Alert the Weather Girls: It’s Raining Morons

By John Calendo / Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

A storm is, indeed, gathering.

This is the opening line of a spooky and deeply mendacious ad from NOM, the so-called National Organization for (actually against) Marriage.

(You can, if you must, see this infuriating ad here. But wait, we have some spoofs of the ad coming after the jump. No need to get your blood up yet.)

Beneath dark, brooding clouds, their faces eerily lit by sudden flashes of lightning, actors fret over the coming gay-marriage legalizations, which threaten their very existence. You see everyone is about to call them bigots, which, of course, they are.

And that would be “just hurtful,” to use the words of Maggie Gallagher, founder of the hastily concocted NOM and the right’s longtime cheerleader and self-described “marriage expert,” a political and transparently theocratic front-woman for that very special brand of Republican wedge-issue: fag-baiting.

Maggie, unfortunately, has never been a graduate of the Blonde Babe School of Republican Spokesmodeling. A somewhat morose, dog-faced woman with a clearly disturbing case of morbid obesity, (sad picture at right), Ms. Gallagher — excuse us, that should be MRS. Gallagher, her stock in trade, after all — is sometimes heckled at speaking engagements by cruel protesters who moo at her.

Very hurtful, indeed.

But then Maggie is an old hand at fear mongering. She has logged many a tedious hour on TV as that rare talking head who can promulgate Republican homophobia without a trace of hesitancy, or as so often happens with pious right-wing Congressmen, that telltale eye-flutter of embarrassment, the sweaty air of self-aware absurdity.

No, Maggie spews abject nonsense with an earnest little catch in her voice, as if she means well and is doing this, really, only to protect the moms and the dads. And the children. Always the siren call of THE CHILDREN, who must be spared, at all costs, from the shame of human sexuality.

Still with so many hours bloviating on TV, you might think Maggie would have gotten with the diet and the blush by now. Even Elsie the Cow tried her best to smile laughingly from the Borden milk carton, if only to hide the tears of so many wasted years chewing her cud.

Then again, Maggie Gallagher does so love to cast herself as the bovine victim — no matter that only a few short years ago she was exposed as a fraud in the pay of the Bush administration. Playing the victim is a favorite right-wing tactic. Psychiatrists call it projection, tarring your opponents with your own bigoted motives.

And so in the NOM ad, it is the troubled actors, deftly chosen to represent racial diversity, including those portraying immigrants with heavy accents — not the usual love children of the far right — who find their way of life under attack. It is they, who would legislate homophobia, who are the victims here, and gay people, who merely want the full and equal civil rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution — gay people who are the ones with the militant agenda!

And so the clouds rumble with Jehovian displeasure, finding a visual for the Fall of the Western World imagery usually invoked when anti-gay rhetoric rears its thorny head on the Senate Floor.

In the wake of the public’s growing acceptance of gay marriage as well as the public relations nightmare that passing California’s anti-gay Prop 8 turned out to be, $1.5 million will be spent to run the NOM ad in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, states very close to legalizing marriage equality. The ad will even continue to run in Iowa, scene of the anti-gay marriage movement’s most stunning defeat.

And though the ad is getting a great deal of free cable exposure, it’s not the sort of exposure any organization would welcome. The ad’s fake testimonials and misrepresentation of facts are being repeatedly debunked around the dial. You want storm clouds? Check out the hurricane of derision this contrived little ad has kicked up on YouTube. Some of our favorite spoofs follow:

And finally, something different, smart and serious. Not a reaction to the ad, but to NOM itself. Watch a talk show host rip the NOM spokesman a new one in his relentless rebuttal of the entire anti-gay movement.

Matt

All I can think of during that video is Lord of the Rings.

Apparently an army of orcs is marching on Gondor! They bring above them churning smoky black clouds and a sense of ominous doom.

During the last 15 seconds of the video, the skies turn errily yellow, sorrowful trumpets start playing and the wedding ring logo pops up in the bottom of the screen. That’s when I’m expecting Damon Owens to start chuckling in an increasingly wicked tone, ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL, buahahahahaaaaaaa.

In other news, I wonder how many of those actors in the video are actually undecided on gay rights or have gay friends and are just selling out. It’s funny how they picked people who look young and hip – the black woman in the thick glasses who says “I am afraid” reminds me of every theater student/total fag hag I’ve met. The depressed-looking girl who says “I will have no choice” reminds me of the sad girl in the lunch room whose only friend was the gay kid who got his lunch tray knocked onto the ground by a jock but is trying to stay upbeat about it.

