Happy Birthday, Malcolm X

Melissa Harris-Perry: Happy Birthday, Malcolm X (MSNBC)

Today is the birthday of Malcolm X. He would have been 87 years old.

Malcolm rarely receives the kind of mainstream press attention that his better known counterpart, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. does. And perhaps that is best. Unlike King, Malcolm has been not been subjected to the ahistorical nostalgia machine of American hero-making. His radicalism remains intact.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Marable Manning

James Buchanan: Our REAL first gay president

I have no adjectives to describe the latest cover of Newsweek, which declares Obama “the first gay president” after he personally endorsed same-sex marriage.

I’ll just let the rainbow halo speak for itself.

Usually this is where I’d post a picture of said cover, but I refuse to perpetuate that crap. Google it if you haven’t seen it already and you want to feel sad about American print media.

On a less disappointing and more historical note, George Mason University’s History News Network just ran an illuminating article about the real first gay president of the United States. (Hint: it is not Barack Obama)

Our real first gay president (History News Network via Salon)

There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.

Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:

I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

Despite such evidence, one reason why Americans find it hard to believe Buchanan could have been gay is that we have a touching belief in progress. Our high school history textbooks’ overall story line is, “We started out great and have been getting better ever since,” more or less automatically. Thus we must be more tolerant now than we were way back in the middle of the 19th century! Buchanan could not have been gay then, else we would not seem more tolerant now.

This is a great, great article. Read it!

And if you needed any more convincing that Newsweek has in fact degenerated into a vulgar peddler of sensationalistic tripe:

The Most Controversial Newsweek Covers [Slideshow] (Mediaite)

Good lord.

Congratulations, North Carolina. Last night you struck a decisive blow for loneliness. And tonight, as you go to sleep beside your heterosexual life mate, you can rest assured that all across your great state a gay man or a lesbian woman is crying themselves to sleep in solitude, and making your relationship stronger with every tear.
Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report, 5/9/12)

This is how a global nuclear disaster will happen

All of the experts seem to agree on one thing. The state of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan is unacceptably precarious.

It has been 14 months since the massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country and triggered a triple-meltdown at the Daiichi plant. Japan is still trying to understand the short-term and long-term health consequences of the largest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, although the psychological scars of the disaster are already evident. And while much of the 12-mile “exclusion zone” around the power plant is likely to remain uninhabited for decades, there is potential for a much larger disaster that could wreak nuclear havoc on a global scale.

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Our political future: Voting for inflexible positions rather than leaders

Tonight, six-term U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) lost his reelection primary to conservative challenger and Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock.

It should be noted that the Senator of 36 years lost the primary handily. Indiana Republican voters broke for Mourdock by a twenty point margin.

After conceding the race, Lugar’s office released the following statement. I’m posting it in its entirety because I think it describes the current state of U.S. politics better than anything or anyone I’ve recently encountered.

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