Archive for May, 2009
Military admits Dr. Utopia lied about Don't Ask/Don't Tell
If you are surprised by this, then we are sorry to tell you that you are as painfully stupid as all the guys down at Sidetrack’s here in Boystown who voted for Dr. Utopia believing he would openly allow LGBTQ service men and women to openly serve in the military.
He has no intention to do this, and the military has come out and stated the obvious: that Dr. Utopia has been lying about this the whole time.
The thing is, DADT is much more complicated than people realized because, as we understand it, Congress is needed to pass legislation to lift the ban as a mere executive order will not do in this case. It’s more complicated than Harry Truman desegrating the armed forces in racial terms.
Dr. Utopia does not want this issue to do to his term what DADT did to Bill Clinton’s first year in office. Dr. Utopia also knows the issue will hurt him in 2012, as he is consumed with his re-election bid, and DADT would not only cost him some moderate and crossover votes, but will dampen his black support that he desperately needs. Blacks will not, under any circumstances (save Michael Steele as VIP on the other ticket) vote AGAINST Dr. Utopia, but DADT might make a lot of them sit him — since if there’s one thing the black community loves more than race-based-bloc-voting it’s sticking it to gays (see: California Prop-8, which garnered 85% black support, the highest % of ANY social, religious, or ethnic group).
In Boystown, a few former Kool-Aid Kids are angry about DADT, and we tell them how stupid they are because when Dr. Utopia refused to march in the 2008 pride parade, the way he refused to march in ANY pride parades over the years, and instead got his hair cut and played basketball at the East Bank Club that day, he told everyone pretty much all they ever needed to know about his commitment to LGBTQ issues.
Suckers!
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? May 19th, 2009
945am – Meeting with Representatives of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria
1130am – Global Presse Conference at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, DC
130pm – Meeting with former UN Secreteary General Kofi Annan (at which, we will once again wonder if Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton will become UN Secretary General herself one day too)
Go, Hillary, Go!
Israel News Roundup – May 19th, 2009
Dear HillBuzz,
I’m really thrilled that the first Israel News Roundup got such a great reception. I’ve put together another few notes and also a couple of book recommendations based on topics that were raised in the comments. I’ll try to point you to a variety of sources and books so that your readers can make up their own minds about current events and consider historical precedents when forming their political positions.
Here is a nice story that I saw last week about Jesus’ baptism site being opened up to the visitors in Israel. Northern Israel is full of places of spectacular interest for Christians, as is Jerusalem. Israel’s religious minorities have full rights of worship.
Unfortunately, Jews have not fared as well under Muslim rule as is painstakingly documented in Andrew Bostom’s book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemetism. Jewish holy sites also have a history of being desecrated by many different Islamic forces (Jordan in the pre-1967 West Bank, and Joseph’s Tomb, to name just a few recent examples).
Israel is generally a conservative country, with Jewish family values forming the bedrock of most people’s lives. Yet, the local gay community thrives in major urban centers with very few demonstrations of intolerence or prejudice, unlike in some other places in the Middle East.
This is a nice story about an initiative in Israel for the mentally handicapped. It’s nice to see mentally disabled people being assisted in their quest for a meaningful life, rather than being mocked and ridiculed by leaders of certain western countries.
The last item, concerns Israelis judgment regarding the current US administration. Not surprisingly, only 31% of Israelis consider the current administration “pro-Israel”.
Lastly, for those readers who questioned the Jewish democratic voting patterns, I would suggest that this is part of a larger, historical phenomenon of Jewish wishful thinking and belief in false messiahs from the Golden Calf, to Shabbtai Zvi, to communism/Marxism. The best reference for readers interested in this subject is Dr. Kenneth Levin’s fantastic book: The Oslo Syndrome-Delusions of a People Under Seige, which I highly recommend.
My last book recommendation speaks to readers who referred to America’s historical relationship with Islam, during the founding era. I would recommend Michael Oren’s fascinating study: Power, Faith, and Fatasy America in the Middle East from 1776 to the Present. It details American resolve against Mulsim piracy and barbarism and paints an enlightening picture of the roots of American Christian Zionism. It’s a fantastic read.
Until next time, this has been Israel News Roundup on HillBuzz. I invite your readers to please discuss the information I have provided in comments below.
