This video of Ryan Sorba going on a tirade about GOPride at CPAC has been making the rounds along with Alex Knepper’s interaction with Sorba after the “speech”.
Let me begin with the very bald fact that I found Sorba’s tirade repulsive and continue to be utterly gobsmacked about the state of gay rights in American politics. How a so-called beacon of freedom manages to get away with systemic attitudes towards gay men and women that are only marginally better than many of the “Islamo-fascist” entities it berates as fundamentally evil is outrageous.
But with that said, let me take a slightly different tack on the Sorba incident.
Andrew Sullivan, commenting on Sorba’s display, says,
Sorba also fits into a sub-sub-sub-category of those young men, always bristling with somewhat strained masculinity, who are obsessed with the subject of homosexuality and have obviously spent a huge amount of time finding sources and arguments that can back up their feelings on the subject.
Here is a Google video of a recent lecture of his at Cal State. Enjoy a glimpse into the future of Republicanism.
While I share Andrew’s disgust with Sorba, I think those who want to catch a glimpse into “the future of Republicanism” ought to look at the You Tube video of Sorba at CPAC, not his Google videos.
The reaction of the crowd struck me as telling insofar as Sorba essentially got called out on his hate-mongering bigotry by what seemed like a decent cross section of the attendees. That Sorba was invited to speak at all is not all that surprising given that CPAC is being called by many the conservative event of the year. CPAC’s list of speakers contains a host of talking heads ranging from obnoxious to offensive.
But the moderator having to come back to the microphone after Sorba and say something like, “freedom of opinion, folks, freedom of opinion,” because the shouts in opposition to what was said required addressing is at least cause for a dim glimmer of hope.
It isn’t a full blown step in the right direction, but we’re also talking about the party who hosted the comment, “I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that, if you want to call me a bigot, fine,” from the likes of Jesse Helms in 1993 without a substantial in-house backlash of the kind that Sorba encountered. We’re talking baby steps here, painfully slow and hard earned baby steps, but baby steps all the same.
To wit, the very fact that a group like GOPride is at CPAC and causing a stir, able to shout down someone like Sorba, as opposed to being barred access and having comments of the kind that Sorba delivered go unchallenged, is a small but important victory in terms of seeing an American conservatism that embodies something approaching sanity.
Besides, these days you gotta takes your victories, be they small, tiny, or minuscule, where you can get ‘em.
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This is something that makes absolutely zero sense to me if it comes at face value.
Only in the Ted Haggard overcompensation sense might I nod and say “yeah, I can see saying that in public.”
The dude thinks he’s actually helping.
This makes no sense to me.
It’s vengeance in a way. Before the culture wars and the women and gays the social right was the unrivalled social hegemony. Now, decades later, having chosen to treat those issues the way they have look at what they’ve become. A right wing interest group lumped in with Scientologists reviled by their own children.
Look at how far they’ve fallen.
As for Sorba he’s a useful outspoken idiot. I’ll take a hundred up-front Sorba’s over say Goldberg or Lowry who at least know how to disguise their positions with pretty verbal smoke, any day.
I must be too buddhist.
I honestly cannot understand this particular attachment to this particular flavor of unrivalled social hegemony.
No attatchment here Jay. I’m just saying that the old rulers of the society descended from their mountains to smite the humble wretched gays, now 30 years later they’re just another interest group.
It feels like attachment. Let’s say you know you’ve only got 3 minutes to give a speech. You’re giving a speech to people who, effectively, paid money to hear you talk.
I don’t know what I’d talk about. Batman, maybe.
I can’t imagine caring enough about sodomy to spend my 3 minutes talking about that.
I can’t wrap my mind around it.
Oh, yeah I hear ya. I mean the snark/psychoanalyst side of me would say that he must have some reason to be so obsessed. Was he a victim of one as a youth, is he one himself, is someone close to him one? But it’s entirely possible he’s just a douche.
If I were giving a three-minute speech to a bunch of Giants fans, I would preach upon the text “Dodgers suck!”, and for those three minutes there would be nothing but cheers. Sorba probably expected the same, and not long ago he would have been right.
But CPAC specifically invited GOProudToBeADodgersFan.
One would hope that one would know that talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers to Giants fans wouldn’t be like talking about them two years ago.
You might avoid using the term sodomy, Jaybird. Quite a few gay people find it offensive. If, of course, you really don’t care.
I’ll switch to “buggery”.
Or you could use butt-buddies. We buggering sodomites have all kinds of terms we use on each other. No need to let PC’ism get its greasy hands all over the subject matter.
I used to like “sodomy” because it had biblical connections. It sort of captured the mindset of those opposed. Genesis, Leviticus, and modern legal theory all rolled into one.
Buggery has a similar old-school feel. Like, they used it in Rob Roy (did they name a drink after William Wallace? No. They did not.). Plus Derb uses it.
I find the term to have a precision that is useful insofar as it decribes solely an act without describing an inclination. Sort of like “fornication” with a finer point. “Butt-buddies”, interestingly enough, shows up in some ancient Greek comedies. While it’s old-school in its own special way, it carries connotations that I want to avoid.
If a clinical description of the act without any discussion of the spiritual nature that may or may not also go along with it is what I’m going for, what word ought I use?
ScottBrown:
Is the term sodomy inaccurate as a descriptor?
Who does he think he is helping?
Bigots or wackos?
