In Black Swan, Natalie Portman, a pristine and proper ballerina, must figure out how to go beyond her ability to dance the white swan in "Swan Lake." She must find the passion, a darker side if you will, to convincingly portray the seductress that is the black swan. Of course, as she takes this leap, Portman's character is drawn deeper and deeper into a hallucinatory psychosis, unable to distinguish between reality and delusion.
In the film, Portman must become the Black Swan to play it, there is no middle ground where she can inhabit the character, but not the character's life - which causes her to lose all the self-control and discipline she has gained on stage as well as off. Which would seem to work the same way as conservatism, at least with regard to social policy - as right wingers fear in their fevered and misfiring synapses that we'll all become black swans just like they would (and often still do), without authoritarian rigidity dictating every aspect of our personal lives.
In other words, much like in the film, in the conservative worldview there can also be no middle ground. Either we all become Pat Robertson - you know, before the newfound love of the pot plant - or you know where things are headed. To quote the great Dr. Venkman from Ghostbusters, "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria!"
This same dance has played out with policies relating to birth control, divorce, religion in schools and a variety of other issues. But most recently, it reared its Rovian head to spit venom on legislation that would make gay Americans equal to the rest of us under law and started a brawl among conservatives that is worthy of Camille and Kelsey Grammar.
The first of their two most recent Swan Lake moment happened during the vote in the recent lame-duck Congress to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. The Family Research Council, recently rewarded for all their hard work at being bigots with the designation of "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, pulled some statistics out of a part of their body they're afraid to acknowledge to claim that "homosexual assault" would skyrocket if we let openly gay service members into our armed forces.
These happy - or gay if you will - protectors of our purity worried aloud about the "sleeping" and/or "intoxicated" victims of what would seem to be gay sexual Terminators not simply satisfied with converting foxholes into Liberace revivals, but forcing themselves on anyone and everyone within stone's throw of their tiaras.
According to a recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, 50% of respondents said they would support an openly gay person to serve as president. 44% said they were opposed. However if it was argued during his two terms in office that Bill Clinton was "our first black President" because of his supposed liberal policies that would benefit African-Americans (though I'm not quite sure what President Clinton did, that he wasn't forced to do, that would benefit any minority except for Chinese monks with political donations to spend.) With that argument shouldn't Barack Obama already be our "first gay President" due to his liberal policies pushing the homosexual agenda?
Boy, I wish. It's like today's Department of Justice brief using right-wing talking points to defend Don't Ask, Don't Tell never happened. If only, Tom, if only.
This week, President Obama made headlines by reversing George W. Bush's executive order barring researchers who receive federal funds from researching all but a handful of stem cell lines created before 2001.
"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry," Obama wrote. "It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."
I just got this email from the Family Research Council.
With roughly 2,000 political appointments to make, Team Obama has had its hands full. This week, the President-elect concentrated on rounding out his Cabinet, naming his hometown school chief, Chicago's Arne Duncan, to head the Department of Education. Duncan is best known for advocating the use of the city's taxpayer funds to create a segregated high school for homosexuals.
That 'be nice to bigots' strategy is paying some serious dividends.
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