Kathy Griffin Owes Us BiG TiMe

On the spot - Kathy Griffin
by Arnold Wayne Jones
The Dallas Voice
Friday Apr 16, 2010

LADY GAG | Kathy Griffin’s topical humor will be front and center at the Meyerson Sunday and Monday.    Email Print Share

Kathy Griffin owes us big time - and she knows it. She routinely does shout-outs to "my gays," and is attempting to break her personal appearance attendance record not at some mainstream event, but at Milwaukee’s PrideFest.

And even when she appears, as she will this Sunday and Monday at the Meyerson with the staid Dallas Symphony Orchestra ("Nothing makes me happier than to use the F bomb much more than the first cello," she says), she expects her gay following to be the torchbearer.

"I don’t think of Dallas as the Deep South - my next Bravo special will be filmed in Knoxville, so believe me: You guys are like Chelsea - but whenever I play any of those markets, people warn me. But those shows are the most raucous. That’s because the gays will make the drives. They will come three hours to see me. It might not represent the most accurate cross section of Dallas but it’s a good crowd. And let’s not leave out the seven heterosexual men who were dragged there."

Griffin knows where her bread is buttered. And the surest evidence that she’s a true FOG (Friend of the Gays): Even when she’s not obligated to be gay-friendly, she gives us props. For instance, when her house got a room makeover on HGTV’s Next Design Star, she asked for (but did not get) a gay designer. And when she attempted a rare dramatic acting role on Law & Order: SVU, she played gay.

"They told me I was gonna play ’a white Al Sharpton.’ I was so there. I’m actually friendly with Al Sharpton - I love almost every controversial person. I mean, not Ann Coulter - I’m not that nuts."

Griffin even planted a same-sex kiss on series star Mariska Hargitay - though it didn’t make it in he final cut when the aired episode.

"[Executive producer] Dick Wolf ended up cutting the lesbian kiss because they thought it went too far. But it will be the buzz of the Dinah Shore," she cracks. Still, the experience was surreal for her.

"You know the demographics for that show is my mom, who’s 90, and older people. I never had my Twitter blow up until I committed to SVU -they put the gays to shame. It was very exciting," she says. "But the gays are all up in that shit, too. The gays love Chris Meloni and the lesbians love Mariska."

It also made her wonder about the sexual orientation of Hargitay’s character.

"The day we shot the kiss, it was a big deal on the set - you could hear a pin drop. She’s tough and she’s sexy - they almost purposely play her like she’s gay," she opines. "Her character has never slept with the Chris Meloni character in, like, seven years. I personally don’t know any woman who could go seven minutes and not sleep with him."

The guest spot was a departure from My Life on the D List, her Bravo reality show for which she won two Emmys...

"Did you says Emmys?" she gasps. "I didn’t’ know we were switching topics to my favorite subject! I’m on a campaign to get nominated for my guest appearance on SVU ... and to legally change the name of show to SUV. That’s what people call it anyway."

But she hasn’t abandoned The D List. In fact, the day we talk, she’s terribly excited about what’s coming up.

"Please let me tell you my day," she begs. "Of course, we’ll have a joyous interview, but then I’m going to the house where we will be filming the next season of The D List. I will be at that meeting with Levi Johnston and his personal representative, Tank Jones. He’s gonna be on our show! Sarah Palin is supposedly getting a million dollars an episode [for her upcoming show on Discovery]. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to have Levi on a competing network."

Levi is just one peg in a year Griffin enthusiastically describes as "a comedy gold mine. When Clinton was in office you could have fun with anything, including him. Then Bush was elected and we couldn’t laugh at our government in the post 9/11 years. With Obama in office, it’s a nice change. I cannot sit idly on the sidelines."

Griffin can find comedy almost anywhere. "That’s what I love about touring year round. I am like two weekends on, two weekends off. There’s always something new.

But while she still pays homage to Paula Abdul and Oprah - "what I call The Standards," she says - she has some current targets:

About Tiger Woods: "I could listen to Gloria Allred read his sexting all day long."

About Miley Cyrus: "Miley was a mentor - a mentor! - on American Idol. I think that’s what you call jumping the shark. And I don’t hear Miley singing ’I’m a sweet virgin’ much anymore - not now that she has a hot boyfriend."