Laura Rosen Cohen
Toronto, Canada
Giving credit where credit is due: Dr. Utopia chooses his own opponent for 2012 = John Huntsman
When we met Michael Steele last month, one of the things we told him is that Democrats and the MSM pick Republican candidates they want to run against. Moderate Republicans do not win national elections. Normally, we’re thrilled when the GOP allows weak, fatally-flawed Republicans to run against Democrats — when those are Democrats we like and want to win. Here in Chicago, the GOP backing crazed loon Rosana Pulido in the 5th Congressional race in March against good-guy Mike Quigley was marvelous. It was the Pulido Generals versus the Quigley Globetrotters, and things went down just the way you’d expect in exhibition, high-styling, guest-starred in an episode of Scooby Doo!, basketball.
But, this isn’t so funny when Republicans select candidates who will clearly lose to bad Democrats…or to flat-out SOCIALISTS.
We THOUGHT the GOP would learn its lesson and not allow the Democrats and MSM to pick Dr. Utopia’s 2012 opponent, but this is exactly what’s happening, people.
And we have to give credit where it is very, very much due because the way they are going about this is perfectly executed and in complete control of all the casual news-readers out there who have no idea they are being played.
Bobby Jindal and Charlie Crist are repeatedly held up by the MSM as two leading contenders for the GOP’s nomination in 2012. Because both of them will lose to Dr. Utopia (Jindal, because he is neither a remedy to Dr. Utopia nor an opposing narrative to his own and Crist, because he is orange, for one, and because of what he used to get up to at the Green Iguana in Tampa, for two, three, and cha-cha-cha).
Read the Redstate piece as it details how John Huntsman has been engineered by Democrats and the MSM, with McCain’s help, to become the Republican nominee in 2012.
Honestly, if Republicans are stupid enough to nominate a moderate two elections in a row, then the GOP deserves to self-implode as a party; if Americans really are stupid enough to give Dr. Utopia a second term, in which he would at last be able to reveal himself for who he truly is and revel in an absolute radical leftist agenda free of any elections to defeat him and anything on Earth to stop him, then maybe America itself deserves to implode and end under him. Because, at that point, we would indeed just give up. We did our part. We sure as Hell tried to stop this. And we will surely turn out the lights as we leave.
Because the warning signs on all of this are as clear as day. The only thing restraining Dr. Utopia today is the fact that he needs, at the very core of his being, to win that second term. Every day, he is campaigning for that, because losing the presidency like Carter or Bush Sr. would quite possibly destroy this egomaniac. Republicans are out there doing whatever it is they do all day, but Dr. Utopia is plotting and scheming with Axelrod, Emanuel, and Co. for that second term.
They know full well Hope! and Change! won’t work a second time around, and that in 2012, nothing will have changed in this country, except for the worse. By 2012, the wild inflation caused by Dr. Utopia’s reckless spending will whallup us all, and all of the new social programs germanated by the Trillions in spending he’s forced through Congress will still be sucking more tax dollars from states and local government, forever needing more infusions of cash from the feds to stay afloat. Unless Dr. Utopia REALLY IS the light-bringing miracle worker his followers believe he is, we are going to be in seriously bad shape in 2012.
Which means, the way Dr. Utopia wins a second term is to run against Jindal, Crist, or Huntsman, with Hunstman’s fatal flaw being the fact that he’s even more moderate than John McCain — and McCain is a Republican we, as Democrats, love but whom we, as Democrats who do not support Dr. Utopia’s socialist agenda, do not want to see hand-pick his successor as GOP nominee.
The one hope we have in all of this goes back to that conversation during the Pride Parade last year we had with Log Cabin Republicans in Sidetrack’s here in Boystown. Remember, those guys told us they did not want McCain to win because he was too moderate, so they were going to let Dr. Utopia become Carter Part Deux so that a new Reagan could emerge, and a true conservative candidate would be the 2012 nominee.
The media keeps pounding and pounding and pounding a drumbeat that the Republican Party is dead, with TIME magazine featuring an “endangered species” elephant on its cover and Arnold Schwarzenegger braying that the party needs to move left to survive.
Well, moving to the center didn’t win you 2008…and it won’t win you 2012. When something does not work out well for you, you do not do more of it. Dummies.
