The Fat Lady has sung. The last dog has died.

And still she hangs on, clutching her barely-there 2-percentage-point victory in Indiana. From her cold, dead hands, children. From her cold, dead hands.

What I will miss most about my Hillary — for yes I am a supporter and yes I would vote for her again and yes, yes, I know, she is sooo cooked — is the way she would look at Barack Obama during the debates. That frozen glare behind the frosted smile. The slight up tilt of the forehead. God, that was priceless!

There would be ol’ Barry sawing away and saying nothing, all misty uplift about change and hope and the American people, slipping ever so carefully into just the palest of black preacher cadences, something for the home team, no Reverend Wright, of course; more Miss Diahann Carroll in an Oleg Cassini gown glossing her way through Aretha: R. E. S. P. E. C. T., ladies and gentlemen. That’s what y’all mean to me.

And there would be my Hillary in all her late-blooming, newly blondized, Georgette Klinger radiance, the robot who suddenly grew a heart and look ma, she’s even warm to the touch! All red-carpet razzle dazzle beside the dour law professor, with his down-turned lips and his solemn — here I risk a racist word — dignity. (more…)

Question for Duncan Hunter: So you think only conservatives become soldiers and that those soldiers are too mentally fragile to have their prejudices challenged. What next, racially segregated units? Thanks a Lot, Fuckhead.

Question for Huckleberry Hound: What a surprise from the Darwin-denier! So you think gay men and women are constitutionally incapable of professional conduct. This from a former preacher who never served in the military talking down to a Brigadier General who had — for 43 years. Thanks a Lot, Fuckhead.

Question to Mitt Romney: Another profile in courage from the Robo-Spokesmodel. Could you be any vaguer? Thanks a Lot, Fuckhead.

Question to John McCain: For whom is this policy working, by the way? Not the Right (who balk at the “Don’t ask” part) and not the Left (who deride the enforced hypocrisy of the “Don’t tell” part). But, more than that, for making your answer entirely an advertisement for your access to 4-star generals: Thanks a Lot, Fuckhead.

BONUS ROUND: And a second, very special Thanks a Lot, Fuckhead to Duncan Hunter for working in something about Judeo-Christian values. In case anyone got the idea that the U.S was a modern, secular nation and not a Baptist theocracy.

The straight takeover of San Francisco was made all too clear last month when Castro Street had to cancel its annual Halloween parade.

And if you examine the photo at left you’ll understand why. Yes, it’s a gay bar. And yes, it’s crammed wall-to wall with straight people

“The Glindas, gladiators and harem boys of the Castro — along with untold numbers who plan to dress up as Senator Larry E. Craig, this year’s camp celebrity — will be celebrating behind closed doors,” reported the New York Times, citing the decision to disband the parade as a wrenching moment of “soul-searching” that struck “a blow at the heart of neighborhood identity.”

It is a decision that is coming to symbolize the dismantling of the great gay ghettos throughout America — what the press used to call “Gay Meccas,” those insular enclaves where men could walk down the street carelessly holding hands, or slobber over each other in the hellish light coming from some leather bar as they made out on the sidewalk. (A world lovingly imagined — but wildly, cartoonishly overdrawn — in the American version of Queer as Folk, below) (more…)

Why stop now when we’re on a roll?

In the mysterious ways that these things happen, barebacking has become the theme of the week here at Nightcharm. Triggered by a casual aside from a porn star, developed in a report on a report, the subject has set off a cascade of irate comments. To acknowledge the practice without condemning it, apparently, is a deal-breaker for many readers and some veteran Nightcharmers have vowed never to break bandwidth with us again.

We hope they will reconsider. Still the muse calls. In keeping with our theme, we bring you the contrary view, a herald from the opposite camp, who comes through the battlefield out of breath, loaded with news, telling us of the latest in the Trojan Wars.

