The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ben Domenech Accidentally ‘Outed’ Really-Not-So-Closeted Lesbian

Posted on | April 17, 2010 | 19 Comments

This is hilarious. Potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gayer than the first three rows at an Indigo Girls concert, and yet the White House acts all outraged that conservative writer Ben Domenech incorrectly described the unmarried 49-year-old as “openly gay.” 

Kagan is not officially so open about it, and this gives the White House a chance to pretend that Domenech is part of a right-wing homophobic whisper campaign. In the process, as Moe Lane notes, the White House reacted “in a manner that explicitly and authoritatively denies that Ms. Kagan is gay” — a denial that thereby makes it legitimate news if, in fact, Kagan is gayer than your average NCAA Division I varsity women’s softball team.

Allahpundit figures all the angles, but I personally doubt Obama will pick Kagan for the Stevens slot. I expect him to do the smart thing, which is to promote an appeals-court judge.

UPDATE: Omri at Mere Rhetoric:

Did the WH not get the memo that Kagan’s not only a lesbian, but that she’s not really concerned about who knows it? Two days ago it would have been totally unremarkable if she walked out of a Georgetown or Cambridge restaurant holding her girlfriend’s hand. Now it would be a national event.
Because the Obama administration decided to make Kagan’s sexual orientation a capital-t Thing, she’s now in a position where either it looks like she’s hiding her homosexuality to advance her judicial career or – if she acknowledges she’s a lesbian – it looks like she’s being chased out of the closet.

The point is, it wasn’t hateful homophobic wingnut Ben Domenech who “outed” Kagan, it was her gay-friendly liberal friends. But because the White House is in the habit of automatically attacking conservatives as hateful homophobic wingnuts, Domenech’s description of Kagan as “openly gay” pushed the red-alert button at Obama spin HQ, which then automatically denied Kagan’s lesbianism as if it weren’t already a widely known fact.

Hope and Change and Irony. Lots and lots of irony.

UPDATE II: Dan Riehl notices that Kagan slightly resembles Bob Costas. NTTAWWT.

Category: Gays

Comments

19 Responses to “Ben Domenech Accidentally ‘Outed’ Really-Not-So-Closeted Lesbian”

  1. Joe
    April 17th, 2010 @ 9:47 pm

    Unfortunately he will probably go with Wood, she is smart and super liberal. Seems like an oxymoron, but she can do some damage.

    Frankly I hope he picks Big Sis Napolitano (who likes the Indigo Girls too). She will be lame and incompetent.

  2. Joe
    April 17th, 2010 @ 4:47 pm

    Unfortunately he will probably go with Wood, she is smart and super liberal. Seems like an oxymoron, but she can do some damage.

    Frankly I hope he picks Big Sis Napolitano (who likes the Indigo Girls too). She will be lame and incompetent.

  3. Dell
    April 17th, 2010 @ 10:06 pm

    I agree with Joe on the first graph. Disagree on the second.

    This is an election year and the Republicans won’t make too very much of anything that might cost them votes in November, so now’s the time for a strong Lib candidate to slide on in. He can always hold off on Kagan for the NEXT appointment, which will change the 5-4 tilt strongly in the Dems favor.

  4. Dell
    April 17th, 2010 @ 5:06 pm

    I agree with Joe on the first graph. Disagree on the second.

    This is an election year and the Republicans won’t make too very much of anything that might cost them votes in November, so now’s the time for a strong Lib candidate to slide on in. He can always hold off on Kagan for the NEXT appointment, which will change the 5-4 tilt strongly in the Dems favor.

  5. Indentured Servant Girl
    April 18th, 2010 @ 3:29 am

    I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.

    Scary.

  6. Indentured Servant Girl
    April 17th, 2010 @ 10:29 pm

    I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.

    Scary.

  7. Robert Stacy McCain
    April 18th, 2010 @ 4:10 am

    “I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.”

    All the more reason to hate a little extra while it’s still legal!

  8. Robert Stacy McCain
    April 17th, 2010 @ 11:10 pm

    “I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.”

    All the more reason to hate a little extra while it’s still legal!

  9. McGehee
    April 18th, 2010 @ 2:21 pm

    Republicans won’t make too very much of anything they fear, perhaps wrongly, that might cost them votes in November

    FTFY. I’m not sure that fighting a proggish SCOTUS pick really would hurt the GOP. Of course, what matters is that the ones who would actually have to try to block confirmation are Senate Republicans, who piddle themselves at the very thought of earning an unhappy glance from Chris Matthews.

  10. McGehee
    April 18th, 2010 @ 9:21 am

    Republicans won’t make too very much of anything they fear, perhaps wrongly, that might cost them votes in November

    FTFY. I’m not sure that fighting a proggish SCOTUS pick really would hurt the GOP. Of course, what matters is that the ones who would actually have to try to block confirmation are Senate Republicans, who piddle themselves at the very thought of earning an unhappy glance from Chris Matthews.

  11. Ron
    April 18th, 2010 @ 4:21 pm

    If they really believed in the worthiness of all their causes, the response should have been easy and quick. They should have just said “So, what?, her sexual orientation is irrelevant” If I truly believed it to be irrelevant, that is what I would have said.

