Hillary Clinton's campaign is getting ready for 2012.
A company associated with Hillary Clinton's top presidential campaign advance staff has purchased a website domain that hints of a 2012 presidential bid for the vanquished senator from New York.
HRC2012.com was bought by the Markham Group on June 8, according to whois.com
Greg Hale of the Markham Group served as a key advance aide to Sen. Clinton, organizing political events for the campaign. The Markham website calls him the "lead consultant for advance and visual messaging." Partners Paul Neaville and Robert McClarty (the son of former White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McClarty) also worked on Clinton's advance team. According to whois.com, the site was registered by Todd Wilder, a longtime Democratic operative from Florida. A picture of Clinton pops up when the company's website is called up.
Anyone believe it's for her 2012 Senate campaign? Anyone?
The proposed George W. Bush Sewage Plant renaming that I told you about back in April? Yesterday the initiative qualified for the November ballot in SF. Congrats to the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, whose board of directors includes drag star Peaches Christ and members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Bawdy 70's game show The Newlywed Game is coming back to the airwaves. But via Good As You, check out the eligibility rules (PDF):I can't imagine any self-respecting queer couple wanting to go on The Newlywed Game, but then again I didn't use to think that people would eat worms for money on TV.
- 9 to 5: The Musical will begin Broadway previews March 24, 2009, at the Marriott Marquis Theatre following a Sept. 3-Oct. 19 tryout at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes Stephanie J. Block, Megan Hilty, Allison Janney and Marc Kudisch.
- Whoopi Goldberg joins the cast of Xanadu on July 29th for a six-week run as the evil Calliope. Goldberg replaces Jackie Hoffman, who will return after Goldberg's run. I love Whoopi, but Xanudu - Hoffman = refund.
- The Helen Hayes Theater, currently home to Xanadu, has agreed to be purchased by the Second Stage Theatre, which will begin productions there in 2010. Second Stage will become the fourth non-profit Broadway house, joining Roundabout Theater Company, Manhattan Theater Club, and Lincoln Center Theater.
- A revival of West Side Storycomes to Broadway in March 2009. Casting to be announced. An out-of-town trial begins at DC's National Theater in December.
- Monday, July 21st: Broadway Stands Up For Freedom! - a benefit concert to support the youth programs of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The show "focuses the spotlight on the NYCLU's dedication to reproductive rights and other civil liberties issues relevant to young people." More info here.
- Forbidden Broadway: Dances With The Starsincludes a song parodying Broadway beefcake. Title: Xanadude.
- Phantom Of The Opera will close for a week next month for the installation a new surround sound system. "Designed by Olivier Award winner Mick Potter, the $750,000 new surround sound system will consist of over six miles of cable, 155 speakers placed throughout the auditorium, and a digital sound desk that will make the 28-member orchestra and 36 strong cast sound more powerful and clear than ever before. The digital system will up the number of microphones used in the show from 58 to 76 and The Phantom himself will have 3 dedicated microphones."
Using the same language as the amendment, a new Field Poll shows that a majority of Californians continue to oppose Proposition 8. Pollsters expect opposition to grow.
Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California, is opposed by 51 percent of likely voters with 42 percent in favor, according to a new Field Poll. Those results put the proposed ban in a politically perilous position in the Nov. 4 election, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the nonpartisan Field Poll.
“Starting out behind is usually an ominous sign for a proposition,” DiCamillo said. “Over 90 percent of propositions that start out behind get taken down.” Typically, ballot measures start out ahead, but become less popular as the opposition campaign begins raising questions and creating doubt, he said.
Proposition 8 has attracted nationwide interest, with some analysts estimating that it will generate more than $30 million in total campaign spending. The poll is the first to question voters using the measure's exact language. But the results are similar to a Field Poll on the same topic in May, shortly after the California Supreme Court overturned laws that prohibited same-sex marriage.
The ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State have filed a joint lawsuit in a federal appeals court asking that government funding be refused to a Baptist childcare agency in Kentucky because the agency fires gay employees and proselytizes to the children.
The lawsuit asserts that Kentucky Baptist Homes has no right to accept public funding while imposing religious dogma on the children in its programs, and that the Homes’ religion-based anti-gay employment policy violates civil rights laws.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Alicia Pedreira, a former employee at the Louisville home who worked with troubled young people. Despite her excellent performance reviews, Pedreira was terminated in 1998 after officials at the facility learned she is a lesbian.