In other other news, I wonder what Jessie Jackson thinks of a Right-Wing group appropriating the term “Rainbow Coalition” for a cause opposite of what Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition stands for.
Thorn

Dude. Three of those youtube vids have been yanked. :-/
Thorn

oh never mind, it’s just my connection fucking with me without lube. Again. *sigh*
Anonymous

I must say I never quite tire of hearing bigots in positions of power squirm and desperately try to form some sort of counter-argument to the perfectly sensible arguments brought on by those of us who get it right, only to stutter and eventually either conclude that we are ‘steering away from the main argument’, or just start ranting again about this ‘marriage is the union of a man and a woman’ schtik.

I do wonder when they will ever get it, if they ever do. Because even though they say people have a right to vote against it, and that they are doing it for the people, even if the people themselves say they want same-sex marriage to be legal, those bigots will still be on the frontlines, fighting until the bitter end. It is with sadness in my heart that I must applaud them for their sheer, unbridled determination and stamina. It would have been so much easier had they not had that.
W_Lantry

Although I agree that opposition to same sex marriage is indefensible, I can’t help but wonder, what is the point of heaping scorn on Maggie Gallagher’s physical appearance? Her arguments can be easily rebutted on their merits (or lack thereof), without bitchily mocking her weight or her “dog face.”
Would her bigotry be any more acceptable if she were physically attractive? How would you feel if an opponent of gay marriage were to mock Barney Frank’s big nose?
I’m sure it must be satisfying, in some juvenile way, to call attention to an adversary’s every physical flaw, but in the end it doesn’t help our cause, but merely reinforces the stereotype that gay men are shallow and catty.
ceasar

Hold on, a physician having to treat everyone with clinical objectivity and administering care to people who aren’t exactly like her? That’s crazy talk!
Goldie

She’s a hate-spewing pig…fuck ‘er.
Anonymous

“Would her bigotry be any more acceptable if she were physically attractive?”

In this case one can only think of Anita Bryant, who was perhaps the most attractive opponent of civil rights in U.S. history. Sometimes it breaks my heart a little to watch videos of her bashing gay folks as the animal part of my brain gives her extra trust since she was so good looking. I have no doubt it helped her popularity with the general population who would be on the fence about what she was saying.
http://www.nightcharm.com John Calendo

Why I slammed Maggie Gallagher’s appearance, and how it relates to Anita Bryant

Thank you W_Lantry and Anonymous for your comments, which both are prompting this (for me, rare) reply. Explaining one’s writing is usually as thankless as explaining one’s jokes. So much depends on shared taste. So much depends on initial impact. Still David K., the webmaster of this site, in sync with my writing and humor for many years, had the same question: Why the cheap shots, John? Funny riff on Elsie the Cow, but why the low blows?

Why? Because M.G.’s physicality is an irresistible metaphor, a physical snapshot of her smug, contented-cow line of baloney. Cows are sedentary creatures slow to move, suggesting rural life and the limits of provincialism. To avoid Maggie Gallagher’s similarity to a dim creature chewing her cud, with a bell strapped around her neck, always sounding the same note of unchanging tradition, might have been gentlemanly but it would have left the reader with no image to hold on to, just a series of dry dead letters: “Maggie Gallagher.”

I was inspired to take the low road by Christopher Hitchens’ savage obituary of Jerry Falwell for Slate (here), which opens with the line “The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor on an obscure office in Virginia…” and goes on to say:

“Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire. From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm.”

It was a physical slam but one that brought Falwell gaspingly to life, bellying up on the shore of the reader’s mind like a harpooned whale. How memorable Hitchens’ words remain while those of the more tasteful, even-handed Falwell critics evaporated even as they were being read, never to be quoted again, inspiring no one.

And so I set out to breathe life into the dead words “Maggie Gallagher” for my readers, the majority of whom, including those outside of the States, have never heard or seen her, and can not benefit as I do from the way her appearance provides a competing narrative — one of an uncomfortable, overweight woman, with an unhappy dog-like face, who winds herself up to repeat carefully contrived lies.

I mention her appearance because it is central to her story. Her appearance completely sabotages her. Her smugness comes off instead as desperateness. This, in an odd way, works in her favor, as her particular brand of smoke and mirrors is to present herself, and the moms and dads she claims to represent, as victims of a militant army of gender-benders who are going to pull down family and (though this is rarely mentioned by name) church, especially church, as all the opposition to gay rights can be boiled down to religious opposition.

Anita Bryant was a more traditional spokeswoman and her line was not victimhood but the perfect Donna Reed Mom protecting her beautiful, Christian children — from vampires. Gays, she contended (and which is documented in the film Milk) recruited children to homosexuality, which once tried would seal a child forever in a tomb of godless depravity, so irresistible was the kiss of these lesbian and homosexual Draculas. (I sometimes wonder if Anne Rice picked up on this meme once it was in the air and turned it, against all odds, into art, the beautifully written Interview with the Vampire.)