  12. Ron
    April 18th, 2010 @ 11:21 am

    If they really believed in the worthiness of all their causes, the response should have been easy and quick. They should have just said “So, what?, her sexual orientation is irrelevant” If I truly believed it to be irrelevant, that is what I would have said.

  13. Indentured Servant Girl
    April 18th, 2010 @ 8:23 pm

    “I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.”

    All the more reason to hate a little extra while it’s still legal!

    I’m doing my best!

  14. Indentured Servant Girl
    April 18th, 2010 @ 3:23 pm

    “I’m more concerned that she’s pro-hate speech laws.”

    All the more reason to hate a little extra while it’s still legal!

    I’m doing my best!

  15. How Gay Is Elena Kagan? : The Other McCain
    April 19th, 2010 @ 2:07 pm

    […] finds itself lashed to the mast of its adamant insistence on Kagan’s heterosexuality.The weekend merriment is recounted by The Week (“A lesbian smear campaign?”) and by Lachlan Markay at […]

  16. White House Hoisted On It’s Own Retard « The Camp Of The Saints
    April 19th, 2010 @ 2:37 pm

    […] From his first posting, published on Saturday: This is hilarious. Potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gayer than the first three rows at an Indigo Girls concert, and yet the White House acts all outraged that conservative writer Ben Domenech incorrectly described the unmarried 49-year-old as “openly gay.” […]

  17. wymck
    May 11th, 2010 @ 7:39 am

    I think the underlying point is the under-lying and pointing. Barack Obama is a 10/90 guy… everything he does has wild support with 10 percent of the population and the 90 percent of us are scratching our heads saying, What the heck is wrong with this guy?

    Obama gets the Presidency seemingly in a walk… nobody is asking tough questions… and he hides and evades and websites get scrubbed and we can’t figure out who he is or anything about him. Now he is the President. They ram the $787 billion stimulus through. Nobody has read it or knows what is in it. They have now rammed through the $6 trillion health bill, because they lied and said it was $1 trillion.

    All of this, however, is so fleeting, so temporary, so unimportant. Our grandchildren will be paying $200 billion a year in taxes to repay the interest on the Obama debts from the 2010s, but Elena Kagan will still be on the Supreme Court in 40 years, because we didn’t take the time to find out that she’s a Communist, or lesbian, or Muslim, or a coke dealer, or (more likely) a Communist lesbian Muslim coke dealer.

    Naturally, by 2050 or whenever, our great-grandchildren won’t know a thing about this Kagan controversy because in the future nobody cares if you’re a Communist lesbian Muslim coke dealer (Commie-lesbi-Musli-Cokie for short) as long as you pay your taxes and observe Shari’a law like everyone else.

    All the while, Mister Ten Percenter is laughing at us, saying, Look what I did. I really rubbed it in their faces this time. I haven’t been this happy since last week when I used the Gettysburg Address as a bib. I think I’ll take some French soldiers to South Dakota and shoot Abraham Lincoln’s nose off of Mount Rushmore.

  18. wymck
    May 11th, 2010 @ 2:39 am

    I think the underlying point is the under-lying and pointing. Barack Obama is a 10/90 guy… everything he does has wild support with 10 percent of the population and the 90 percent of us are scratching our heads saying, What the heck is wrong with this guy?

    Obama gets the Presidency seemingly in a walk… nobody is asking tough questions… and he hides and evades and websites get scrubbed and we can’t figure out who he is or anything about him. Now he is the President. They ram the $787 billion stimulus through. Nobody has read it or knows what is in it. They have now rammed through the $6 trillion health bill, because they lied and said it was $1 trillion.

    All of this, however, is so fleeting, so temporary, so unimportant. Our grandchildren will be paying $200 billion a year in taxes to repay the interest on the Obama debts from the 2010s, but Elena Kagan will still be on the Supreme Court in 40 years, because we didn’t take the time to find out that she’s a Communist, or lesbian, or Muslim, or a coke dealer, or (more likely) a Communist lesbian Muslim coke dealer.

    Naturally, by 2050 or whenever, our great-grandchildren won’t know a thing about this Kagan controversy because in the future nobody cares if you’re a Communist lesbian Muslim coke dealer (Commie-lesbi-Musli-Cokie for short) as long as you pay your taxes and observe Shari’a law like everyone else.

    All the while, Mister Ten Percenter is laughing at us, saying, Look what I did. I really rubbed it in their faces this time. I haven’t been this happy since last week when I used the Gettysburg Address as a bib. I think I’ll take some French soldiers to South Dakota and shoot Abraham Lincoln’s nose off of Mount Rushmore.

  19. Here We Go Again « Imagine Today
    May 12th, 2010 @ 12:38 am

    […] [And a conservative blog post, for good measure:] “This is hilarious. Potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gayer than the first three rows at an Indigo Girls concert, and yet the White House acts all outraged that conservative writer Ben Domenech incorrectly described the unmarried 49-year-old as “openly gay.” […]