http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=93...370&sd=07/23/03

This is sort of shocking to me... as ya'all are usually all over the anti-gay comments... then again, a dem from CA said it, so he didnt really mean it. Now did he?

[ July 23, 2003, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: PhillyFan ]

I've heard "nutty as a fruitcake" but never gay as a fruitcake. It didn't strike me as gay slur. Is the guy a closet case or something?

Funny. No mention in the story that Stark also called Bill Thomas a "c*cksucker". And not in a good way. As if it were a bad thing.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that the Advocate story was a negative towards Stark as it was, since the general rule is that Democrats cannot be homophobic.

shhhh Dem's are all perfect Angels

it's not like they made it a headline.

looks like someone needs to learn some compassion from the repubs....

bahahaha! good one, fillyfan, compassionate republicans. you slay me.

Don't give PF any ideas.

Fortney (yes, that is the wacko Demo's name) "Pete" Stark is a bit of a loon. Always has been. Combative. Crazy. His homophobia was totally uncalled for. I'm denouncing it. Get a grip, Fortney, er, Pete.

BTW, didn't the top GOPer burst into tears like a chastened schoolgir...schoolboy yesterday as he apologized for his shamelessly partisan, unethical behavior towards his fellow Democratic Congresspeople? What was with those tears? A bit emotional. Should he be at the reins? First Strangelove Rummy, now this crackpot...yikes. The leaders of the leading nation of the Free World, fellow citizens.

Too bad we can't recall some of these people and replace them with our favorite movie stars! Someone bring that up to Rep. Weepy when he's done bawling.

It is kind of pitiful that the Republican supporters have to latch on to some loony thing now and then to try and show that their party is not quite as hateful as what it is.

Perhaps the reason this stuff does not get more press is because it is pretty rare to see it coming out of the Democratic party. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to have a barn full of leaders who are willing to tell the world how awful it is that we exist.

I don't see any of the leading Democrats in the House or Senate publically calling for sodomy laws to be deemed legal, and a constitutional amendment banning us from receiving equal rights/benefits under the law.

When your party starts to come out of the dark ages, then you can start pulling out the loony birds that exist in the Democratic party. Nobody ever asserted that the Democrats were pure or innocent. Simply that our rights as gays and lesbians will go a lot further with them than with the hate-mongers you support.

When I was a still a small kid, me and a friend got in a fight, he called me gay fruit as an insult, I thought he said grape fruit, because that was my favorite fruit, so I thought grape fruit was an insult, so for like a year after that every time I wanted to insult someone I called them a Grape Fruit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...ml?nav=hptop_tb

Ways and Means Chairman Apologizes to House

Don't feel too sorry for Bill Thomas. He will still enjoy working on his Porsches.

That is too funny Sonix ....I thought you were gonna say that his comment scarred you so much that it caused to stop eating your favorite fruit and changed your taste buds for life.

I see you've changed your user name again from "gp" and "ra" to just "sonix" (not that Payton and Allen weren't worthy of your honor, of course wink ) but with the revolving door that most NBA rosters are nowadays it's probably easier this way, I guess.

Yes but hopefully Allen retires with the Sonics, so he can get 34 up there in the rafters next to GP's 20.

Hold on there a sec - I'm a FILLY fan. He likes that pro football team in Eastern Pa.

When I was growing up, calling someone a "fruit" had a definite homophobic connotation. It was on a par with "fag." It has pretty much fallen out of linguistic fashion.

On the other hand, "nutty as a fruitcake" is a common expression which I don't really consider homophobic. It has more to do with the targeted individual being crazy or having crazy ideas.

Calling someone a "fruitcake" I would say really derives from the latter usage, the equivalent of "you're nuts." The folks at Dictionary.com define the slang usage as "a crazy or an eccentric person."

My theory is that the folks at the Advocate read about the comments and had a horrible playground flashback experience remembering being taunted as "fruits" when they were children. Apparently they didn't have a chance to visit their analysts to work through it before sitting down to put the next issue together and churned out this story.

Actually, I thought Thomas sounded like Paul Lynde. School girl/Paul Lynde. Potato/po-tah-to.

What about Stark calling Bill Thomas a "c*cksucker"? How you going to spin that as not invoking an anti-gay slur?

Not even gonna try -- Stark should follow suit and apologize to Mr. Thomas for that. For heaven's sake, everyone knows that Thomas is an avowed heterosexual. The married congressman had an affair a few years back with uber-lobbyist Deborah Steelman -- it broke up her family (her husband left her). The worst part about the affair was the Steelman was a prominent health care lobbyist -- the very issue that Thomas deals with on Ways & Means (she quit her job this very week at Eli Lilly).

