Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Obama likes to play both sides
When I read the White House announcement about the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom I laughed out loud. Wasn’t too boisterous because the day job is getting funkier by the minute (if my boss is reading this I only mean that as a compliment). Only President Barack Obama would think to honor both Jack Kemp and Harvey Milk.
Milk’s importance doesn’t have to be justified here (at least I hope so). While I have nothing against Gus Van Sant’s biopic, it wouldn’t hurt folk to check out Randy Shilt’s The Mayor of Castro Street for a more nuanced vision of the man and his history. However, when Milk’s family goes to the White House on August 12, they will bump into Jack Kemp’s kin. The former HUD Secretary will also be given the same award. Kemp and Milk. I’m willing to bet both would appreciate the irony of their honors because they looked at each other from across the political divide. Milk, knocking the door open for gay political participation; Kemp, doing his best to slam that very door.
For partisans honoring both men cheapens what they stood for. That’s fair and worthy of conversation, but the past shows people of good will can be found all over the political map. Yes history judges us, but that rearview look doesn’t mean we can’t honor those who were political opposites. Our battlefields have made this point already.
What’s so good about Kemp? Was it his hair, voodoo economics, or just the fact that he died in the right year?
Anyone who feels that honoring both of these men cheapens the award is probably operating out of the idea that there is a Good Group and a Bad Group. (That’s the very definition of “partisan,” I guess.)
I think it gets easier to understand if you come at it from the angle of “A job well done.” In that framework, it’s very possible for someone with a world view that I don’t like to pick a project, execute it very well, and help people.
>What’s so good about Kemp?
I’m totally not going to remember the details, but I remember reading that he did a surprisingly (for those of us on the Left) darn good job at HUD.
I also think that it takes a person of high character to get knocked out of the running for president, to accept a “lesser” role, and then to knock the ball out of the park in a lesser role.
Hilary Clinton is in the process of attempting to do that right now, and I give her *tons* of credit for it. She could have stayed out of administration, lurked in the background, waited for a moment of weakness, and then leveraged the situation for her own presidential ambitions. What she’s doing right now took guts…I admire her for it.
To be honest, the only way I’m seeing these awards is just Obama avoiding the social issues. Sure, he’ll give us a gay pride month, benefits for federal workers, award a now-dead activist (never mind the punishment his killer got), and promise that he’ll work on DADT. But where’s the substance? I’m not seeing it. It’s like he’s throwing bones and hoping we’ll just run away.
I wish the writer had told m specifically what Kemp did to hurt me. I don’t recall him in particular among the anti-gay pantheon.
Obama keeps pandering to both sides knowing fully that the right in America will never like him and accept him. They just want to see his birth certificate.
In the spirit of Harvey Milk, HRC needs to step up on rights. We a Rev Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, a high profile gay who can draw news cameras to, say Camp Pentleton, and declare loudly injustices against gays so people can see for themselves the scope of evil against gays in this supposedly free country. Little progress is really been made on our rights and won’t till we put it in front of citizens.