I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home (Happy Pride!)


    In June, 2017 I shared my excitement about the upcoming publication of Southern Perspectives – the cover was all I had back then – but I could see the finish line of a very long journey. Two years later I am still excited about this collection of intimate personal stories that reminds all of us to never give up on our potential to change the world for good.  Onward.

    Coming this December – a Must Read!

    Read the intimate personal essays of 21 native or adopted South Carolinians who contributed significantly to the organizing of the queer community in our state from the AIDS crisis in 1984 to marriage equality in 2014.

    http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2017/7813.html.

    Jim Blanton, Candace Chellew-Hodge, Matt Chisling, Michael Haigler, Harriet Hancock, Deborah Hawkins, Dick Hubbard, Linda Ketner, Ed Madden and Bert Easter, Alvin McEwen, Sheila Morris, Pat Patterson, Jim and Warren Redman-Gress, Nekki Shutt, Tony Snell, Carole Stoneking (deceased), Tom Summers, Matt Tischler and Teresa Williams answer the questions surrounding the reasons for their activism in a conservative state in the South during a tumultuous time in American politics when many people assumed the only activists in the queer community lived in San Francisco or New York City. These folks chose to remain committed to home instead of fleeing South Carolina. Why?

    Although the book isn’t scheduled for release by the USC Press until December, I couldn’t let the Pride month of June (or the Obergefell Supreme Court decision two-year anniversary this week) go by without sharing my excitement over this book which has been in the making for the past 4 years. Harriet Hancock was my original creative impulse for undertaking the project and has been with me every step of the way toward the ultimate goal of collecting and sharing these stories.

    I am grateful to all contributors for their unwavering willingness to participate, to Harlan Greene for a wonderful foreword and to the USC Press for their commitment to “home” authors.

    Happy Pride!

    Stay tuned.

    Please contact me at smortex@aol.com if you are interested in obtaining a signed copy of Southern Perspectives.

     

     

  • who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?


    Apparently everyone.

    The Democrats allow the Big Bad Wolf to ignore congressional subpoenas under the guise of special privileges for Big Wolves. Not just for himself but for anyone who they demand appear before Congressional committees on the second Tuesday of the third week in the fifth month under a full moon. Everyone knows wolves can’t be expected to testify about anything when there’s a full moon.

    For verification, ask the Big Bad Wolf Teddy Bear who will agree that the Big Bad Wolf is always right so don’t nobody go up in that Congressional Hill to testify. I’m saying, don’t nobody.

    And nobody does.

    Meanwhile, the Republicans just lay low – so low they can’t see past their fear that the Big Bad Wolf will eat them in a primary down the road. That’s low.

    Where in the world is Little Red Riding Hood when we need her? Oh my goodness. I see her walking down the lane right this minute. What’s that she’s saying? I can’t hear her until she gets closer.

    “Tra la. Tra la. What’s the matter with you Americans? Impeach the Big Bad Wolf and get that chaos creating limelight loving immigrant child murdering racist S.O.B. out of the White House.”

    Tra la. Tra la. I couldn’t agree more with you, Little Red Riding Hood.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • Nick Kyrios is to Tennis as Donald Trump is to the American people — bad to the bone


    Nick Kyrios is  an Australian professional tennis player ranked #25 in the world in men’s singles. Daniil Medvedev is a Russian tennis player currently ranked #14 by the ATP in men’s singles. Today they met in the first round of the Italian Open being played in Rome this week. I have had lots of time to watch the entire clay season unfolding this spring on the road to Roland Garros at the French Open which begins on the morning of the 26th.

    Monaco, Barcelona, Madrid and now Rome this final week before the next major at the French Open. Today I watched Nick Kyrios “play” against Daniil Medvedev and perform the same outrageous antics I’ve watched him do for years against opponents. Trick shots, serving underhanded, bullying  referees and opponents in general, using whatever disrespectful tactic he can generate to fluster his opponents and entertain his fans who, I admit, are many.

    I have never been a Kyrios fan, and today I made a personal promise to refuse to watch any of his matches being shown at any event. It’s just me and my little protest, but maybe I could hashtag my protest into a movement if I knew how to hashtag anything.

    Meanwhile across the Pond from Rome as we refer to the Colonies who have become our own states due to little wars and things like that in the 18th. century we have another Bad Boy who refuses to respect our constitution which contains the map of how each branch of the government is to perform.

    For those of you who have forgotten the one civics class taught to you by a coach in junior high school I’m choosing to refresh you with the big Three lynchpins of government: the judicial system with its highest authority in interpreting the constitution, the executive branch which has it function to implement the laws of the land, and the congressional branch which is supposed to make the laws and supervise the executive branch through its oversight of the executive.

