Gay Marriage Skit Offers Evidence "Homophobic" South Not So Bad?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently had a segment in which they sent two men posing as a gay couple to Mississippi and Alabama to see what the public's reaction would be.

A man in the foreground congratulations
two other men posing as a gay couple in
the Deep South  

The two states are regarded as the least likely to allow or even consider gay marriage anytime soon.

The stereotype is the states are populated by hopeless, right wing, evangelical, closed minded homophobes.

Yee-hah! Let the party begin with this skit.

Maybe some of the politicians in the Deep South are like that, but the Daily Show segment offers anecdotal evidence and hope the general public might be more accepting

The "gay" couple was sent to a carnival, a livestock show and a photo booth where they did the whole PDA thing. Nobody flinched and some passersby were nice to them.

Then,  the pair went to the iconic southern cliche restaurant Waffle House where one proposed to the other.

In each place, people either ignored them or gave them a round of applause.

The Daily Show skit played on southern stereotypes. The people in Alabama and Mississippi didn't.  At least the onces on the Daily Show.

I have no illusions.  Some of the people in the Jon Stewart skit maybe didn't like gay people, but they kept quiet to be polite.

And there are hateful people everywhere who at best detest gay people and at worst want to kill them.

Just ask the morons who physically attacked a straight guy in Omaha for the Cardinal Sin of defending another guy in drag.  Or the 30 or so people murdered each year in the United States in homophobic hate crimes.

Or the zillions of people who can still be fired or denied housing because they are gay.

But the anti-gay politicians and the right wing blowhards who are the loudest are just trying to scare up votes and money. They're Internet trolls without actually being on the Internet.

I'm beginning to thinnk most people might be pretty decent. So thanks to the Jon Stewart people for pointing that out.

Anyway, here's the Jon Stewart video::

Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani Teen And Education Advocate, A Thrilling Antidote To Most Recent News

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage girl who was shot by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education, was on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show the other night.

The inspiring Malala Yousafzai. Too bad
people running things in Washington
can't be half this smart

Yousafzai, 16, and largely recovered from the gunshot, wrote an inspiring book and is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. We'll find out first thing Friday morning if she won.

I have to say the interview was thrilling. It was made that way because of the complete contrast between the incredibly smart, poised, generous, humble and gentle Yousafzai, and the willfully ignorant, bombastic, egotistical, destructive clowns in Congress.

Too bad we can't clone Yousafzai and make all those clones be the U.S. House of Representatives.

The best moment in the clip might be when Stewart asked her what she'd say to the Taliban guy who tried to kill her. Here's her response:

"If you hit a Talib, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib.... You must not treat others with cruelty... You must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education.  I would tell him how important education is and that I would even want education for your children as well. That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want."

You can see in the clip, below that Stewart was awestruck. So was the audience. So was I when I watched the video, below. This is just an excerpt, longer versions of the interview are on YouTube.

But I want to give you a taste of intelligence, in case you were feeling dumbed down by the news from Washington: