h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've always wondered (admittedly without ever bothering to check) just how many of the passengers and other victims of 9/11 were Muslim.

The idea that 9/11 was solely an American tragedy and the victims all Christian (?) is ridiculous.

That community centre has every right to be there and more so than any of the capitalist temples that are already there. IMHO, respectfully.

One of the many news items of the US media did mention that there were a number of Muslims in the police and firefighters that raced into the towers. And perished with everyone else. And that of the near 3,000 within the towers, sheer proportional representation of the population ... There would have been people of every faith, belief, non-belief, ...

It worries me just how much some people are prepared to ignore the Constitution. It might be because I worshipped The West Wing in my formative years, or because I truly admire the liberal philosophers who conceived it, but I've always seen the US Constitution as something mighty and wonderful: a beacon that has lit the world for centuries.

Perhaps the most controversial, most radical of those self-evident truths is the idea that all men are created equal and that every citizen of the US is equal to every other. Now you've got the situation where people are just disagreeing with that concept, they're actively destroying it. Just when the US could prove why it has attracted the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, it has a group of citizens trying to destroy their own history.

It's rather upsetting to say the least and I'm not even American.

Yeah.

Did you hear that there are some (that whack job Glenn Beck, for one) who are actively lobbying to repeal the 14th amendment? That's the one that grants citizenship to everyone born on US soil. Which brings me to another stupid and offensive term: "anchor babies". I'm sure some immigrants have children in order to maintain residency status, but come on.

Doesn't the 14th also guarantee equal treatment and protection for all citizens?

I understand a lot of the tea-baggers are pretty scared of that at the moment: if the California gay marriage case goes federal and the good guys win, then the 14th means gay marriage will become legal in every state

Oh and I wish Beck and Limbaugh, the hateful little douchebags, would just disappear and spare us all their bigotry.

Sadly, such little minds are also responsible for raising their own next generations. So buck-stupid-attitudes will be passed along ... Not to all of the next line, but enough to make life miserable for some.

(My country is not very much different)

14th amendment provides for citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution . And yes, some sick individuals want it repealed.



I just don't get, at a very fundamental level, all the fuss over gay marriage. It's a matter of equal protection, nothing more, nothing less. Why on earth would anyone who cares about the Constitution at all even debate the issue?

Glad to hear someone else use one of my favorite terms, though. "Douchebag" has been an important part of my repertoire for over 20 years now.

oh yes - "I could care less"

every time I see that I want to give examples about things they probably could care less about.

'shed some light'

It's 'shed some light ON' something! Grrr

As Sho might attest too, the term 'douchebag' is seriously and strenuously frowned on in official circles. (Doesn't stop us old beggars from saying it though )

It's frowned on in all sorts of circles. But it's so accurate at times!

If you like the word "douchebag" as invective, may I point you (if you haven't already been pointed) to the very, very wonderful podcast, "The Bugle (audio newspaper for a visual world)", which stars Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver. They use phrases like "industrial strength douchebaggery" quite frequently. I love it.

re: "The idea that 9/11 was solely an American tragedy and the victims all Christian (?) is ridiculous." Indeed. In fact it's not often stated or realised, I think, that 9/11 is also BRITAIN'S worst ever terrorist atrocity. Almost 100 (92? 93? Not sure...) British subjects were killed on 9/11.

Re: "gay agenda": the "agenda", as I (a straight person) see it portrayed, is this:

"It's not enough the buggers are legal now (TM Tom Robinson), it's not even enough they can get married and stuff. It's that they want to make out we're ALL a bit gay. And I'm NOT. NOT AT ALL. Really. That stuff at school doesn't count."

And while making closeted bi people uncomfortable is all very amusing, can anyone honestly watch the first four seasons of Doctor Who and NOT detect something that could reasonably be called a "gay agenda" at work?

I'll definitely check out the podcast "The Bugle", thanks! The word "douchebag" has held a special place in my heart since high school in the mid 80s, and especially during my radio internship, as it was one of my few favorite invectives that passed muster per the FCC.

Yes, lot of British subjects were killed on 9/11. A company I worked for at the time (as a contractor) lost 330 employees and only half of them were US citizens. And a good number of public safety personnel who were there (a lot of whom perished) were Muslims et al.

>>It's that they want to make out we're ALL a bit gay. And I'm NOT. NOT AT ALL. Really. That stuff at school doesn't count.<<

I assume that's a remark

>>can anyone honestly watch the first four seasons of Doctor Who and NOT detect something that could reasonably be called a "gay agenda" at work<<

Well, it depends on what you mean by 'gay agenda' - the phrase has never made much sense to me. 1 omnisexual companion, played by a gay bloke, compared with 8 straight ones, played by straight actors. Jack kisses the Doctor but he does it seconds after kissing Rose and (I think) all the Companions except Wilf, Christina De Souza and Adelaide Brooke, kiss the Doctor.

There's been a smattering of gay couples and gay people in the background characters but it's certainly not overwhelming and it's not like attention is brought to it (off the top of my head: the soldier Jack knows in Empty Child/Doctor Dances, Chip from New Earth certainly codes gay, Shakespeare, the Cassini "sisters" from Gridlock, Midshipman Frame, the son from The Unicorn and the Wasp and Ianto in the S4 finale). That's really not many in about 70 hours of TV.

Yes, the remark re "that stuff at school doesn't count" was a joke aimed at people like, oh, I dunno, Ted Haggard, or Michael Portillo. You know the sort.

"it depends on what you mean by 'gay agenda' "

More or less what I said above: the attempt, with varying degrees of subtlety, to imply that homosexuality is not merely normal but extremely common.

