Which Party Is This?

Listening to Giuliani and McCain last night, I was starting to think, well, this Republican thing ain’t so bad. Just like when I listen to Lieberman or Evan Bayh I think the same thing about Democrats – hey, these folks make sense. But then, in the middle of the night, or in the dim, subterranean light of the bowels of Madison Square Garden, I wonder if there will ever be a political party for me anymore. While the Democrats thrill to a “disingenuous filmmaker,” the ideologues of the Republican world rock on with their special version of intolerance, making their own justifiably crazy:

Christopher Barron of the Log Cabin Republicans, a GOP gay-rights group, was livid after the panel endorsed the first-ever call for a constitutional gay-marriage ban in a GOP platform and went beyond that to oppose legal recognition of any same-sex unions.

“You can’t craft a vicious, mean-spirited platform and then try to put lipstick on the pig by putting Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger on in prime time,” he said in an interview.

But you can, evidently. We live in a strange world where hypocrisy piles on hypocrisy. [You’re sounding rather ornery this morning.-ed. Are you in a bad mood? Yup. Sleep deprivation. I guess I’m feeling a little like a flak for the Republican Party. I don’t particularly enjoy that feeling. I don’t like being a flak for anybody. Yes, we’re in a war that’s important.Terribly important. And, yes, I think John Kerry is a straw man who should not lead us in such a situation. But there’s nothing that makes me more angry than masked or unmasked homophobia. It’s deeply reactionary and immoral.]

UPDATE: I just had coffee with one of New York’s finest(bloggers)Jeff Jarvis – a man with whom I have been exchanging email for about a year and a half and had not met face-to-face. It was a pleasure to meet him. Ditto Jay Rosen who stopped by earlier today. Jeff had an interesting proposal regarding political parties and conventions — that party platforms be abandoned. There are obvious arguments against this, but it sounds like an idea whose time has come, expecially given our present parties whose tents are so big ideology becomes meaningless.