Over at one of my all-time favorite blogs ever in life Shakesville, Arkades is writing a series about gender and sexual identity, and all that good stuff. While the whole thing is wonderful, I just wanted to highlight this paragraph:

Oh, and a big fuck-you-very-much to the advertising wizards who turned every holiday season into a constant reminder of how I didn’t fit in. “Sports Illustrated – the perfect gift for every man!” Every man? Hardly. Though I suppose that “every man who likes sports and boobies” must have seemed redundant to their copywriters.

Agreed. And honestly, I’m a sports fan myself (yes, SI editors, me, a girl, likes sports). However, I prefer ESPN: The Magazine and the occasional Sporting News. I don’t need tons of boobies flashed all over my sports news to get the info. But more coverage of women in sports would be nice. Real Sports on HBO is one of my favorite shows on television, and each episode has at least — at LEAST — one female athlete or executive.

I gotta admit, I usually don’t fall for rich blond Republicans — country clubs make me uneasy. I’m much more attracted to people with darker features and a pocket full of liberal conspiracies. But there’s something about a certain GOP daughter that makes me want to be BFFs…who cuddle on occasion. I’ve broken down the reasons, so that if I run off to Arizona, or wherever she lives, my boyfriend will know what happened to me.

1. Meghan McCain is the 2009 version of 2000 John McCain — the straight-talking rogue. Sure, she’s down with the GOP, but she isn’t scared to break from her new party (she’s a former Dem) every once in a while to assert her own core beliefs. Take her recent appearance at the Log Cabin Republican’s annual event, and her ardent support of marriage equality. She’s even declared that her party really needs to abandon the party line on divisive issues like abortion and gay rights and really get to the matters at hand like the economy, which should be a Republican strong hold.

2. The woman has a body. A real body — she’s curvy — and damn proud. Let’s take the Mean Girls-esque exchange between her and Laura Ingraham. The commentator called Meghan “too plus-sized to be a cast member on the Real World” and some more crap about her weight. You know, instead of making a jab on something political or news-worthy. McCain gracefully Tweeted, “To all the curvy girls out there, don’t let anyone make you feel bad about your body. I love my curves and you should love yours too.” She also told Ingraham to kiss her fat ass — feisty!

3. Speaking of radical-right darlings, McCain has some level of beef with conservatives’ biggest nut bags: Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Ingraham, etc. On Coulter:

…if figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off, then they are definitely turning off other members of my generation as well. She does appeal to the most extreme members of the Republican Party—but they are dying off, becoming less and less relevant to the party structure as a whole…controversy sells and Coulter is nothing if not controversial. Everything about her is extreme: her voice, her interview tactics, and especially the public statements she makes about liberals. Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.

4. She has interesting, eclectic, musical taste. While she doesn’t update them really anymore,  take a peep at the playlists that she posts over at her blog. In September, she was listening to Lady GaGa, Run-DMC, and Spoon.

5. Just her Twitter feed alone is enough to make me swoon. A few recent Tweets:

• I am not saying to Christian conservatives, There is no place for you. I am saying, Please stop saying there is no place for us.
• my fav line in any Biggy song is in “Juicy” when he talks about Sega Genesis, ok that was my childhood, remember when Sega was the shit?
• in my hotel room, in my sweats, watching my fav reese witherspoon in “4 christmases”, who doesn’t love her?
• Do we think its as big of a deal when Shepard Smith drops an F bomb or only when it comes from a 24 year old blonde?
• Don’t worry about me! I am a strong woman and it threatens a lot of people who aren’t comfortable in their own skin.

6. Meghan has embraces social networking better than most GOP establishment who probably view the web and its capabilities as the 55-year-old balding middle manager at your job:

(Walking into your cubicle with his arms crossed across his button-down short sleeve shirt, squinting at you) Should our company be on MySpace? What the hell is a poke!!? Just do it. We have to be relevant!!!

Looking back, especially on her blog, she really tried to embrace as many younger voters as possible, but even she couldn’t single handedly deliver the miracle that would be a GOP win in November. I mean, she’s even taught her dad, who was notoriously computer-deficient, the first step to social networking.

Do she and I agree on everything? Of course not. No couple is perfect, right? But this blatina journalist from Queens and the daughter of a GOP Senator/Presidential hopeful can make it work — we’re not really all that different. We’re smart and sassy. And we both have a pair of awesome boobs. Follow me, McCain Blogette, and together we’ll face the world, blackberries and crazy moderate ideals in hand.

Sorry, it’s a very gay morning.

Miss California USA Carrie Prejean  opened her clap trap and this B.S. came out of her head.