This push for Hunstman, Jindal, and Crist also, you may have noticed, remains in coordinated concert with daily efforts to malign, berate, and nuetralize SARAH PALIN, the one person we see in the GOP field who will indeed defeat Dr. Utopia and send him packing to Hawaii (because we also don’t believe, once defeated, he’ll be coming back to Chicago…it will be Honolulu all the way, baby, from then on, where his presidential library will also indeed be, Mayor Daley be damned). Mitt Romney will also lose, we believe, and that’s hard for us to say because we like Romney and have many Romney supporters as friends, but he won’t win.
Sarah Palin will win.
But, will she run remains to be seen. Honestly, the MSM is doing a very effective hit job on her, with talking points from the White House itself. Many Republican diaper-babies we know cry, “She can’t be the nominee! They will attack her! They will make her into a joke! A woman can’t be the nominee because Tina Fey will make fun of her!”. Well, in this Golden Age of Hope, there remains the possibility that Tina Fey could acquire crippling laryngittis in 2012 (or possibly realize that she, a feminist, might not want to be the poster woman for trying to take down the first female presidential nominee of either party…but would Fey respond to Palin with gender motivation the way racists like Colin Powell jumped aboard Dr. Utopia’s snake oil bandwagon? That too remains to be seen).
Why the diaper-babies believe Palin is the only GOP nominee the media would savage is beyond us. The MSM will do everything it can to destroy whomever the GOP puts out there. By 2012, most media outlets will be under tacit government control, as the lurch towards nationalizing them under Dr. Utopia has already begun (The New York Times as a 501C3 nonprofit, with tax-free status? Really? And as a beneficiary of Dr. Utopia’s largesse in this way, don’t you think they would be EVEN MORE inclined to do the White House’s bidding?). Jindal, Crist, and Huntsman are all paper tigers set up early so they will be in place to tear down in another round of glorious, leg-tingling, celebrated speechifying come the 2012 campaign.
Meanwhile, in Alaska, we have a real life Momma Grizzly who is head and shoulders above the paper tiger men who share the hypothetical field with her. Men, in many ways, we feel don’t hold the slightest candle to her.
And that’s why Sarah Palin remains target number one, while mouth-breathers like Hunstman, Jindal, and Crist are lavished such praise by Dr. Utopia’s determined supporters…and yet, Republicans apparently don’t make the connection that nominating someone the White House and the MSM wants Dr. Utopia to run against might just be a bad thing.
It’s more than a little depressing writing this today, because we are committed to doing whatever we can to defeat Dr. Utopia in 2012, and will once again put our hearts and souls into this, but we have a sinking feeling that, just like in 2008, we’ll have the wrong person at the top of the ticket (on both sides of the aisle, really, yet again).
Tuesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
Because we love the little guy, we want to let you know that Joey Grant is offering $15.00 haircuts (for your first visit) if you book with him at Free Nation of Beauty here in Chicago. Address: 3255 N. Broadway (at Aldine). Phone: 773-857-3662. Joey cuts women’s, men’s, and children’s hair and is a very good friend of ours, so we’d like some of you reading this to become new clients of his. $15 is a great deal for a cut here, and also a great introduction to an awesome stylist, so we hope those of you in Chicago land book an appointment with him (Tuesdays through Saturdays, off Sun and Mon).
Also, take a look at Michael Steele in action in Maryland — he is one dynamite speaker, and a really good man. We’re still amazed at how great he was to us when we met him here in Chicago. THIS is who should have been our first black president. Steele’s the real deal, people.
Proof not everyone is going Galt: women renting themselves out as "fake girlfriends" for gay men
Someone please take a screen grab of this page before it’s ripped down, as the mac we’re on today doesn’t have screengrab tech.
The best we can do on this machine is to take a digital photo of the screen, but the ad is so big we have to use two shots to get all the words (many thanks to a reader who merged our two photos into the amalgam below):
It’s a Craigslist ad posted by a woman (supposedly) who claims she’s 23 and will pretend to be a gay man’s girlfriend so he doesn’t have to deal with his family, and can still be in the closet.