About Sandra Bullock: "Are you really going go for Sandy Bullock? There’s no comedy there. It’s the Nazi with the whip - that’s where the joke is." (But she must have known before the Oscars that Jesse was cheating on her, right? "She was thinking, Whatever the fuck I’m going through is only going to be worse with every reporter asking ’Where’s Jesse?’ It’s just easier to put a goddamn suit on him, walk down the carpet and just deal with it Monday.’")

But all of this raises a question: With sold-out tours, Emmy Awards, another season of her show and guest spots on mainstream network fare, might she need to change the name of the show to, maybe, The C List?

Never, she insists.

"When you’re on the D list, you constantly have to switch it up," she explains. "It’s not newsworthy for me to me seen at the grocery store or walking my kids. Trust me, I would get a kid if I thought it would help. But I’m not able to get pregnant with Levi’s baby because I don’t have any eggs left."

Toward that end, she granted us this exclusive:

"I tell you first: I am coming out as a Christian virgin. I tell people I am going to become Christian and a virgin and am not doing it for publicity. I am also not a proud member of the Church of Scientology. If that doesn’t get more people to buy my t-shirts, what the fuck will?"

- - - -

KATHY GRIFFIN
With the Dallas Symphony
Orchestra, Meyerson
Symphony Center, 2701 Flora St. April 18 and 19
at 8 p.m. 214-692-0203.
DallasSymphony.com.

 

Interest in scandal could hobble Spitzer NY return

Edith Honan

NEW YORK

Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:57pm EDT

(Reuters) - Two years after former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a prostitution scandal, public interest in the sleazy details is still strong, dampening speculation of a political comeback.

BARACK OBAMA

A return to the political stage by Spitzer, a Democrat who left after being caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet a prostitute, is not impossible but would be strongly hobbled by persistent reminders of the scandal, experts say.

Spitzer, who was not charged in the case, recently said he was "incredibly frustrated" at no longer being governor and would not rule out another run for office. "I love politics," he said in Fortune magazine.

But Spitzer is the subject of a new biography by Peter Elkind, an editor at large at Fortune magazine, that claims he spent as much as $100,000 on high-priced prostitutes before he resigned.

The book, "Rough Justice: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer," also says Spitzer paid to have a prostitute flown to Puerto Rico where he was attending a meeting, according to media that have seen early copies of the book.

And the former governor is the focus of an untitled documentary by Alex Gibney set to premiere at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this month.

The hit CBS television show "The Good Wife" is loosely based on the Spitzer marriage, with actress Julianna Margulies portraying the wife of a politician who is forced to resign after it was revealed he paid for escorts.

Ashley Dupre, the real-life escort at the center of the Spitzer case, is posing for an upcoming issue of Playboy and even writes a sex advice column for the New York Post.

"He has become an industry," said Doug Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch College in New York.

Nearly half of New York voters in a poll this week said Spitzer should run for office again someday, but a majority said they did not want to see him run this year.

"Some of the battle scars have faded a little bit," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion that conducted the poll.

"But voters in New York are still very reluctant to entertain the notion of him as a candidate," he said.

'WANTS TO BE A PLAYER'

Miringoff added that Spitzer as a candidate would be "a consultant's field day, not just in terms of his character flaw but where the state is in terms of its dysfunction."

Democratic Governor David Paterson, who succeeded Spitzer, is embroiled in scandals of his own.

He is being investigated by the state attorney general's office for allegations he improperly intervened when a top aide was involved in a domestic abuse case. Another probe is weighing whether he illegally solicited and accepted gifts.

Meanwhile, the state's budget lies unapproved and past deadline. In the latest of New York's grim fiscal travails, the state-run Off-Track Betting operation is on the brink of closing down unless it receives a bailout.

"The political terrain is relatively barren and at one point Eliot Spitzer stood at the top of the mountain," said Muzzio. "Who else is there?"

Spitzer writes a column for Slate.com, often appears on television and has been an outspoken proponent of financial reform -- the issue that propelled him to national prominence when he served as state attorney general and earned him the nickname Sheriff of Wall Street.

"I think clearly Eliot Spitzer wants to be a player," said Muzzio, adding: "But a politician's legitimacy rests on their credibility and he lost his credibility."