Keith Lewis, the executive director of Miss California USA, responded:

“As co-executive director of Miss CA USA and one of the leaders of the Miss CA family, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss CA USA 2009 believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman. Although I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit, I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone. Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.”

Firstly I want to show the other 49 states the reason Prop 8 passed — not everyone in California is all crazy and liberal hippy-dippy. In fact, you’d be surprised how many conservative, church-going people there are here, despite people’s fear of “San Francisco” or “California” values infiltrating the rest of the country.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know why some people are so surprised she said that. I would suspect that a majority of women who still participate in these types of pageants probably come from conservative backgrounds — I imagine most women with feminist (therefore probably liberal or libertarian) sensibilities wouldn’t subject themselves to such baseless, superficial scrutiny. Then again, I KNOW that isn’t necessarily true for everyone.

It just seems to me that the conservative movement tends to bolster the traditional (ie: pretty, blonde, trophy-wife) view of women, which is so archaically on display during the Miss USA and Miss America pageants, and the countless others that more or less sell women as though we’re slabs of meat, eventually given 30 seconds to skirt a political issue by hoping for world peace.

Now I won’t deny that these contests can be good — the winners tend to engage in community service activities and other do-gooder projects throughout the year of their reign. And honestly, it’s nice to prance around in a big pretty dress, and get your hair done every once in a while — I call those occasions “Wednesdays.” But it’s clear that the types of women who participate in these pageants, and the family that supports them through the process from the time they’re embryos until they’re too old (age 25), and the culture that they perpetuate are outdated.

I was fortunate enough to get a press ticket to tonight’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation 20th annual Media Awards at Nokia Live. Personally I hate awards shows, but I’ll get free food, and possibly meet famous gay and gay-adjacent folks like T.R. Knight, and Kathy Griffin (yay!). And it’s all in the name of gayness, so it can’t possibly be too bad. My goal is also to get a photo with Nichelle Nichols by the end of the night. I’m not a schmoozing, falling-all-over-celebrities type of person. I’m a boring, wonky news lady, but I’m gonna have to get my schmooze on just this once. Let’s see what happens…

Coverage starts tonight around 7 p.m. PST — maybe a little earlier if I can get to my seat on time.

After a tumultuous legislative session in Vermont, and a tons of legal rigmarole in Iowa, each of those states have added to the handful that grant full marriage equality to its citizens. All consenting adult citizens.

Freaking awesome.

Vermont was the first state to do so using the legislative route — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and ill-fated California were all mandated by state supreme courts.What’s phenomenal is the crazy majority that supported this in the senate (23-5) and house (100-49).

So gay Iowans will be able to get married by the end of April. Vermonters will have to wait until September, but New England in the fall is beautiful, so yay.

And if you didn’t know, Vermont has already been a pioneer in this arena: in 2000, it became the first state to grant civil unions to gay and lesbian couples. Booyah.

Apparently an organization in West Virginia is pushing to set up a ballot initiative this year to ban same-sex marriage in the state by a constitutional amendment. That was an informational video from the campaign… oy…

Please note, I’m writing this, so there’s some sarcasm infused all up in this:

1. Those crazy non-heteros, actually attempting to have families!! Don’t they know that families can only have one semi-attractive woman as the mom, and a portly guy who looks like he spends most of his day in a coal mine for a dad?! Families can’t have a grandmother or an aunt raising the kids. A woman can’t head a household by herself if her husband died or left her. That’s clearly impossible. Gay couples? FORGET it!!

2. Obviously, there are no black, Latino, or Asian people in West Virginia that are in actual nuclear families. In fact, the only person in West Virginia with some racial pigment is the black boy who was photoshopped (aka adopted) into some white family [around the 2:12 mark].

3. God forbid your kid finds out that there are people in this world different than them. I knew from Sesame Street and growing up in a city, that all families are different and that’s actually OK! Some parents get divorced. Sometimes grandmothers raise their grandchildren. Sometimes Cambodian kids are adopted by white families. The point is that  we’re all different, and that’s what makes this country awesome — we’re allowed to be different, and embrace our differences. I didn’t know what happened in my dance teacher Stanley’s bedroom when I was 8 years old, but I knew he had a male partner and they loved each other. Frankly, that’s all kids need to know at that age, anyway. I knew what gay meant for years, but I didn’t even think there was anything “wrong” with gay people until Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 and the world turned upside down.

It just makes me mad that there are still people who think like this. Maybe they should actually get to know some real gay people. Maybe then, they’ll realize no matter how different our politics, or races, or beliefs are, we all want to be treated in the same manner: fairly.