For it is not only barebackers who don’t believe in condoms. The American religious right — a scandal throughout the world — has long waged a campaign against them with all sorts of ludicrous misinformation about their supposed ineffectiveness. It is their way of policing morality, to make sex as deadly as possible. And so the latest skirmish is taking place over a witty new ad for Trojan condoms:

In the ad, beautiful women sit listlessly in a singles bar while all around them big, hairy hogs are looking for some action. But the piggies don’t rate so much as a glimmer until one of them gets the idea to buy a Trojan from a vending machine. Poof, he instantly turns into the cutest Prince Charming ever to need a sweetener to enhance his sales pitch (Odd, but the actor reminds us of Sanjaya – except hot and manly! Who knew? See for yourself.) (more…)

The gay blogosphere is in an uproar this week over Baring the Truth, an article in the August Out Magazine (not available online) that is unusual for abandoning the typical HIV sermonette in favor of a frank and sober evaluation of the popular, if controversial — some would say deadly — practice of anal fucking without rubbers. (This uproar has even hit our own site. See the angry comments that readers left on our recent Dawson entry.)

Baring the Truth wonders if bareback porn is responsible for a recent upswing in HIV sero-conversions.

According to Out, barebacking accounts for a third of the gay porn industry’s output and — get this — one half of all rentals from a popular DVD rental site. A poll of Out readers found that while 15% disapproved of such porn, finding it “irresponsible and misguided,” an overwhelming 70% either “loved” the raw dicking (”because porn is just a fantasy”) or found it “compelling” but disturbing.

Meanwhile, the major players in the industry were divided into warring camps. To one side you had porn producers like Chi Chi LaRue (”People call me a condom Nazi”) and Tim Valenti of NakedSword (”I found many [young models] to be extremely naive … [they] were being pushed into participating in something without having a clear understanding of the ramifications. I didn’t want to be part of it”). Above, we see two models from Raging Stallion Studio, which has a strict policy of condom-only fucking. (more…)

Ever wonder why men don’t lock eyes unless they’re going to fight … or fuck?

Or why adolescent boys leave empty seats between them when they go to the movies?

That is the burning question today over on AlterNet, kicking off a long and ponderous meditation on manhood by a professor of American culture. The essay’s title: Don’t Look Gay: Why American Men Are Afraid of Intimacy with Each Other

Yes, we’ve made this trip before — many times before –but let’s strap ourselves in for one more thrill-packed, hands-in-the-air go-round on the Cyclone, that splintery old roller coaster of cultural frettings over men who just can’t handle heavy duty man-on-man, dick-in-ass action — the wimps! … and definitely not our kind, darling.

“On Saturday afternoon at the Cineplex you can see them: adolescent boys, there to watch one of the action films that Hollywood makes with an audience of young males in mind,” begins John Ibson, who teaches courses on male sexuality at Cal State Fullerton. “What’s distinctive is where the boys sit in the theater. Though they might’ve come to the movie together and might even be close friends, they’ll leave an empty seat between them.” (more…)

“I could have written a statement denying that I was homosexual, but lying did not seem like the right thing to do… The result was the termination of our careers, and the loss to the military of two more Arabic translators.”

That, in a nutshell, is the testimony of an outed gay sailor, writing an op-ed in today’s New York Times. (Pictured is a model, not the op-ed author.)

“I was an Arabic translator,” writes Stephen Benjamin, recounting an all too familiar tale of excellence denied because of the backward, religion-based opposition to gay men and women from right-wing politicos.

“After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq.” (more…)

The Bush Administration has once again been caught up in its own bullshit.

Randall Tobias, an Abstinence Czar in charge of AIDS foreign aid, had to resign in a hurry over the weekend after his name was linked to “a Washington call-girl ring”, as the Washington Post rather antiquely put it.

Antique because so-called “scandals” involving joy girls — or joy boys, for that matter (like the model playing one at right) — are amusing non-starters for most of us, including the Washington Post.

Especially when such merely human peccadilloes are placed against the backdrop of recent and truly egregious Bush fuckups — the mismanagement of military aftercare at Walter Reed Hospital, say, or the systematic leaking of an undercover CIA agent’s name by a White House intent on selling a war with disinformation.

The only reason the call-girl story has traction is because Republicans are involved, and not just Republicans but those who have set themselves up as caped crusaders in a “morals” war on sex. (more…)