That’s the only 2 types of beings I see in the GOP these days…
Bill, you may wish to note that he got booed at CPAC.
Let me say that again (with tags and an exclamation point this time).
He got BOOED at CPAC!
And Coulter and Beck got cheered rabidly. Your point was what, exactly?
I cannot and am not inclined to defend Coulter.
Beck, from what I can glean from Bill Bennett, gave a speech similar to this one: http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/10/12-steps-to-a-healthy-republican-party/
I’ve gotta say, I see nothing wrong with Beck’s speech there insofar as it was similar to that one.
My point was that Coulter got up there and talked about Democrats bad, Conservatives good and got cheered. Beck talked about how the Republicans screwed up and screwed up bad and now they seriously need to be conservative this time and got cheered. This chucklehead got up and screamed about buggery and got booed.
That strikes me as an exceptionally interesting development at CPAC.
I’m willing to see the forest for the trees here, and turn my focus in the direction you indicate. While the presence of Sorba at his ilk at CPAC is still obvious cause for many deep, slightly pained sighs on my part (and the CWA was also there in all its distaff homophobic glory), I think it is genuinely a cause for hope that his screed drew the reaction it did. That Sorba felt so alienated from the audience that he tried to insult them by comparing them (negatively) to “lesbians at Smith” is telling. Also, hillllllllarious.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Sorba telling some guy I had never heard of that they were now “enemies.” I believe the appropriate reaction to that is “Oooooooh, I’m so frightened!”
If all those who called themselves allies of the LGTB population would actually stand up and BE allies, perhaps we would not live in a country where heterosexuals tolerate and indeed encourage governmental discrimination toward THEIR VERY OWN OFFSPRING.
Genius. Simply genius.
Baby steps my ass.
Scott -
I want to agree with you. Seriously, I really, really want to.
But there’s still the fact that a lot of the folks that CPAC support and flag waive for use banging on gays (no pun intended) as a touchstone for rallying the troops. I have a nagging feeling that the boos came not from having the stones to say no to Sorba’s anti-gay rhetoric as much as it did that he was being hostile to the room in general.
Like I say, I WANT you to be correct… but I need to hear the booing when anti-gay slurs are depicted at those on the other side of the fence.
Scott, I hear your point. But it’s still sort of hard to believe we’re at the point in which we can say things like this “is a small but important victory in terms of seeing an American conservatism that embodies something approaching sanity”and that’s what we’re optimistic about.
Let me clarify a bit- I don’t mean it’s amazing that we see this event as a good step. I just find it amazing that the optimistic dream for the future is for the country to have a conservatism that embodies something approaching sanity.
This is also the event where Coulter and Beck delivered thoroughly evil rants to an enraptured audience, and where the Ron Paul crazies managed to win a straw poll. Don’t make too much out of the fact that a marginal group among the GOP managed to hoot and holler a little at a relatively minor figure during this lunacy. This isn’t a baby step at all, just an brief aberration in the usual smooth course of bigotry and hatred for the party of Slow and No.
Do you have copies of their speeches? Specifically Beck’s.
I’ve read Bennett’s complaints about the speech and it doesn’t strike me as particularly “evil”.
Could I read the whole thing as, I assume, you have?
That’s the spirit! No compromise, no forgiveness! No recognition of change!
No opening of the minds to progressive change in conservative chambers here, no sir. That’s how they get you, with their slow change in ways they think you might approve of. First you notice, then you give them a kind word for the first time in decades, suddenly Gitmo is back up and running.
No it’s best to chastise them and leave them be, never anything but an unkind word and put down. That’s how they learn, how good and right we are.
I applaud you, your good opinion once lost is lost forever.
“I can’t imagine caring enough about sodomy to spend my 3 minutes talking about that. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”
I can.
Two days ago, I had never heard this guy’s name. I had no idea he existed. Neither had/did anyone else, for the most part. Now, he’s all over the Internet, getting links from Sullivan and all the rest.
Would that have happened if he had given a speech about spending? School choice? No.
Obvously, this guy had enough of a name to get invited to speak. But that’s not enough to secure funding for the next few years, or some op-ed pieces in big-time magazines and newspapers. Or a book deal. How much do you want to bet that all of those are in the works. Right now.
Jerk? Yes. Genius? Sure.
Sigh.
But here’s the weird part:
He got booed.
If there are people inclined to buy, I reckon that they’d be there at CPAC itself.
Yes. He got booed by the college kids at CPAC. They are not the ones with the pursestrings or the connections. There have always been several strains of “conservatism” in the movement. All have their own funding streams. He just identified himself as someone willing to carry water for one of those strains of conservatism. The fact that he got booed makes him even more marketable to people who think they need to step up their outreach.
He’s a lightning rod now. Which means people will listen. Even when the other teams of conservatives get together, they will invite him and pay him to speak. That way, they can boo him, too, and show how enlightened they are.
Predictions: He’s not going away. And he’s not going broke.
Agreed Sam. He’s just two (small) fake boobs and a blond wig away from Anne Coulter. He likely has found himself a career for life.
Really? Because I wonder if he’s not the next Don Black. (Or whatever his name is.)
“How a so-called beacon of freedom manages to get away with systemic attitudes towards gay men and women that are only marginally better than many of the “Islamo-fascist” entities it berates as fundamentally evil is outrageous.”
This is just rhetorical excess, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_homosexuality_laws.svg
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