Here’s what the ad said, in case it gets ripped down before we can get a screengrab:
Need a fake girlfriend to get fam off ur back? – 23 (Chicago)
Reply to: pers-qeuam-11777XXXXX@craigslist.prg
Date: 2009-05-18. 8:23PM CST
Are you gay but not ready to reveal it to your family? Are the pressuring you to bring a girlfriend to the family BBQ? Well TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR! Bring me. I can conjure up a simple made up past for us and we can be the cute couple at the next family BBQ. I will even do all the talking. This will buy you some time or at least get them off your back for a while. We can even have a dramatic breakup or fight. When the time is right for YOU they will now but until then it is you and me. I can do multiple appearances. $up front
Here’s the funny thing — Robby’s sister, Ann-Louise actually had a service like this back in New York YEARS AGO, but it was just a word of mouth thing when she was in grad school at NYU and pretended to be the girlfriends of various guys in the theater or dance programs. She didn’t get paid, though, but instead accepted the free tickets to Broadway shows they all got, or got free clothes from them because many worked in fashion, or got to go to all the fabulous restaurants they worked at for free. If Craigslist was around back then, Ann-Louise would still be doing this, for sure.
And, we will say this, think what you want about this ad, and this service, and PLEASE share your thoughts below, but we will remind you of what happened to Sebastian Gray at his grandmother’s funeral a few years ago: he was with David at the time, and hadn’t been home to Cleveland in YEARS. When he got to the funeral, over the course of the few days he was there, hundreds of people came up to him and asked him where his girlfriend was, since his mother had been making up elaborate lies involving girlfriends, fiancees, etc. for YEARS. And Brenda, his mom, got so elaborate that after a while when people wondered why Sebastian and the girl weren’t married yet, as they’d been engaged for over a year, Brenda would say the girl had to move to Japan for work, or that she died in a car accident, or that she was away taking care of a sick relative in Idaho — where there are no phones and she can’t get mail, so that’s why she hasn’t written anyone.
And…wait for it…wait for it…Sebastian’s mother is a FASHION DESIGNER. Who can’t deal with her gay son, who has never had a girlfriend his whole life.
So, we wonder if Sebastian had just hired a fake girlfriend and brought her to Cleveland if that would have been easier than dealing with the mess he found there instead.
It’s sad to say, but there are an AWFUL lot of guys we know who would indeed hire this actress for what would be much, much better than dealing with a lot of relatives who either can’t understand, don’t realize, or don’t want to deal with them being gay.
Is the White House using the Chicago Tribune to attack Hillary Clinton?
We have it on very good authority here in Chicago that Chicago Tribune columnist Paul Richter gets his talking points directly from the current administration, and most likely from Rahm Emanuel himself. Richter, and the Tribune as a whole, is a propaganda tool of the current president, and has been since Dr. Utopia was just a candidate for said office.
Today, a very sharp friend of ours very familiar with both Richter and Chicago-style politics asked us to read this article in the Tribune that most people would miss entirely if they weren’t looking for it.
It’s called “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: What Will She Say Next?”
In it, Richter tries his best to make Clinton look crazy — but, of course, the problem is the article is not about Joe Biden who, in fact, actually might just be crazy and who truly deserves the question “What will he say next?”.
Richter does what the British often do when giving left-handed compliments: he starts off saying Clinton’s approach to being Secretary of State is full of candor, and that she has the guts to speak the truth and say what everyone in Washington is thinking, but what no one before her had the nerve to say.
So far, so good.
But, then Richter tries to make Clinton seem erratic, like she’s going off the reservation and making things up as she goes along, which is something Biden most certainly does, and what Dr. Utopia does when this teleprompter fails, but something Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton has never, ever done.
This woman is the most studious, prepared, resolute, and overly cautious person we have ever met.
We WISH she veered off the reservation during the primaries and was erratic and spontaneous, because we might have pulled out a win in places like Wisconsin, Missouri, or one of the other caucus states and Dr. Utopia wouldn’t be president today.
For the last 17 years, the MSM has driven the point deep into all of us that Hillary Clinton is the most calculating, methodical, and relentless plotters and schemers the world has ever known. It’s an unfair caricature, but one that’s actually rooted in her reserved, careful, studious nature.
And that does not jive with what Richter is suddenly trying to pull, painting her as an erratic woman off running her mouth without thinking.