It seems rather wonderful that the anti-gay forces have returned, in this stormy NOM ad, to Transylvania, their frightened actors speaking, it would seem, in the shadow of Castle Dracula. Wonderful too that the whole thing is coming off less in the spirit of Dracula and more like the buffoonery of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the Rocky Horror Show.

To wrap up (and beat a dead … cow into the ground), I did what I did to M. G. because we live in the age of the image, specifically that of the television image and Maggie Gallagher, like all political advocates, functions in that sphere. Like them she gets air time because she has mastered the skill of condensing her ideas into digestible soundbites . At the same time, whether she likes it or not, her physical appearance is providing a parallel narrative, working for her or against her in selling those soundbites. What someone looks like as they put forth their ideas cues the viewers as to their veracity. Thus, the Republicans of the Bush era sold their spin by employing lovely and purposely distracting spokesmodels — Dana Perino and Nancy Pfotenhauer (yes, that’s a real name) come quickly to mind. (Even the snappy George Bush of the 2000 campaign and the likeable Ronald Reagan fit here.)

Maggie is not such an appealing saleswoman and I wonder what that says about how serious these backward arguments about gays, guns, and gods are taken by the Republican movers and shakers. Like Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas, I tend to think that the stately Brahmins of this longtime pro-business, anti-worker party look on the culture wars as not even part of their circus, merely a sideshow put on in a side ring to keep the bozos in the peanut gallery jumping up and down.
W_Lantry

Mr. Calendo -
I appreciate you taking the time to respond, and I take you at your word that your attacks on Ms. Gallagher’s appearance were part of a deliberate effort to paint a vivid picture of the woman.
However, I think that this is a dangerous strategy to employ, one that actually cedes ground to our opponents. Let’s keep in mind that one of the wellsprings of homophobia is the belief that that appearance is reality. The typical gay-basher believes in his heart that a gay man’s stylish dress and well-coiffed hair is true reflection of some inherent weakness and femininity. When we put our faith in the “irresistible metaphor,” as you put it, we open ourselves up to all kinds of twisted interpretations of our own appearance. You’re right that taking the low road can be viscerally inspiring in a way that sober reasoning cannot, but I believe that we’re inspiring our enemies as much as ourselves with those kind of attacks.
glynn

True. But bitch is still a hog who can’t get a man.
Halo66

You gotta love how the Rethuglicans are so desperate for relevance that they’re actually ripping off diversity and tolerance to spin their batshit cause.

And yeah, Tolkien and Jackson should be suing their asses for plagiarism.
Bearlextn

I find it interesting that the California Dr. had religious issues with implanting embryos in a gay woman, considering all the religious issues associated with IV fertilization.

And that parent that is freaking out, is she that upset about her son learning about evolution?
anonymous

I’m no great fan of Hitchens, I think he’s a cranky hysteric. But he’s still a lot more eloquent in invoking Falwell’s appearance in metaphor than you are pointing at this woman and calling her a fat cow. Ooh, original. Makes me, a fat woman, wanna run right out and hug the nearest queer.

Now that’s not a threat and I’m sorry that it probably sounds like one. I don’t agree with her, I don’t like her and I’m happy about the recent legislative feat in Vermont–but I fucking hate fat-bashing. I’ve been on both sides of the weight issue, slender and then fat–you might call me a bimorph. (Or less flattering names, I’m trying to be cute-ish here though.) Over the years I’ve observed myself becoming less and less visible to the gender I prefer sexually and let me tell you, I’m just as good in bed as I was 100 pounds ago, and certainly a much better person, having matured as I have. None of that makes a damn bit of difference.

You’re correct in your observations about the effect that public perceptions of obesity have on this woman’s credibility, at least in some circles. But you’re not helping. And when you engage someone on their looks rather than on the issues you come off as desperate and nasty and you make a martyr of them. At least Falwell is dead, so Hitchens could not be said to be trying to engage him at all. There’s no reason to give a shit what ol’ Fartwell says anymore, as he will not be saying anything more. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of him. But you may be seeing more of this woman in her activism in the future–so maybe you need to start practicing more effective responses.

And, y’know, lots of fag hags are fat chicks. So are many lesbians and bi women and MTFs. Nobody’s asking you to wanna boink this woman, but maybe you should consider the effect of your words on other people who meet this woman’s physical description even a little bit. It’s no fun associating with someone that you know has moved well beyond simply not being attracted, to being absolutely disgusted by you even though you’ve done nothing to him personally.
http://www.nightcharm.com Nightcharm

After a ton of “Gathering Storm” spoofs hit YouTube as the NOM ad was laughed out of credibility, the best response may be the simplest. Coming out and never denying one is gay is the most radical act of all.