A federal district court dismissed the case earlier this year, ruling that the plaintiffs do not have legal standing to bring it. Americans United and the ACLU Thursday asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the case.
"I put my heart and soul into helping the children who were under the care of Baptist Homes and was making a difference in their lives," said Pedreira. "It was unfair to be fired for being a lesbian. It’s not right that an organization that is funded by state and federal dollars to do work for the state can get away with this." The lawsuit also asks the appeals court to strike down public funding for Kentucky Baptist Homes.
Via Towleroad comes the story of Oklahoma politician Brent Rinehart's homophobic comic book, which he is using to attack the people he thinks are trying to run him out of his OK County Commission office:
The "liberal good ol' boys,” gays and Satan are doing everything they can to get Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart out of office, a comic book prepared by his re-election campaign claims. The comic book, obtained Wednesday by The Oklahoman, is expected to be mailed to voters by Rinehart's campaign, Rinehart said.
"A drowning man tends to thrash about,” state Attorney General Drew Edmondson, one of the targets in the book, said through a spokesman. "Nothing Rinehart says is worthy of comment or rebuttal.”
Edmondson filed felony campaign finance charges against Rinehart last year, alleging Rinehart and his former campaign manager illegally funded the 2004 campaign for county commissioner. A trial has been scheduled for September.
Another of the book's targets, Sheriff John Whetsel, called it "extremely pathetic and very bigoted. I was taken back that in 2008, a candidate would use that type of inflammatory material and do it under the name of being a Christian.”
"This is one of the strangest things I've ever seen,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. "I've never seen a comic book with the phrase ‘anal sodomy' in it before. That was a new one for me.” Gaddie said comics were common political campaign tools decades ago, but not for today. "He's pretty much grinding every ax he's got from his days in the county commission,” Gaddie said. "In a way, it's a sophisticated piece.”
In one sequence, Satan says: "If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal!” The angel replies: "Hey Satan, not with Brent around you won't!”
The Winter Garden was built in 1896 as the American Horse Exchange and was opened by the Schubert family as a theater in 1911. Just a few of the famed Broadway musicals that have played the Winter Garden: Peter Pan, West Side Story, Funny Girl, Mame, Follies, Gypsy, Cats. Since 2001 the theater has hosted Mamma Mia! The movie version opens today, hence this Morning View.
Less than a year after Merck gave up on its initially promising HIV vaccine trial, the U.S. government announced yesterday that it too was giving up on a massive HIV vaccine trial.
Plans for a large human trial of a promising government-developed H.I.V. vaccine in the United States were canceled Thursday because a top federal official said scientists realized that they did not know enough about how H.I.V. vaccines and the immune system interact.
The decision is a major setback in an effort to develop an H.I.V. vaccine that began 24 years ago when government health officials promised a marketed vaccine by 1987. Health officials have long contended that such a vaccine would be their best weapon to control the AIDS pandemic.
A number of other H.I.V. vaccines are in various stages of testing around the world. But there had been high hopes for the government’s trial because the potential vaccine was among a new class that sought to stimulate the immune system in a different way.
The official who canceled the government trial, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it was becoming clearer that more fundamental research and animal testing would be needed before an H.I.V. vaccine was ever marketed.
Scientists say that developing a vaccine against H.I.V. is one of the most difficult scientific endeavors in history because of the uncanny nature of the virus. The government vaccine — known as PAVE, for Partnership for AIDS Vaccine Evaluation — was similar to a much-heralded vaccine that failed last year. That vaccine was developed by Merck, and Dr. Fauci’s agency helped pay for the Merck trials.
The NIH said that it is not completely abandoning the vaccine and will conduct a smaller study first to determine if it reduces HIV in the blood.
In more encouraging news, pathologists in Texas believe they have found the "Achilles heel" of HIV - a weak spot in its protein envelope that must remain constant for it to infect cells. They believe this weak spot may be the key to developing a vaccine.