No, that would be JOE BIDEN. The grown man who needs Cabinet-level officials to have weekly breakfasts with him to mitigate his chances for doing anything stupid that day (like revealing the top-secret secure and undisclosed location of the Vice President’s bunker…WHOOPS! Oh, that Joe Biden, he’s done it again!).
Read the article and then come back and post what you think about it, and about what Richter’s motivations are.
We’ve said this to you before, and have told you we think this is speculative and a little crazy, but our very good friend Wess says he hears a lot of chatter that Hillary Clinton will ultimately leave her position as Secretary of State to run for political office — and that she would leave in 2010 or 2011 or so. That might be for Governor of New York, or it might be for President in 2012 if Dr. Utopia indeed pulls an LBJ and claims he has health reasons (such as Parkinson’s) that prevent him from seeking a second term.
Maybe Richter’s hit piece on Clinton is somehow Pelosi-related, since the CIA is going to release more to embarrass Madame Speaker this week, so maybe Emanuel is doing Nancy a solid by encouraging Richter and the Tribune to take a whack at Clinton to start some sort of distraction to take the heat off Pelosi.
These machinations, or perceived machinations, and speculations have the potential to drive you crazy if you spend all day thinking about this stuff. So, we urge caution with the speculations.
But, the article IS WEIRD.
The person who clued us in on the weirdness is smart and well-connected, and knows what she is talking about (and only emails us this stuff when it is really, really important).
And it does fit with the chatter people like Wess are hearing that Clinton will have new projects in the political realm before we all know it..and that coincides nicely with a recently revamped www.NoLimits.org that’s mighty impressive, and seems to be running off a Facebook-like engine that will make a marvelous organizing tool for another Clinton run for higher office.
Read between the lines on this kind of stuff, but never get too carried away. You know how much we love Hillary Clinton, so we too enjoy fantasy world where she gets another crack at President in 2012, but we freely acknowledge the dangers of going off on that path.
HOWEVER, there is something fishy going on with articles like this…and we don’t believe Dr. Utopia will run in 2012 if he’s certain he will lose — because he will certainly think it is best to retire if he cannot beat his opponent. That’s totally keeping with his narcissistic MO, and an ideal setup for great and eternal sympathy because of whatever medical condition he uses as his excuse for retirement.
Can’t wait to see what comments look like on this one.
The Granholm Question
The MSM is doing what it does best — hyping things that aren’t true.
For the last few weeks, the MSM was hyping vulgar and crass Sondra Sotomayer for the Supreme Court vacancy that will be left by retiring Justice Souter. Between rounds of this abject lunacy (Sotomayer’s temper and belligerence would shine through during confirmation hearings, for sure, because the way she treats lawyers and fellow jurists is not something she can ever conceal completely, based on her lack of professionalism and erratic behavior in her courtroom), the MSM has also been pushing two University of Chicago leftists, Judges Kagan and Wood. All of this is crazy.
And so is today’s push for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who has never served on the judiciary.
Now, we fully believe Granholm would be Attorney General right now if Hillary Clinton was president. She is loved in Democrats’ Washington and bureaucratic circles (regardless of what you people on the ground in Michigan think of her) and is term-limited in Michigan, where she has become exceedingly unpopular with an earned reputation for mismanagement in the face of crisis. For 9 years or so, she has been consistently held up as a star of the Democratic Party, so she will, indeed, get some sort of rescue post-governorship. We’ve met Granholm several times through the years at various events and like her personally — and tell you that when she is in a room she does have the star power that Democrats LOVE. What future position is planned for her is anyone’s guess, but it will not be the Supreme Court.
She MIGHT end up on the bench in a lower court, however, or could find herself an ambassador. But she’s not going to the Supreme Court.
She WILL go somewhere big after Michigan, though.
The meeting at the White House tomorrow with Dr. Utopia might just be about an appointment to a circuit court or an ambassadorship. John Huntsman was just removed from the governorship of Utah and dispatched to Beijing. Jennifer Granholm could end up ambassador to a European country — maybe even Great Britain or France, depending on if Dr. Utopia wants to instead reward his biggest donors with those plums, and how badly he chooses to humiliate HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy, who clearly wants to be an ambassador to either country (and it would seem odd for a sitting Governor to leave office to become Ambassador to Belgium or Paraguay or somewhere not in the Top Five most coveted posts).