    Ok. Right now, this very minute…we have a president who has gone off the reservation by refusing to comply with the subpoena process issued by the Congressional committees for oversight.Think evil. Think wicked. Think Machiavellian. If he were a tennis player, he would throw his racket on the ground, stomp it, and then yell that the other guy was a loser anyway. The referee would issue him a racket violation which he would scoff at.

    The president is being as disrespectful to the law as Nick Kyrios is to the game of tennis for which he equally shows no respect.

    I am consciously choosing to never watch Nick Kyrios play tennis again. Small protest, but it makes me feel better. I always mute the president when he speaks.

    I of course will never vote for Donald Trump for president for reasons too numerous to list here, but let’s just say I can’t stand a bully who thinks he is above the law. Think Bill Clinton. Think Richard Nixon. Add to that knowledge in the basic history lessons.

    I pledge to stop laughing at things which I know aren’t funny. I plan to follow the debates to see where my future belongs.

    Bad Boys, take your brand of disrespect and shove it…anywhere…I don’t have to see.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • another one bites the dust


    Alas, yet another member of the president’s cabinet bids us all a fond farewell – maybe not fond, but definitely farewell.

    Kirstjen Nielsen, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, evidently felt it was the right time for her to step aside according to an article in the Business Insider today. Nielsen became the pretty face for the president’s ugly “zero tolerance” immigration policy of 2018 and she continued to defend the detainment of refugee children taken from their families – assuring Congress (and I heard this with my own ears) none of the refugee children were living in cages. Alrighty then. Clearly none of us have seen those conditions with our own two television eyes.

    Ms. Nielsen attended Georgetown University’s school of foreign service and studied abroad in Japan. She worked for Senator Connie Mack of Florida before going to law school at the University of Virginia. During Dubya Bush’s first term who’s surprised  she worked for the White House Homeland Security Council during Hurricane Katrina and had a hand in the less than stellar response by the Bush team in that tragedy. And still she moved on up.

    In one of her Congressional appearances I heard her answer she had no idea how many asylum seekers had died during their internment in our camps. I could have helped her with that one. Two children died within one month of each other in December of 2018. Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal of Guatemala died on December 8th. Eight-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo died on Christmas Eve. We can start the death count with those two.

    Now the courts have determined we may have to wait another two years to identify thousands of children still separated from their families at the border because of a policy Secretary Nielsen administered for a man with no concern for the welfare of anyone other than himself. Shame on him, shame on her and shame on all of us for a lack of moral outrage as a nation.

    In Vision of Reality – a Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior, author Alberto Rivas quotes Heinrich Himmler,  another Minister of the Interior in a country across the pond during the Nazi regime:

    “The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But we don’t ask for their love; only for their fear.”

    So farewell to you, Secretary Nielsen. Don’t let your twisted lack of conscience hit you on the way out the door.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • SISTERS ARE DOIN’ IT FOR THEMSELVES!


    BREAKING NEWS – WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH MOVES ON TO APRIL!

    If pictures are worth a thousand words, then you tube videos with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Eurythmics must be worth more than any amount of words available in the English language for me to describe my elation with the election results for mayor last night in our 3rd largest city, Chicago, when Pretty gave me the breaking news. Pretty is my personal Twitter crier.

    By a vote of 74% of all votes cast in the run-off election Tuesday, Chicago elected its first African-American mayor, a mayor who identifies herself as “an out and proud black lesbian.”Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot had this to say in her acceptance speech Tuesday night according to Bill Ruthhart of the Chicago Tribune:

    “A lot of little girls and boys are out there watching us tonight, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot said with a smile. “They’re seeing a city reborn, a city where it doesn’t matter what color you are, where it surely doesn’t matter how tall you are and where it doesn’t matter who you love, just as long as you love with all your heart.”

    While Chicago captured the biggest news, other election results around the country were also, well, a little bit different. For example, the city of Madison, Wisconsin elected 47-year-old Satya Rhodes-Conway, its second female mayor in history, with 62% of the vote. Mayor-elect Rhodes-Conway became the first openly gay mayor of Madison. The results of the Madison School Board election were to add three more women to the four women currently serving which means all members of the School Board for the city of Madison will be female.

    Sounds like countless sisters are getting the gavel, and I don’t believe any of them will be afraid to use it.

    Lawdy, lawdy. I have lived long enough to see the revolution of the sisterhood.

    Sisters are doin’ it for themselves. Girls do rock after all.

    Onward.

    Stay tuned.