A glimpse of the atmosphere Spitzer would face was on display this week at a Manhattan nightclub where Kristen Davis, who served prison time for running an escort service, held a fundraiser for her long-shot bid to become the next governor.

Davis called Spitzer a hypocrite for targeting prostitution rings as governor and paying for escorts in his personal life.

On hand was longtime Republican political operative Roger Stone, a Spitzer detractor and adviser to Davis' campaign.

"Will he always have a voice? Of course. This is America," said Stone. "But his record of hypocrisy will always follow him around."

Another Despicable Cowardly Act Against the LGTB Community In Staten Island, NYC

LGBT Community Responds in Solidarity On the morning of April 14, 2010 the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center staff arrived to find a torched rainbow flag draped on the front of our building. This act of hate must not be tolerated! Actions like this are menacing to our community and, if not addressed, can lead to an environment that allows more heinous acts, such as verbal attacks, property damage and physical violence. Showing our solidarity now will empower our community and send a message to the public that we will not be intimidated or threatened. The Center is a beacon of safety and hope for LGBT New Yorkers and our building stands as an emblem of our community's presence in the city. The Center is visited over 300,000 times every year by people in search of support, safety and transformation. More than 1,000 young people come through our doors annually searching for acceptance and a place where they feel comfortable expressing their true selves. Cowardly acts of hateful speech must be responded to with acts of courage and unity. The Center has partnered with Gilbert Baker, the Rainbow Flag's creator, as well as many elected officials and other organizations to bring together our community and unfurl a new 20 foot long flag that will drape the building (please visitgaycenter.org/torchedflag for the most up to date information). On Wednesday, April 21st at 5:00 pm we will gather together as one to prove that we will not sit idly by while our home is threatened. We invite our straight allies to stand with us to demonstrate that LGBT safety and rights are not just an issue for LGBT people. Our city is strong and we need to come together to show that we cannot be intimidated. Please join us and demonstrate the true power of community! When: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 5:00 pm Where: In front of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th Street, Manhattan For questions or how to help, please contact Jeffrey Klein at jklein@gaycenter.org Sincerely, Glennda Testone Become a Center Member | Donate Now | Subscribe to the Center's E-newsletters | MyCenter www.gaycenter.org/calendar | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe  This message was sent by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center  208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011 | 212-620-7310 | www.gaycenter.org

Elena Kagan 'Gay' Whisper Campaign Enrages Rights Groups

First Posted: 04-16-10 09:43 AM   |   Updated: 04-16-10 11:32 AM

 e

With reporting by Julian Hattem

Leading gay rights group are accusing Republicans of trying to rile up their conservative base by launching a whisper campaign against potential Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan -- suggesting the current Solicitor General is a closeted lesbian even though she's not.

In its first entree into the upcoming Supreme Court nomination process, the group Human Rights Campaign blasted the increasingly public discussion of Kagan's sexuality, calling it a play "straight out the right-wing playbook."

"Even though the majority of Americans couldn't care less about a nominee's sexual orientation, the far right will continue to be shameless with their whisper campaigns to drum up their base and raise money off of prejudice," Michael Cole, a spokesperson for the group emailed, in a statement to the Huffington Post

In a separate interview, Jean-Marie Navetta, spokeswoman from PFLAG -- Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays -- accused people of trying to manufacture scandal out of thin air.

"People love taking part in rumors like this, whether they're gay or not, because it implies that there's some sort of scandal going on there. And the bottom line is, it doesn't matter and it shouldn't matter," she said. "But we hear it all the time... it's a gossip point for people. And I think it could certainly be used, or be perceived to be used by some as a way to discredit [Kagan], even though we all know that it does not matter and it should not matter."

The comments come a day after CBS published a blog by Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, in which he asserted that choosing Kagan would help Obama "please" much of his base, because she would be the "first openly gay justice." The White House reacted strongly to the assertion, relaying that Kagan is, in fact, straight. It was the first public pushback by the administration in defense of any potential Supreme Court nominee.

 Even before the CBS post, a top conservative religious group was already insisting that a nominee's sexuality would play a major role in his or her confirmation process. This past week, the organization Focus on the Family abruptly reversed its position from the last Supreme Court confirmation battle by declaring it would oppose a gay Supreme Court pick, no matter who the nominee is.

