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About a minute after stepping up to the podium inside Local 7 Ironworkers Hall, Romney delivered this gem: "There’s nothing wrong with our supreme court in Massachusetts that having Wacko Hurley as chief justice wouldn’t cure!" Quick history lesson for those whose knowledge of Boston doesn’t extend back a decade (a group that, judging from the aforementioned one-liner, may include the governor): in March 1992, South Boston’s Allied War Veterans Council, the long-time sponsor of Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, denied the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB) permission to enter the event. GLIB, an organization largely made up of Irish émigrés, went to court, won the right to participate, and marched in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld GLIB’s right to march, organizers cancelled the parade. In 1995, the US Supreme Court reversed the SJC’s decision, ruling that — as a private group — the Allied War Veterans Council had a First Amendment right to determine the parade’s composition. (Public sponsorship of the event had been scaled back as the controversy dragged on.)
As the parade’s chief organizer, John J. "Wacko" Hurley embodied the veterans’ determination to keep gays out — which, of course, helped pave the way for the ugliness that ensued. In 1992, smoke bombs and beer cans were thrown at some of the gay marchers as bystanders shouted, "You bunch of fags, get out of Southie" and "I hope you all die of AIDS, homos." In 1993, when Hurley promised to continue the legal fight ("We’ll go on until we have a parade of a family nature," he vowed), gay marchers were spat upon and pelted with snowballs as sharpshooters watched from rooftops. In 1994, Hurley explained the parade’s cancellation by saying, "They’re not going to shove something down our face that’s not our traditional values."
Whatever one thinks of the US Supreme Court’s 1995 decision, the nastiness directed at GLIB on the streets of South Boston was an overt display of homophobia. And there was a clear subtext of intolerance lingering behind Hurley’s — and the veterans’ — determination to keep gay and lesbian people from participating in the parade. On Tuesday, Romney spokesperson Nicole St. Peter told the Phoenix that Romney’s quip "was in the lighthearted spirit of the breakfast." Maybe so. But would anyone direct a comparable joke at blacks or Jews — or Mormons, for that matter — at the "lighthearted" St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast?
Ah, that GOP. Such "lighthearted" humor. Next week we can expect Romney to bring the house down by quipping "There's nothing wrong with John Lewis that James Earl Ray couldn't take care of!" Ha Ha!
If I made lighthearted jokes like that about Romney the FBI would be at my house rather quickly.
And, then of course, we have the joker-in-chief. This guy's hilarious!
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Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.
Haha! The families of all of these people think that was a real goddamn knee-slapper!
It's too early for this crap.