Some days it's just so very difficult to choose. The toxic tales come so fast, slippery and weird, you don't know which way to flip your personal drunkmonkey of wary perspective, just how hard you're supposed to laugh and sigh before you strip naked and run screaming into the woods.
Which will it be, fine citizen? The twee tale of the whiny outcry endured by the unwitting Washington Post after it ran an innocuous photo on its front page, a shot of two sweet, skinny guys lightly smooching on the courthouse steps, the very day that gay marriages were finally legal in D.C.?
You can guess what happened next. The tiny-brained homophobes of D.C. came out in force, threatening everything from canceled subscriptions (oh no!) to the death of every human soul for all eternity. Confused macho lugnuts and little old ladies alike began accusing the paper of promoting "the faggot lifestyle" and destroying all morality by, you know, showing two people in love. The horror.
"That kind of stuff makes normal people want to throw up. People have kids who are being exposed to this crap. I will be glad when your rag goes out of business. Real men marry women," the seemingly rather startled, bespectacled WaPo ombudsman quoted a particularly loathsome reader as spewing.
Oh WaPo, how adorable is the popping of your virgin cherry of virulent reader homophobia! How sweet is the tang!
See, we here in sinful, hellhole Sodom-iffic San Francisco see such piffling outcry, and laugh. We've been shrugging off Bible Belt ignorance and fundamentalist accusations of our being the perverted nail sticking out of God's virtuous park bench since Harvey Milk opened a camera shop, Berkeley decided to light some U.S. flags on fire and the Haight burned Vietnam draft notices -- all right before we became one of the world's foremost centers of intellectualism, culture, art, food, education, experimentation, leather, enlightenment, love and joy and fine lubricants for all. Welcome to hell, WaPo! Come on in, the water's blasphemous....
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Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle, a hilarious mega-collection of his finest work for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. His columns are archived here;. Also: His home page, Facebook page, or send him some nice email. Not to mention...