Yes, I think “rooster whose crowing brings the sunrise” is the correct diagnosis here.

Incidentally, is anyone keeping an eye on the negative responses to the Administration’s plan to revoke the HIV travel ban? It would be good to have someone send in a response close to the August 17 deadline that addresses the statements of those who think either the travel ban or the testing at entry should be retained. Just re-sending the same form letter, which looks like what some organizations are having people do, isn’t very useful.

In fact, I challenge anyone here to imagine the mindset of someone who would be convinced to support ssm, or even repeal of DADT based on Aravosis’ writings and actions, where, without them they would oppose either.

No, he’s not “Mr. Ourside,” but with his constant repetition of “Obama wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t revealed the comparison to incest and pedophilia” he very well might be the rooster who knows his crowing brings the sunrise — and damn well wants credit for it.

It was not just the idea of helping people that prompted much of the action of the New Deal, it was the fear that if concessions were not made, a revolution of sorts might break out as had in Italy, China and Germany.
Again, I don’t advocate such fear tactics, but its just natural part of human psychology that sometimes requests for change are more palatable when compared to other requests/demands that seem more radical.That’s all I was trying to say in regards to even the shrillest voice having a purpose in moving discussions along. Its this competition of ideas, even bad ones, that keeps the political process alive.

I agree with this, but I don’t see how Malcolm X was helpful in illustrating that to America. MLK quite deliberately waded into the places where he knew he would be imprisoned, have dogs and firehoses set on him, and otherwise make a dramatic image for the cameras. I wrote a paper once about the influence of TV on the civil rights movement, and it was precisely this difference between violent racism and passive racism that made TV useful in the early years but less so later on.

E.g. MLK could get great imagery of what it looked like to be thrown off a bus or out of a restaurant, or to have children getting eggs thrown at them while they just tried to go to school, or to be beaten for trying to exercise the right to vote. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, however, MLK had a much more difficult time rallying public support. When he tried to campaign against housing discrimination, it was very hard because there was no dramatic action for the cameras. Redlining doesn’t happen in public; it’s done on paper behind closed doors.

Similarly, I think Matthew Shepherd’s death gave some impetus to the gay rights movement because the images were so grisly. Straight people felt badly that gays were actually getting murdered for being gay. (This is also why there’s such a strong effort by opponents of gay rights to declare that Shepherd’s murder was merely a simply robbery, nothing more.) It is more difficult to show visually the effects of losing a job, getting kicked out of the military, not being able to marry the person you love.

Ideally, we’d just act on legal and moral principle, but humans don’t really function that way, we need to feel empathy, fear, guilt, hunger or some other instinct in order to act.

Some of these commentators don’t like the fact that Chris isn’t agreeing with Aravosis. He isn’t trying to fight fire with fire or by creating a fire. Chris is standing his ground and that’s brave.

Does anyone whose followed him longer have any clue either? But does Obama ‘need’ an Aravosis, as someone suggested earlier? Do his actions help us? Those last two are easier to answer. (Someone who was pushing hard, but not ‘kneecapping’ the person he’s trying to work with — that Obama needs and would help us.)

But there’s something more going on here, I think. And I’m going to try and put it into another post.