GETTING ELECTED: Gay candidates have an easier time at the polls than gay rights do. This is basically something we’ve known for a while: people are less homophobic when confronted with an actual gay person.
There are currently at least 445 openly gay and lesbian people holding elected office in the United States, up from 257 eight years ago, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political group that supports gay candidates.
Some political scientists say the rise in openly gay candidates’ winning public office is a better barometer of societal attitudes than are the high-profile fights over same-sex marriage.
But do they want that gay person to get married? Does it ever bother you when people congratulate themselves on not hating you, or refusing to be your friend, like that’s some big achievement? I want to interview all of Sarah Palin’s gay friends for Autostraddle. (@nytimes)
NYE: Hey New Yorkers, do you have New Year’s Eve plans yet? It’s not too late to make some! You can still buy tickets to the Perfect Ten party at Chelsea Brewing Company. It’s $20 in advance or $30 at the door. The party goes until 6 a.m. kids, so take a nap beforehand, you will be up all night making out with someone super cute!
MAGAZINES: HuffPo has a depressing list of 25 magazines that folded in 2009. I don’t think I’ll ever get over Gourmet.
I never read i-D, but based on this cover, I think that magazine & I would’ve gotten along. (@huffingtonpost)
TRENDING TOPICS: What Twitter and Facebook’s 2009 top trends tell us about ourselves. It also tells us I think that twitter doesn’t know that True Blood is a tv show not a movie. (@mashable)
VOTING FOR WOMEN: The Washington Post sees Hillary Clinton’s “sound defeat” in the primaries last year as an indication of a larger, generational fault line in the feminist movement: “To younger voters, Clinton was both a relic of that era and a victim of its success. She was the wrong woman at the wrong time; she was a Clinton; she hadn’t gotten there on her own; a woman could be elected another year. After all, the reasoning went, it would be easy enough next time. Look how simple it had been for her.” (@wapo)
TRANS: “Transgender people… understand more than anyone the high cost of gender, having adopted identities as adult neophytes. People often work harder than they think to maintain the boy/girl behaviours expected of them. You may have learned through painful trial-and-error not to use certain phrases, or to walk a certain way. After a while, learned gender behaviour becomes almost second nature, like trying to compensate for a weak eye. Again, transgender people are just experiencing what everyone goes through.”
From here on out Riese has taken over the Daily Fix with NONSENSE
JUDGE JUDY: Ten years of Judge Judy. These videos keep getting more and more incredible. If the founding fathers had known about this they would’ve invented Final Cut before cars. (@jezebel)
THE END OF THE OOs: You should read a few of these, they’re pretty good. (@the awl)
WE WILL HAVE TO JUST MEET UP AT RED LOBSTER: When the 2010 Sundance Film Festival kicks off in Park City in January, regulars might notice something missing among the unofficial party sites. The Queer Lounge, a hangout for gay and lesbian filmmakers to network and relax since 2004, will not open at Sundance this year.
EAT MY SHORTS: Why The Simpsons doesn’t matter now, but did, and has, so much: “I think that audiences’ sense of irony, and audiences’ willingness to accept a certain level of irreverence, have been really influenced by “The Simpsons.” (@salon)
SEX TAPES: The 00s in Sex Tapes, I didn’t even know most of these things happened, who are these people? (@huffpo)
LADY GAGA: Back in November this happened: “Ballet Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again),” a performance by the artist Francesco Vezzoli, featuring the pop singer Lady Gaga and ballet dancers from the Bolshoi, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles. In this audio slide show, Goodyear discusses this one-time spectacle, the atmosphere at rehearsals, and the début of Lady Gaga’s new song “Speechless.” (@newyorker)
PHOTOPLAY: “We Are Experienced includes football stars, anorexics, wiccans, punks, prom dates, snowboarders, and baton twirlers. Levitt revels in the beauty of the age and its incomparable potential. She also exposes an advanced awareness particular to a generation.” (@trend.land)
QUIZ SHOW: 2009: The Quiz – Were You Paying Attention? (@newyorker)