As Aaron and I were walking in Hell's Kitchen yesterday on our way to see Yaz, we ran into Cheyenne Jackson leaving his apartment, presumably on his way to Damn Yankees, where he's moonlighting from Xanadu this month. (It was 7:30. What time do performers have to be there for an 8PM curtain? Seems to be cutting it close, even for Off Broadway.) Anyway, the block was deserted except for the three of us, and even though Jackson smiled and nodded as he passed, I played it cool, you know, Manhattan style, and didn't say, "OMG! Cheyenne! Can we have a photo!!" Dammit. I've taken plenty of photos of him at press events, but none with ME in them. Dammit.
Last night Aaron and I attended the first of three NYC shows by Yaz (Yazoo to you Brits) as they close out the American leg of their Reconnected reunion tour. It's been over 25 years since Alison Moyet and Vince Clark released the second of their meager two album output, but you wouldn't have known that by the reaction of the audience at the sold-out show at Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen. People sang, they swayed, they waved, Alison beamed - it was a total love fest.
The duo played pretty much every song from their two classic albums (1982's Upstairs At Eric's and 1983's You And Me Both), as well as my personal favorite State Farm, which was the non-album b-side to the show's opener, Nobody's Diary. Alison Moyet sounded amazing. A-mazing. You would never ever dream it's been 26 years since Situation blew the roof off every gay club in the world. Vince Clark stayed in his usual stoic Erasure-mode, occasionally lending a vocodered vocal over his very slightly re-worked versions of their beloved catalog.
The audience, as might be expected, consisted primarily of gay men in their late 30's - late 50's, guys who once danced to Yaz in shiny buckled shoes as they tossed their blue-black asymmetrical bangs out of their mascara'd eyes. But last night they waved their heavily tatted arms over their shaven/bald/salt-and-pepper heads and sang along to every song. Who knew so many people knew all the words to Winter Kills and Ode To Boy? (The link to Ode To Boy is a performance clip from last night already on YouTube.) During the encore of their immortal Only You, somebody in the front of the audience passed out a couple of hundred red paper hearts, which the audience waved slowly over their heads, bringing Alison to visible tears. It was lovely.I've seen Vince Clark many times as part of Erasure, of course, and I'd seen Alison perform solo at SF Pride in '99, but like probably everyone else last night, I'd never seen them as Yaz. Now all I need is a proper Alison Moyet solo tour so I can hear Love Resurrection, Invisible, or my all-time Moyet favorite, the uber-fabulous Whispering Your Name.
Terminal 5 Set List:Nobody's Diary, Bad Connection, Mr. Blue, Good Times, Tuesday, Ode To Boy, Goodbye 70s, Too Pieces, In My Room, Anyone, I Before E Except After C, Walk Away From Love, State Farm, Sweet Thing, Winter Kills, Midnight, Unmarked, Bring Your Love Down (Didn't I), Don't Go. ENCORE: Only You, Situation.
Below is my blurry, shaky video of Don't Go, the last song before the encore. I pan around a bit at the end so you can get a sense of the crowd and the venue. Ah, the venue! I kept saying to Aaron, "This place would make a GREAT nightclub!" Then it finally dawned on me that it had been a club, Exit, and that I'd been there many times five or six years ago. Time has not been as kind to my memory as it has been to Alison Moyet's voice.
Yaz plays Terminal 5 again tonight and closes the tour at the Beacon Theater on Saturday. Get there. Or wait another 25 years.
I know there's an "internet sensation" every ten seconds, but you really, really, really have to watch Act 1 of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a singing, acting, evil Doogie Houser bwah-ha-ha-ing bit of genius.
Conceived by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a three-part musical miniseries, has become an online sensation since Part 1's release Tuesday. The traffic quickly crashed the server for free-view website drhorrible.com, and iTunes' downloadable version instantly became, at $1.99, the No. 1 video.
The musical stars How I Met Your Mother actor Neil Patrick Harris as tongue-tied super-villain Horrible, who hopes his freeze-ray gun will gain him standing with the Evil League of Evil and win him the girl of his dreams. Nathan Fillion (Desperate Housewives) co-stars as self-absorbed hero Captain Hammer. Felicia Day's Laundromat girl captures both their hearts.
Act 2 comes out later today and the series concludes (for now) with Act 3 on Saturday. After that, you'll have to pay to get it from iTunes. Created for a cost in the "low six figures", the series is expected to make a fortune on paid downloads.