"We can assure you that we recognize that homosexual behavior is a sin and does not reflect God's created intent and desire for humanity," said Tom Minnery, the group's senior vice president. "Further, we at Focus do affirm that character and moral rectitude should be key considerations in appointing members of the judiciary, especially in the case of the highest court in the land. Sexual behavior -- be it heterosexual or homosexual -- certainly lies at the heart of personal morality."

The fact that the rumor campaign surrounding Kagan has been settled doesn't necessarily mean that the issue is off the table, Republicans still seem poised to make gay rights a prominent feature of the confirmation process -- should she be chosen as Justice John Paul Stevens' replacement. Already conservative websites are latching on to a brief signed by Kagan and 40 Harvard Law School professors in which they argued that the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was discriminatory against gay troops.

"Let's just say that if somebody is gay, it clearly becomes political fodder," said Navetta, when asked if the effort could damage Kagan's chances for the court or confirmation. "And I'm not implying one way or the other that she is or is not [gay]. I'm just saying that its no myth that people's sexual orientation can and does become an issue in political campaigns. We've seen it before."

These Volunteers ALL Have a big....

A Big Heart

Every 10 minutes, someone in the United States is infected with HIV. A preventive vaccine against HIV offers the best long-term hope to end this worldwide epidemic. Finding a safe and effective HIV vaccine that will protect people is a huge task. We cannot do it without your help.

•  We are currently seeking 1350 men who have sex with men to participate in a vaccine trial.
•  You cannot become infected with HIV from the vaccines
•  The study will take place in several cities in the United States.

Safety is a primary goal of the vaccine trial. This is a Phase II study, designed to yield limited information on the effectiveness of the vaccine. The research vaccines have been found to be safe in animals and hundreds of humans in previous trials. One of the vaccines is made from an inactivated cold virus known as an adenovirus. The vaccines do NOTcontain the HIV virus, and CANNOT cause HIV infection. Since these vaccines are still being researched, we urge all of our participants to practice safe sex.

The HIV vaccine trial is a collaboration between the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the Division of AIDS, NIAID and the Vaccine Research Center, NIAID.

Could Heroin Hold The Clues For A New Protective Agent For HIV?

To their surprise, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have discovered that morphine (a derivate of the opium poppy that is similar to heroin) protects rat neurons againstHIV toxicity - a finding they say might help in the design of new neuroprotective therapies for patients with the infection.

The discovery, being presented at the annual meeting of the Society of NeuroImmune Pharmacology, also helps explain why a subset of people who are heroin abusers and become infected with HIV through needle sharing don't develop HIV brain dementia. This brain disorder includes cognitive and motor abnormalities, anxietyand depression.

"We believe that morphine may be neuroprotective in a subset of people infected with HIV," says the study's lead investigator, Italo Mocchetti, PhD, Professor of neuroscience at GUMC. "That is not to say that people should use heroin to protect themselves - that makes no medical sense at all - but our findings gives us ideas about designing drugs that could be of benefit.

"Needless to say we were very surprised at the findings," he added. "We started with the opposite hypothesis - that heroin was going to destroy neurons in the brain and lead to HIV dementia."

The researchers conducted the study because they knew that a number of HIV-positive people are also heroin abusers, and because of that, some are at high risk of developing neurological complications from the infection. Others, however, never develop these cognitive problems, Mocchetti says.

Because little is known about the molecular mechanisms linking opiates and HIV neurotoxicity, Mocchetti and his team conducted experiments in rats. They found that in the brain, morphine inhibited the toxic property of the HIV protein gp120 that mediates the infection of immune cells. With further investigation, they concluded that morphine induces production of the protein CCL5, which they discovered is released by astrocytes, a type of brain cell. CCL5 is known to activate factors that suppress HIV infection of human immune cells. "It is known to be important in blood, but we didn't know it is secreted in the brain," says Mocchetti. "Our hypothesis is that it is in the brain to prevent neurons from dying."