So Bill Thomas joins the notable line-up of GOP traditional values home wreckers -- Gingrich, Hyde, Livingston (these just from the leadership ...)

btw -- we're running out of good obscene insults in the English language -- I like using the term "motherf**cker" -- but I guess victims of incest might object. Scratch that one wink

[ July 24, 2003, 08:09 AM: Message edited by: DCBucky ]

The Hussein boys are little fruitcakes.

Bucky, might I suggest F**kface, F**khead, F**kknocker, F**kweed, F**kmeister, F**kaluffagus or, the worst insult in my book, F**king Yankee.

You mean, one that stayed? eek!

wink

When I first read about this comment, I actually could not figure out if he was being homophobic or not - he did use the term fruitcake (I certainly have not read anywhere else about the c*cksucker comment) but as others have pointed out, that is more a term for craziness than gay. However, he also called Thomas (or someone else on the same committee) a "wimp" at the same time. That to me seems like he was equating the two.

This incident to me is more like the Armey "Barney Fag" comment than the Santorum or Lott commentary, if only because it was off the cuff and not part of a formal interview. I would expect leaders to be more prepared for an interview, and therefore more likely to have weighed the ramifications of their comments. To insult a group in a setting like that is more deliberate than Stark's comments.

There are a number of conservative sites that are calling Stark a "raving lunatic." I many not agree totally, but he really needs some anger management.

I've heard "fruitcake" used both ways, but not recently. Mostly I hear fruitcake as the butt of jokes around Christmastime (like ugly ties for Father's Day).

And Stark needs to get a grip!

Well there'd be no way around that one! I didn't see anything in the article about the cocksucking comment. I heard a report on this incident on NPR last night and they didn't mention it either. Maybe it was too crude to repeat.

Actually there's something very appealing about the image of someone standing up in the well of the House chamber and calling them all a bunch of cocksucking fruitcakes, so devalued is my opinion of our elected representatives. I seem to remember from my history studies that there was once an incident in which one representative thrashed another with a cane right in the House chamber. I think he later died. Those were the days!

The Article coming from the Advocate, is already slanted... you'd only expect to get 50% of the news out of the article anyway... they would never ever paint a dem in a really bad light there...

No nuts in my fruitcake, please. wink

Yikes! 1856--the height of tensions over U.S. slavery and the battle for Kansas. Charles Sumner, the noted abolitionist and senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, gave his famous "Bloody Kansas" speech. He was then brutally attacked on the Senate floor by Preston Brooks, the nephew of a pro-slavery South Carolinian senator, Andrew Brooks, and took three years to recuperate! (He was re-elected by Massachusetts, thankfully.) If those are the kinds of days you want, you can have them!

Not really. I guess I'm just more comfortable with the proposition that maybe they all really dislike each other intensely than I am with the veneer of pretentious collegial civility that is usually presented.

I'm not making the claim that it didn't happen -- but does anyone have a source for the "c*cks*ck*r" (I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat) comment other than "Republican sources" telling it to Fox News? That's the only place that I've seen it mentioned -- other than message boards and Andrew Sullivan's website -- and these are all sources that I prefer to double-check before I get up in arms.

Stark's a freak at any rate -- but the general nastiness in the House is the real story to be up in arms about here. Of course, everyone likes to either play the victim or shout "bigot!" rather than ever dealing with actual issues. Character counts, yes -- but I care a lot more about how someone does their job -- and that means voting. I'll look to my parents if I want a role model on how to act -- I just ask for my legislators to legistlate without having the police involved.

[ July 25, 2003, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: MCMikeNamara ]

1) If he did say c*cks*ck*r, then Stark is an idiot and the Republicans are idiots for latching onto a benign word like "fruitcake" instead of getting to the meat of the matter. Seriously, if he had said c*cks*ck*r then I doubt fruitcake would have even been mentioned by anyone.

2) Stark is probably an idiot anyway.

I don't see any of it as "anti-gay" comments. I see 2 morons getting into an argument and flinging insults at eachother.

I have not seen the "cocksucker" remark documented, but I have seen several sources which said fruitcake "and another homophobic slur". It could be the media is just refusing to print it.

Dont you mean "were?"

Once a fruitcake, always a fruitcake.

Well, many people do seem to regard fruitcake as a weapon of mass destruction. wink