in 1999. But old habits die hard. I got up about 8:30am and turned on CNN as always. I didn’t have to prepare for work, but I’m still a news junkie.

The first pictures that I saw were of a hole that looked like an airplane in the side of the World Trade Center tower. I called my sister. I needed a witness to what I was seeing. She turned on her TV and while we sat there, me in Cincinnati and she in Myrtle Beach, we watched the second plane crash.

We watched all day, talking to each other, clicking out to talk to other people and finally to sit there alone, stunned. I don’t remember moving, not to walk my dogs, go to the bathroom, or to get something to eat.

I felt helpless. Despite being retired, my first reaction was to respond, to go to work, to get the story. I felt the adrenalin rush. But I couldn’t do that anymore. I was on the sidelines for the first time in a very long time. I was a spectator in a game that I had previously played very well.

One of the things I know about myself, is that it is much easier for me to stand in the middle of chaos and crisis then it is to endure it from the outside, watching. I am emotionless in the eye of the storm. My emotional collapse always comes when story ends.

When I go home and shut the door, the processing of what I’d just seen and done begins. Sometimes, I get over it quickly. Other stories stay for years and manifest as memories when I least expect them. It usually happens when I write.

9/11 is a story that has never left. I and we, as a people are still processing this one. No matter where we were at the time of the incident, we were affected.

I told myself this morning, five years later, that I would not write about 9/11. I told myself I would not watch the rehashes that will go on all day on 24 hour cable news. I told myself I would not again watch the video of the planes into the tower, even though I know that some of it was shot by one of my closest friends in the whole world. He was on a roof top all day long.

But here I sit, watching and writing, going against my instincts that tell me I should turn this off and put down this computer. I should go do something else, work in my neglected gardens, take my dogs for a walk, cut the lawn. But I can’t.

I remember at one point, still sitting there and realizing that tears were streaming down my face. I don’t remember crying, I just remember the wetness on my face.

Five years later my face is wet again. The tears have not yet dried.