Gaga Over Gaga

Her music is catchy, her style outlandish and her attitude brash. Now add political ball-buster to pop sensation Lady Gaga's impressive list of attributes.

Speaking at a rally in Maine Monday, Gaga officially threw herself front and center into the military's 17-year-old "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy which allows gays to serve but not disclose their homosexuality or act on it.

Gaga growled, "Doesn't it seem to be that DADT is backwards. Doesn't it seem that we're penalizing the wrong soldier? Doesn't it seem to you that we should send home the prejudiced? The straight soldier who hates the gay soldier? The straight soldier whose performance is affected because he is homophobic? The straight soldier who has prejudice in his heart, in the space where the military asks him to hold to our core American values ... he instead holds and harbors hate, and he gets to stay and fight for our country."

Bravo, I say. We need more "voices of a generation" like Lady G to use their massive celebrity to help bring about much needed change in America. To help the small-minded and frightened close the discrimination gap.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Gaga groupie or anything. In fact, she's not even in my iPod. Oh, she's certainly very talented and is a real fav of my 22 and 24 year old daughters. But, at almost 51, my heart still belongs to Madonna, of whom Gaga is a tad derivative. More importantly though, I now have immense respect for her as a person, in particular, a young person, who has achieved gargantuan success so quickly, and who has just as quickly realized how she can use this immense fame to make a difference in peoples lives. She's not just a marketing and branding genius, but one of those rare people who truly have their fingers on the pulse of society and culture. Many more good things to come from her politically I suspect, and hope.