Granholm is from Canada. Could she be Canadian ambassador? For some reason, an ambassorial posting feels right for Granholm, who can never run for President of Vice President herself since she is not a natural-born US citizen. But, maybe she could be a future Secretary of State if Hillary Clinton decides, as some suspect, to leave Foggy Bottom in 2010 or 2011 to run for political office again, having won the foreign policy credentials she was criticized unfairly for lacking in 2008.
Granholm’s terms as Michigan Governor + ambassadorship = the 68th Secretary of State after HRC?
This is all highly speculative, but not anymore more ridiculous than what the MSM does, and they are supposedly actual professionals, as opposed to a bunch of guys in Boystown running this amateur site.
The only things we are sure on with Granholm are these:
(1) The DNC loves her, and there is a strong push to rehabilitate her politcally after her troubles in Michigan. She’s like Julia Roberts after a string of real stinkers because no matter how many Mary Reillys or Flatliners she makes, people know she’s got My Best Friend’s Wedding and Pretty Woman potential in the future. She’s miscast as Michigan Govenor, but agents at the DNC want to see her in many more high profile roles going forward, because she’s ultimately very good for the party when used effectively.
(2) Granholm is non-threatening to many in the DNC, as she can never be President or VP, so she’s someone people see as a future Cabinet member who can help them, but never get in their way. No matter how ambitious she gets, she can never, ever have the Big Job (or Biden’s job, which appears to be saying stupid things and eating as much ice cream as humanly possible).
(3) She’s the sort of political tool that seems best used in a role that is much, much more visible than a SCOTUS Justice — though relatively young, she would definitely be on the Court for years and would indeed get a lot of attention, but we can’t imagine her making it through a confirmation hearing based squarely on her lack of bench time and the mess she’s made of Michigan. Those hearings could get really ugly, really fast and the DNC would not want to tarnish Granholm further with a Daschle-esque failed nomination.
It feels like Granholm’s a future Ambassador, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Health and Human Services or some other Cabinet Secretary. There’s no way she would win a Senate seat and it doesn’t feel like she’d want to be Congresswoman Granholm.
Possibly, she could be DNC Chair if Tim Kaine collapses as we believe he ultimately will. But, that would be years from now.
In the end, the bottom line is that Jennifer Granholm is a name Democrats like hearing and enjoy throwing out into conversation because she is a nonthreatening woman who can never become President herself, so the men in the DNC like her and will see to it that she has important positions for the rest of her life.
We just don’t think that will be on the Supreme Court…where we believe Ann Claire Williams will replace Souter, no matter what the MSM is saying today.
PS — Is it just us, or does all of this feel like a three-episode story arc on The West Wing, where Aaron Sorkin trots out various female candidates for a SCOTUS vacancy that President Bartlett wants put forward to appease various constituencies, but Bartlett all along knows exactly who he will actually nominate, and that’s someone he likes on a personal level whom the media never paid much attention to? And then Josh Lyman will keep telling the press that they are SO TOTALLY RIGHT about it being Candidate A (Sotomayer) or Candidate B (Granholm), but in the end the mystery Candidate C (Williams) “comes out of the blue” and wins nomination to the Court as Bartlett stands in the Oval Office beaming at how well he outfoxed the idiot MSM by putting loons and kooks out there for everyone to rip apart or become disgruntled about, while his actual favored candidate never had a glove laid on her.
If this is indeed the plan, we hope it works for Williams because, honestly, Ann Claire Williams would be, in our opinion, the best SCOTUS appointment in possibly our lifetime. Fair, balanced, honest, hard-working, and someone who knows the Court’s job is not to legislate because she’s actually heard of the Constitution and its separation of powers.
Ann. Claire. Williams.
Everything else is a distraction and smokescreen right out of bad network TV.
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? May 18th, 2009
900am – “Following in Her Footsteps” breakfast honoring former First Lady and UN Ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt
115pm – Barnard College Commencement Ceremony
700pm – Working dinner with Binyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
Go, Hillary, Go!
Gay it forward, people. Gay it forward.