You point out one omnisexual companion, but omit to mention that the Doctor clearly states this is not some odd perversion Jack has, it's the future orientation of the whole of humanity.

You point out "a smattering of gay couples and gay people in the background characters" and then rattle off a list, saying it's "not much" for 70 hours of telly.

Care to rattle off a comparable list for the old series, as in between 1963 and 1989? And no naming merely camp characters - I mean characters explicitly stated in dialogue to have been gay.

How about listing such characters in 79 episodes of the original Star Trek, 178 episodes of ST:TNG, 176 episodes of DS9, 172 episodes of Voyager, 98 episodes of Enterprise?

"it's certainly not overwhelming and it's not like attention is brought to it"

That depends on what you think of it. Its very pervasiveness does bring attention to it, starting with the line in the very first episode - "That'll never work. He's gay and she's an alien." It was striking, for instance, to me, that they couldn't even go the six minutes of the Children in Need special with Peter Davison without shoehorning in a gag implying that the Master is gay. ("Has he still got that rubbish beard?" "No, no beard. Well... wife.")

Saying there's nothing wrong with it is one thing. Saying it isn't happening is just deluded. I'm not the only one who thinks so...

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/04/03/doctor-who-and-the-homosexuals-of-doom/

And that's to not even mention Torchwood, so I won't.

But isn't that more like life these days, most people know a handful of gay people? Usually in the background, someone in work, friend-of-a-friend type relationship.

More people are coming out because its okay and safe for them to do so. If I was born 20 years earlier, I might have never come out of the closet: I'm not stereotypically gay and can pass for straight if I choose to. In the past I might have needed to but because legal equality has been basically achieved and social equality is continuing apace, I don't now and so came out. A lot of people have been doing similar and so there do seem to be more openly gay men and women and especially people who don't fit the stereotypes.

Doctor Who only acknowledges that and shows it. I suppose one example where I concede RTD might have shown a personal agenda is that the gay characters are all nice people (except maybe Chip) and there's no gay villains. In a kids show I can see why RTD maybe wanted to promote the message that gay people are mostly harmless.

All the people in the future aren't shown to be just like Jack: you see stable relationships: Gridlock is a good example - you've got the Cassini 'sisters' who'd been together for decades, the heterosexual cat-human relationship between Brannigan and his wife, and the heterosexual relationship between the two people who kidnap Martha and talk of children and decades spent together. The lesbian relationship is shown on a par with the two straight ones, certainly, but that just emphasises the commitment of all 3. That reflects a social reality we are getting pretty close to.

I can't do the same thing with the old series or with Star Trek (which as early as the Next Gen era was criticised for its lack of gay characters) because they were written in different societies. It's hard to overstate just how much more open society has become to sexuality in the last 10/15 years so the old series represents old values, and the US is about 15 years behind the UK in terms of gay rights (except cable TV - cable programmes are absolutely cutting edge).

>>You point out "a smattering of gay couples and gay people in the background characters" and then rattle off a list, saying it's "not much" for 70 hours of telly.<<

I gave 8 examples. I'm willing to bet that you'd come across more than that in your average 70 hours in the real world, let alone the nearly 5 years the examples were written and produced over.

>>That depends on what you think of it. Its very pervasiveness does bring attention to it, starting with the line in the very first episode - "That'll never work. He's gay and she's an alien."<<

But again, that just reflects the cultural mores of the time. Most people are aware of "celebrity" "relationships" that are widely rumoured to involve at least one homosexual partner. It's the staple of gossip rags and a large portion of the Internet. I'd actually forgotten about the Time Crash example and I'll give you that one, it was cringeworthy. It was also written by Steven Moffat, despite RTD usually being the one who gets blamed for the gay agenda.

>>Saying it isn't happening is just deluded.<<

Like I say, to me it doesn't seem like some nefarious agenda, it just seems to be an accurate reflection of life in the UK these days. But it's come up before that you and I seem to inhabit entirely different countries.

Iago

P.S. I read the article you linked to and, as with much of the coverage of this 'issue' it exaggerated to make it seem like there was a point: "Its scripts are liberally peppered with references to minor characters’ gay marriages" - name 3 examples. 2 examples in 70 hours of telly is only liberal sprinklings if you're into homoeopathy. Especially when compared to the number of heterosexual marriages referenced.

P.P.S. Torchwood was a B-Movie pastiche that ended up developing some serious dramatic chops later on. After S1 there aren't any characters who seem to change their sexual preference more often than their underwear. From S2 onwards the team is Jack, bisexual Ianto and heterosexual Tosh, Owen and Gwen and that doesn't change. Ianto is probably one of the best depictions of a realistic bisexual bloke ever seen on TV and his trying to explain his sexuality to his sister in Children of Earth is an absolute masterpiece because he's fully aware of how unusual and difficult to explain his situation is.

Sherlock Holmes, anyone?

" "Its scripts are liberally peppered with references to minor characters’ gay marriages" - name 3 examples."

Oh dear.

The End of the World: "Lady" Cassandra explicitly references (a) husbands (b) memories of being a boy.

I try not to think about it, but the episode with Peter Kay and the talking, c*cks*cking paving stone has Elton's house now inhabited by "two women who are a bit... severe".

In Midnight, Sky was getting over the end of what was presumably a marriage, and if not then a jolly serious relationship.

In The Doctor's Daughter two of Donna's (female) friends had a baby "together" by IVF.

Waters of Mars, Yuri's brother has a husband.

Oh, and please don't try to pretend Owen from Torchwood is straight - his bisexuality was established in episode 1. Ditto Tosh, except she lezzed up in "Greeks Bearing Gifts".