They say morphine blocked HIV from binding to CCR5 receptors it typically uses to enter and infect cells. The researchers believe CCL5 itself attached to those receptors, preventing the virus from using it. In this way, it prevented HIV-associated dementia. This effect, however, only worked in the M-trophic strain of HIV, the strain that most people are first infected with. It did not work with the second T-trophic strain that often infects patients later.

"Ideally we can use this information to develop a morphine-like compound that does not have the typical dependency and tolerance issues that morphine has," says Mocchetti.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Source:
Karen Mallet
Georgetown University Medical Cente

Is this John McCain, No, No, is Not

Is This Really from John McCain? No, Really.

posted by: Peaco Todd 6 hours ago

I'll see you on the other side. I hope, May be?

Reincarnation or Not?

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Who were you before you were you? Even though we all identify with a very limited slice of time and space, equating “me” with one body and one mind, in reality you also live outside yourself in the field of awareness.

The Vedic seers say, “The real you cannot be squeezed into the volume of a body or the span of a lifetime.” The package of body and mind that came before is a stranger to you now, and the one that might arise after your death is equally alien. But on a deeper level, millions of seeds have already been planted.

Some are the thoughts you will have tomorrow or the actions you will follow a decade from now. Time is flexible at the quantum level and nonexistent at the virtual level. As we watch these seeds sprouting in the fertile field of time and space, awareness wakes up to itself. This is how a single fertilized cell learns to become a brain–it wakes up to itself, not on the chemical level but on the level of awareness.

Imagine that expanded awareness is normal. Time and space could just be convenient concepts that hold true in the material world but dissolve gradually as you approach the quantum level. This is what I believe reincarnation is about.

Former lives fall into the unexplored territory of expanded awareness. It isn’t absolutely necessary to decide whether they are “real” or not. All of the quantum and virtual levels are open to us all of the time. To navigate them completely is impossible; they open up to us according to our own needs and abilities. But no part is intentionally closed off. Although we normally look no deeper than the personal domain, to look deeper is always possible.

It is more normal to learn from the past than not to, and people who shut out their former lives–if we want to use that terminology–are shutting out lessons that give this present lifetime its purpose and meaning. For someone who has absorbed these lessons fully, there is no need to go beyond this lifetime, and yet such visitations are still part of the natural order of things.

Do You Like Beano? There is a lot of Gas here

support global-warming

Grab The Beano! This Planet's Got Gas.

posted by: Beth Buczynski 1 day ago

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It's an awkward, yet necessary human function that happens to the best of us at the worst of times: flatulence.

Whether released in the privacy of your bathroom, or presented with gusto in a room full of your closest friends, there's no denying that the human digestive system and our not-so-healthy diets combine forces to make us one gassy species. 

If you think human flatulence stinks, however, this news is really going to wrinkle your nose.

Up until recently, our planet has kept its gas to itself, locked safely away in Arctic permafrost, the thick layer of soil just beneath the surface that remains frozen year round. Because Earth's temperature has been steadily increasing over the past few decades, however, the frozen ground is melting, and the concentrated gas is bubbling to the surface in alarming amounts.

The gas now exploding through the Arctic shelf is methane that was originally deposited there through decomposition of organic matter in ancient wetlands.

Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years (Climate Progress).

If a significant amount of this formerly-frozen methane is released into the atmosphere, it could put in motion a positive feedback loop in which warming releases methane, causing further warming, which liberates even more of the gas.

In a recent press release, the National Science Foundation press release warned that "release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming."

But the planet's gassy problems don't end with underground methane bubbles.

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, thawing permafrost in eastern Greenland may be emitting large amounts of nitrous oxide, a dangerous greenhouse gas better known under it's cuddly stage name -- "laughing gas."

The smile will probably fade from your face when you realize that nitrous oxide ranks as the third-most significant greenhouse gas generated by human activities, behind carbon dioxide and methane (see above!).

According to the EPA, nitrous oxide is about 310 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO₂ over a 100-year period.

The study suggests that nitrous oxide released by warming permafrost, which lies under roughly a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, could be a bigger contributor to climate change than previously thought.

Now, if you had a friend suffering from this kind of gas, you'd probably offer them a natural enzyme supplement or point them in the direction of your finest leafy green.

Unfortunately, the planet can't reach for an over-the-counter remedy. We are the only ones who can bring it any relief, and it's important that we act quickly.