The tidy palm lined streets and affordable homes of the Rybolt Reserve subdivision in suburban Orlando have become popular with middle class homebuyers and speculators but if you are a gay or unmarried opposite-sex couple the Homeowners Association has a message - don't bother to try to rent here according to some property owners.
Several owners say they have been told by the Association they cannot rent their properties in the East Orange County subdivision to couples who are not legally married or to same-sex pairs. "The Homeowner's Association is totally out of control," Suzane Musashe, who leases homes in the subdivision for investors, told WFTV.
"I feel like I am back in the 60's because there is such discrimination going on," Musashe told the station. The prohibitions are listed in a set of rules passed by the HOA, which describes Rybolt Reserve as a family oriented community. Musahse said the strict rules are so limiting they will send some homeowners into foreclosure. "You can only rent to a married couple, that's it. That eliminates more than half your market," she told WFTV.
The HOA restrictions are legal. Orlando has an ordinance protecting same-sex couples who purchase homes, but not renters. County Commissioner Bill Segal told the station that he may introduce an ordinance to protect gay and lesbian couples who rent.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has campaigned against the usage of the N-word by rappers and the film industry, apparently used the word himself in that now-famous whispered conversation caught by Fox News.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday. The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed the TVNewer's account to The Associated Press, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments. Jackson - who is traveling in Spain - apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics.
"I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Senator Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public," Jackson said in a written statement. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me. I also pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people."
You may recall Jackson criticizing Seinfeld's Michael Richards when Richards was caught using the word during a stand-up performance.
That's the word the Dutch are using to refer to married gay men's "maiden" name. If you take your husband's name, of course. It just means "birthname." C'mon, we can do better than that. Ideas?
Kay Ryan, 62, an openly lesbian woman, has been named the nation's 16th poet laureate.
Known for her sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes, Ms. Ryan has won a carriage full of poetry prizes for her funny and philosophical work, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1994, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, worth $100,000.
Ryan has published six books of poetry and her work can regularly be found in the The New Yorker.
And the United States inches closer to the civilized world....
AIDS Action applauds the Senate for overwhelming, bipartisan passage of the Lantos/Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act (S 2731), which reauthorizes the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The organization particularly commends the lifting of the statutory requirement that bars travel and immigration to the U.S. by HIV positive non-citizens. Also noteworthy are the mention and recognition of HIV prevention, care and treatment needs of men who have sex with men (MSM) and the removal of the directive requiring that 33% of prevention funds be spent on "abstinence-only until marriage" programs.
"PEPFAR has had significant success in saving lives and preventing new cases of HIV infection," said Ronald Johnson, Deputy Executive Director of AIDS Action. "Continuation of PEPFAR ensures expansion and sustainability of the greatest global heath initiative in history," he added. "The lifting of the travel and immigration bar removes the blemish on the United States leadership on HIV and AIDS. We are especially pleased that this discriminatory law has finally been repealed." AIDS Action urges prompt and timely final passage of the legislation and urges the President to sign the Lantos/Hyde bill.
The bill was passed WITHOUT Sen. Elizabeth Dole's repulsive attempt to rename it after Jesse Helms, the very scumbag who created the travel ban in the first place.
All in all, we have four wins today*.
1. People with HIV are now eligible to visit and immigrate to the United States. 2. Third world countries will get desperately needed funds to fight AIDS. 3. Opposition to Elizabeth Dole's re-election has been supercharged. 4. Andrew Sullivan gets to stay in the United States.
In a setback for the marriage equality battle in California, this afternoon the state Supreme Court refused to remove Proposition 8 from the November ballot.
The state Supreme Court refused today to remove a proposed ban on same-sex marriage from the November ballot. The initiative, Proposition 8, is a state constitutional amendment that would overturn the court's May 15 ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry in California.
Gay-rights advocates sued June 19 to block a vote on Prop. 8, arguing that the measure would destroy fundamental rights that can't legally be abolished by an initiative. Noting that the Supreme Court's ruling relied on the constitutional rights of privacy and equal protection, they argued that a repeal would amount to a revision of the Constitution - something that requires approval of two-thirds of the state Legislature before going to the voters.
Sponsors of Prop. 8 replied in court papers that their opponents were trying to deprive Californians of their right to change their own Constitution. The court dismissed the case today in a unanimous order, without comment.
It seemed like a long shot, but still it's a disappointment.
