Bruce Jenner was the star of the first Olympics I ever remember watching and he was on the Wheaties boxes my mother bought me for my breakfasts. It’s a bit of an adjustment to think of him as consorting with the Kardashians, but I’m getting used to it. I’m not going to say I care, but I also can’t say that I didn’t have to adjust my opinion of him a little bit.
Having said that, this thing about him being a Republican is more of a challenge. What? The Bush administration wasn’t enough to get him off that crack?
Having said that, this thing about him being a Republican is more of a challenge. What? The Bush administration wasn’t enough to get him off that crack?
I don’t get why people are shocked that he’s a Republican. One, who cares? Second, there are plenty of gay Republicans. Just look at Ted Cruz’s NYC trip this week. They value their tax cuts the most, obviously.
Remember when they were called “Log Cabin Republicans”?
The Gay Republican thing is one of those weird trends that I struggle to understand. In San Francisco County/City (they are the same thing) the vote is invariably over 80% for the Democrat, but among the GOP minority the male gay population is tremendously overrepresented. No, not female, it’s a male gay thing.
What is it? “Hey, we’re a childless DINK (double income, no kids) couple and we are pissed off about paying taxes for schools and poor folks”? I think a big part of it is that a lot of them really identify with the wealthy elite and buy into the “I got mine” mentality – screw everyone else. I guess the ones that really surprise me are the black gay GOPers in SF. (And understand that I know a lot of these guys of whom I am aquantaince-business friends with.) All I can think of is that they figure the party powers will always have control over the party majority who thinks they should be – at a minimum – thrown in jail.
I don’t see this in the gay female community at all. No surprise there.
My wife and I are also DINK’s, and it does really puzzle some of our Republican friends that we are such supporters of school levies and social safety net programs. I live right on the line of two school districts. Houses across the road from me are in a rural school district, and houses on my side are in a more upscale and largely Republican district that covers a large suburban area, though we are out in the country.
Our school district went into fiscal emergency a few years ago due to the fact that every operating levy, whether a replacement or an addition, went down to defeat, time after time. Now the median income in this district is pretty far above the state average, and the levies could largely be afforded by the majority of homeowners. But this is a very heavy Tea Party area and the attitude was that the first savings, by god, should come by cutting teacher’s salaries by at least half and that programs should be cut back to basically the three R’s. Because, of course, why do we need all this fancy technical stuff in our schools, like computers. They had passed a levy for construction of a new high school building a few years before, before the Tea Party was a local force, and this building was pointed to by the newly birthed Tea Party set as an unnecessarily extravagant ripoff of taxpayers because it had fancy things like internet access and air conditioning. And their sell job worked. Levy after levy failed, and eventually the state had to take over the district. And the cuts the state board was forced to make were draconian. All advanced placement and pre-college classes were eliminated. No music classes. No art classes. No intramural sports. Heavy fees for participation in any school activity were necessary in order to fund them. Somehow, the library was saved. And, of course, to the Tea Partier’s delight, some teachers had to lose their jobs. It was a Tea Party dream come true.
Eventually, voters in the district realized that they were doing nothing more than cutting off their own noses off to spite their face by turning their backs on the schools. But the permanent losses were already obvious. The reputation of the district had soured, property values had declined, many good people had left and they would never be coming back. And this reputation follows to this day.
So we finally passed an operating levy. And it was one of the biggest in the history of the state. As a result I now pay more than double the property tax of the people who live just across the road from me; those people who live in the rural district that has voters who seem to realize the importance of a well supported and funded school system. But the Tea Party Republicans seemed well pleased with their short term win. And they rise up in the county every time a school has to come back to the taxpayers looking for funding to keep the wheels of education in our county greased. It is a majorly fucked up way for Ohio schools to have to do business. But it sure plays to the advantage of the Tea Party philosophy that there is no such thing as a “good tax”, unless it funds the military or corporations.
Back to basics could mean laying off the sports coaches. Does it?
Honestly, I don’t recall that the coaching staff suffered any significant cuts. The largest impact on sports was the high cost that was incurred in order to just play. The thing that eventually pushed a levy over the finish line was when there was a significant cutback in busing services. This created a logistical nightmare for parents, and created a virtual gridlock in the mornings with a significant increase in traffic due to the influx of cars dropping off individual students.
Of course, the school administration was accused of instituting busing cuts in order to purposely inconvenience parents and force their hand on getting a levy passed. I think during this whole process that there were some bridges burned that will never be rebuilt. The whole process simply eviscerated the community. I am sure that the local Tea Party was very pleased with that eventuality.
Probably for the same reason that women who support birth control and legal abortion vote Republican … if they are wealthy, their net worth enables them to do “work-arounds”, so they will not have to suffer personally from voting GOP.
I wish Bruce well, too … and yes, I recall watching the 1976 Olympics, too. What threw me for-a-loop was that after achieving fame, he divorced his first wife (back in the days where aspiring Olympians had to sacrifice to make a living) to marry a beauty queen.
That did not appear to be the sign of someone with identity issues, but merely a typical guy. He gets along well with all three of his-exes, who knew of his inner conflict and wish him well …. still, that was most difficult to reconcile.
Hilarious.
They think that orange marks his hormonal treatments to shift to being a Kossack? And not creeping liver failure?
Well, while he will be scorned by the general Republican crowd because of all that icky stuff about his life that repulses them, as a wealthy transgender he will likely suffer absolutely no ill effects from his Party’s Bronze Age policy positions.
Money is a wonderful buffer. It always has been. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the state of the game in this country, regardless of ones party affiliations.
Covered under the,”Stupid is as Stupid does” GOP clause. See they NEVER seem to learn.
I’m just happy that he’s being open about his transition. Being transgender isn’t anywhere near the strangest thing being done by the Kardashian crowd, and I think that will help put it in perspective.
Bruce Jenner’s New Reality Show Will Be About His Life as a Transgender Woman
Am guessing that he’ll get a bigger closet. To hold his new wardrobe.
He must have been reading “Aunt Tom’s Cabin”. It’s sort of reverse Woody Allen – he wants to be a member of a party that doesn’t want transgenders or women – well, women if they know their place I guess, but there’s certainly no place for minorities or LGBT people in Jenner’s party. Maybe he’s got water on the brain after all these years – or steroids. “I believe in the Constitution” – what a crock.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would vote Republican. When the person is transgendered, it’s exponentially more perplexing.
Their personal situation never prevents a person from supporting people who will lower their tax bill.
The first principle in many people’s lives is to protect their income/wealth – for Republicans all other principle are secondary.
Party before country, money above all.
with Kardashians and Coming Out as a Republican far more off-putting than publicly declaring transgender status. In what universe do “Transgender” and “Republican” share even the tiniest sliver of an intersection in the Venn diagram (presumably/hopefully Jenner is it).
one might as well ask this of any remaining republicans who aren’t rich straight white christian anti-science chicken-hawk males …
Honestly, the gay-trans Bruce Jenner Republican.
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JUMPED THE SHARK.
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JUMPED THE SHARK. Like no one has ever done.
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I am Waiting for his endorsement. Tax cuts trumps all.
(shrug) he’s white.
Now that he’s come out as another ignorant, confused Republican, I feel a little less guilty about staring at him so long, a few years back, at the local S-bucks when I saw his recently worked nose.
I always wondered why a rather handsome fellow with no apparent physical deficiencies should find it necessary to undergo a rhinoplasty, especially in a way that tended to feminize his looks.
Now that he’s announced he’s a Repub, this finally explains that mystery.