We have a great friend here in Chicago named Panda who is diehard Hillary Clinton to the CORE. Panda’s from the Phillipines originally, and went through the process of becoming a US citizen in early 2008 so that he could vote for HRC in the primaries and general election. He is also a laugh-riot, and says things the rest of us around here could NEVER get away with. We were out with Panda last night and he went up to one of our favorite bartenders, now clean-shaven, and just flat out told him, “I like you better with your beard. You must grow it back now. It hides your face, and this is good.” From anyone else, that would be rude, but you just have to know Panda, and that he meant it as a weird compliment (as in, I really thought you were bear-y handsome before, and I miss that about you, so now bring back what I miss immediately so I can think you’re handsome again). Panda claims this is because he’s Filipino and in his culture people never beat around the bush and instead just say what’s on their minds, because “there are so many people in the Phillipines that if you didn’t just say what you want, you’d starve, and if you didn’t ask for what you wanted, you’d never get it”.
Panda’s biggest catchphrase is “gay it forward, people”.
Whenever anyone needs a hand, Panda’s the first one there, loud as can be and larger than life. He hit California, Texas, Nevada, and even Guam for Hillary Clinton with hurricane force, and does the same thing for HIV/AIDS charities here in Chicago. The guy’s unstoppable, and always looking for ways to “gay it forward, people” and help out his friends.
So, in that spirit, we’re doing something we’ve never done here, but something we’d like to “gay forward” for a guy who really deserves the break.
Our good friend Joey Grant, another big Hillary supporter, just started a new job as a stylist at Free Nation of Beauty on Broadway and Aldine here in Boystown (directly next to Joy’s Noodles, and right across the street from the Caribou where at least one of us is usually blogging at some point during the day). Joey is nine shades of adorable, a little elfin bundle of bleach-blonde energy that worked his heart out for Hillary Clinton and loves Sarah Palin as much as we do. He is a great, great guy. Witty. Effervescent. Charming. And so, so talented.
But, starting at a new salon in this economy, especially in Boystown, is really tough. Unlike women, who only cut back to a certain point when it comes to their hair, men aren’t inclined to go to fancy salons to begin with, especially not when Chicago has so many $12 haircut places. So, salons in Boystown are really struggling (as evidenced by Tabatha, from Bravo’s Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, doing an episode in Boystown where she helped one of the fancier salons, Chicago Male, rethink their business strategy as their gorgeous shop is empty most days). And that means Joey’s really struggling and could use new clients.
Joey cuts both women’s and men’s hair, and does a great job with both.
So, in Panda spirit, we want to gay it forward and suggest anyone in Chicagoland reading this give Joey a try as a stylist. We can personally vouch for him, as he cuts our hair too. If you go to him, you might even get the inside scoop on many a HillBuzz adventure Joey shared with us (or, at the very least, exactly how many gray hairs the campaign gave the lot of us).
If you have friends or family in Chicago, it would be great if you’d tip them off to Joey at Free Nation of Beauty. It’s a great place to get a cut, do a little shopping on one of the cutest stretches of Boystown (like at Unabridged Books or He Who Eats Mud, two of our favorite shops), maybe have lunch or dinner at some of the restaurants we love, like Ping Pong for Chinese (just across the street, two shops north of the Caribou) or Nookie’s Tree diner (not far away, just about one street west to Halsted and a few shops north of that).
We’ve already let all of our personal friends know how great Joey is, but with thousands of people reading this site every day, we wanted to put this out there and see how much buzz we could send a deserving guy’s way.
And, he really is adorable. So. Much. Fun. Like a little Keebler elf who, instead of baking cookies in a big cartoon tree, spends his days making people fabulous.
You’ll have a great time, get an AWESOME cut, and have a little HillBuzz adventure in Boystown near all of our favorite haunts.
Plus, Panda-style, even if you’re straight, you’ll be gaying it forward. We could ALL benefit from friends looking out for us right now, helping us find work, and those of us here just happen to have this window to the world to hopefully send a little business Joey’s way.
Call Free Nation of Beauty today and book a cut with Joey Grant. Do a solid for a great guy, put a little positive energy out into the universe, and who knows what you’ll get back in return.
Plus, Joey will make you look all kinds of fabulous, trust us on that.
FREE NATION OF BEAUTY
3255 N Broadway Street
Chicago, IL 60657
(773) 857-3662
