The Gayest Blogger on the Internets

The furore over the Danish cartoons has, along with acres of bogus "Clash of Civlisations" editorials, occasionally resulted in some really interesting and inciteful pieces. Few of these managed to top the deep analysis and culturally sensitive musings of Partisan Pundit:

I find myself wondering what would happen if these riots caught hold here? I have this image of a Korean shopkeeper on the roof of his store with a bulletproof vest and a .308. Next door is a black guy who owns a barber shop wielding a Mossberg in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. A pissed-off muslim rioter cocks back a molotav, and suddenly a large exit wound blossoms in the middle of his back, as the pungent smell of gunpowder residue fills the air. Three, four more fall, and suddenly, rioting in the streets loses its luster. Defending Mohammed's honor against a cartoonist's scribbles suddenly seems less important than avoiding a face full of double-ought buckshot. A rock flies through a display window, and almost like a ricochet, an angry retired fire-fighter comes flying back out swinging a Louisville Slugger like to put a smile on Babe Ruth's face.

Beautiful. Inspired by PP's mastery of the issues, I took a look around his website to see what other gems I could unearth. Here, I was heartened to find that he has dealt with similar issues previously, and with the same thoughtful, rational prose:

The Black Community's attempts to be viewed with any degree of compassion or intellectual equality on the national stage is certainly not in any measure enhanced by the repeated actions of select portions of its constituency wilding through middle-class businesses like a bunch of Somali thugs hyped up on kat, careening through neighborhood streets in the back of technicals.

Guys, my fellow Americans of color, a word of advice from whitey: If you want us to listen to you like rational human beings, STOP BURNING SHIT DOWN. Stop throwing off the oppressive yoke of civilization at every hint of social instability.

...


Here's a newsflash for the Rainbow Coalition: If you smash in MY storefront, you’ll get a 12-guage welcome. Not because I’m behaving like a racist, but because YOU are behaving like a raving lunatic.

But from whence springs forth this well of humanity, this spiritual yearning for a better life for those who are persecuted? What fuels this one-man quest for justice and truth for those who have laboured long in the darkness? More specifically, what's the fucking story with this asshole?

My first guess would be the bullying: "People that hijack websites ... are the same ones who, in high school or the frat in college, would offer you a drink of their soda, only to find out it was the can they were using for their tobacco spit, or maybe even filled with piss". Jesus, he drank a soda can full of piss, the poor bastard. That would tend to make anybody a fucking sociopath. The experience has evidently also completely destroyed any sense of perspective, as he continues: "Ambush sites are terrorism, plain and simple. Maybe planes don't crash and burn, maybe buildings don't collapse, but the intent in the heart of the cyberterrorist is the same as any jihadist".

Are you listening to this, Mr Bush? After you are finished with al-Qaeda, PLEASE MAKE IT SO I DO NOT GET POP-UPS.

My second guess would definitely be the barely repressed homosexuality and attendant self-loathing. Partisan Pundit's writings are strongly obsessed with male sexual relationships, and he cannot decide whether he is as disgusted as The Party tells him to be or all warm and fuzzy in the crotch. In the tight-arsed and ridiculously homophobic world of right-wing bloggery this tends to result in a lot of dumb macho image reinforcement. To demonstrate, let's take a look at some of his other websites - see here, in a post in support of handbags for men, as PP wrestles with the issues:

Men need a bag, but a Manly Bag. Call it a tote. No, wait, I have it: men need a satchel. Satchels are not gay. Satchels are manly. John Wayne himself threw uncountable numbers of satchel charges into uncountable numbers of enemy pillboxes, usually doing so under a hail of murderous gunfire.

Quintessential manliness.

Even the WORD "purse" is inherently unmanly; you almost feel the need to lisp just saying it. "Satchel," on the other hand, is a virile, rugged, squinty-eyed-from-staring-into-the-desert-sun-for-too-long, fist-clenching, teeth-grittin', tear-off-a chunk-of-raw-meat-from-the-carcass-of-the-vicious-carnivore-you-just-killed-with-yer-bare-freakin'-HANDS kind of word. No lisping involved whatsoever.

Gosh. I'm getting a little hot under the collar imagining the tanned, rippling torso of rugged manly manliness conjured up by PP in this deeply erotic passage. I imagine him wearing naught but a pair of ripped jean shorts and white socks, clutching his macho manly man-satchel to his smooth, hairless chest.

Blowing my thesis out of the water, though, the same blog also features a post titled "Guys I'd Probably Like To Do If I Were Gay, Which I'm Not", a lengthy tribute to the mannish man-osity of Matthew McConaughey during which we discover that PP is definitely not gay, because he goes out of his way to tell us so, many times: "And that accent, I'm telling ya, if I was gay (which I'm not) that rolling, laid-back drawl of his would get me all a twitter. In theory, of course". Not gay, then. Got it.

PP has a third website, Don't Get Stuck On Stupid, the main page of which features the following heartbreaking farewell:

I saw myself as something of a crusader, trying to change people's minds by showing them the truth, as well as I was able. But you know what I realized? A great many people aren't interested in the truth. Changing minds is difficult when emotion is so wrapped up in a worldview that reason can't penetrate the folds.

To which he then adds, helpfully: "I'm sure I suffer to some degree from this problem, but hey". Here's some of PP's crusading truthful manliness, penetrating the folds and further establishing his unassailable lady-lovin' credentials:

Getting the icky willies at the thought of two hairy men going to town on each other's exit onlys, or getting queasy at the site of two guys playing tonsil hockey on a public park bench doesn't make me intolerant or homophobic.

It makes me heterosexual.

This is a firm admission that he is entirely adjusted to the fact that something "icky" happens to his willy whenever he kicks back and thinks about two hirsute men making sweet love to eachother. This is a sure sign of someone who is comfortable with his sexuality, and I whole heartedly apologise for ever having suggested that PP is anything other than a handbag-sporting macho racist arsehole with a soft spot for Matthew McConaughey's delectable accent.

To make it up to Partisan P for the entire tone of this post, I'll happily point out his keen scientific mind (whose ID-Evolution pieces are a veritable Algonquin round-table in the comments and feature such fiendish arguments as linking to a picture of a bacterial flagellum and saying "I mean seriously, come ON people").

Brains and brawn - quite the catch, eh ladies? Too bad he's, uh, married. What? What did you think I was going to say?

Oh, shame on you.

UPDATE: PP's obsessive internal struggle continues, as he battles to categorise everything in his life as either "gay" or "manly", as if he isn't a textbook example of the two co-existing relatively comfortably. On the "gay" list we have old favourites like "open-toed sandals", "frappucinos" and, of course, "anal sex" (apparently all anal sex is gay now), but there are a few new additions: base jumping is gay now, along with loofas and placemats. Oh, and lip balm is gay, but only if flavoured.

"Manly" stuff includes fixing the lawnmower, scratching in public and stupid bullshit like that, but because PP is over-compensating wildly we also get stuff like "claymores" and "concealed-carry". How gay do you gotta be that you need fucking weapons to reinforce your rapidly dispersing heterosexual smokescreen? Just suck a cock already, dude! It's cool, nobody gives a shit.

Let's end with a competition. See if you can guess which categories PP sorts the following into:

A. "Smashing that big freakin' spider"
B. "Cleaving Orcs in twain"

Yes that's right, both are, apparently, manly activities. Now, I'm not into this "gay/manly" game, but if I was (which I'm not), then statements about Orcs, in ye olde nerde speake, would definitely be in the GAY category. Really though, who could stand to live their life like this, constantly worrying about the gayness or otherwise of one's actions and possessions? Something's gotta give - watch this space!