Michael O'Hanlon speaks on DADT: It's that nasty 'testosterone,' people
You know I can't stand this asshat and I loved it when he was crying because he only got one request a day for an interview.
Usually he's on TV cheerleading for more war a la Bill Kristol, but now he's back trying to get some ink and he's turned his attention to gay-bashing.
Glenn Greenwald rips him apart.
Ironically, the highest number of discharges came in 2001, when more than 1,000 people were discharged for being gay. For some strange reason, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was on CNN to opine about all of this today, and this is what he said (h/t Michelangelo Signorile):
Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute said the real test will be in the barracks, with the rank-and-file members of the military.
"We can talk about this delicately or we can just be fairly direct," O'Hanlon said. "There are a lot of 18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They're often politically old-fashioned or conservative; they are not necessarily at the vanguard, in many cases, of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle."
First of all, O'Hanlon sounds like he just stepped out of a 1981 Moral Majority documentary. Who still talks about sexual orientation being an "alternative form of lifestyle"? That was always a dishonest and propagandistic phrase -- as though gay people intrinsically lead a different "lifestyle" -- and it's rare these days to hear anyone outside of Jim Dobson and Maggie Gallagher use it. And the apparent belief of O'Hanlon that there's an inverse relationship between masculinity and acceptance of gay people ("testosterone-laden men who are tough guys") is ludicrous, though, almost certainly, his saying this unintentionally reveals some disturbing psychosexual undercurrents that are driving O'Hanlon himself...read on
First of all has he done some new polling which finds that these young men are actually conservative? I don't remember army recruiters pounding on the doors of the very rich, but instead hung out in the most impoverished areas looking to entice young men with cash and breaks on college tuition's. What he really means is that those 18 year old neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists that have flooded the military along with the Christianists probably won't dig it because they are homophobes. We even have religion infiltrating our weapons.
I know quite a few 18 - 21 year old guys who are in the service,
and not a single one of them gives a shit if someone is gay or not.
O'Hanlon needs to pull his head out of his asshat.
might collapse his soft, empty head.
Intolerant right-wingers tend to think that all "normal" and "reasonable" people think the same way they do.
Late last night, I was watching TV news coverage about that senior military man (I forget the name) who was facing the Senate and saying that he, personally, thought DADT should be repealed. He said that the people who defend their country shouldn't have to lie about who they are.
One Republican Senator who opposes this said something about not wanting to undermine "high standards". Huh? What's with this assumption that gays automatically make inferior soldiers?
"Ironically, the highest number of discharges came in 2001, when more than 1,000 people were discharged for being gay."
Maybe if they weren't discharging so much no one would know they were gay.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
korean war vet
who has told me countless times about everyone knowing who was gay in their divisions...and no one cared
cuz its all about bodies when you are at war
Are often closet queens...
More often than "often."
Well, from the looks of this guy I'd say he speaks from experience.
His face cries out for a beatdown.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
When I was in the Air Force I didn't particularly notice anyone being conservative or liberal
We were too stoned to care.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
When I was in the Air Force we didn't even know what stoned was or even the meaning of the word which probably hadn't even been coined yet.
My favorite was smoking sinsemillan through a bong, mixed with some Afghani hash followed by a 3/4 gram rock to wash it down with.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
All we had was "Screwdrivers", vodka and orange juice. Also in Korea we had a lot of 10 cent beer.
Screwdrivers was what I used whilst cleaning out.
I swear on my usual cocktail it would look like the sunlight was strobing.
But I was the conservative one. Everyone else was doing mushrooms, rush and acid as well.
But we all looked down on alchies, too noisy and obnoxious.
So I never drank more than a case a beer a week.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
There were guys camping out in the desert for three days before the first shuttle craft landing dropping mushrooms, and the joke was they got higher than the shuttle craft ever got.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
See, being from the Netherlands, 'soft drugs' were legal to use. Pot and hash. Everything else, not really accepted.
I don't care too much for either one (alcohol is more my thing), however when I came to the US, I was astounded at how many of my 'age peers' had used so many different drugs! Let alone those who were older than me, meaning born before 1963.
I was simply stunned. See, in Holland one is expected to try some drugs, especially the legal ones. Sure, some went on to use heroin, cocaine and whatnot.
In general though, I believe that those societies who are closed to any (non-prescription, HA!!) drug use tend to use more.
It's probably because you have to buy weed and hash from a dope dealer in the US, and they often have a larger buffet of substances from which to choose. Not everyone will sample the harder stuff, of course, but some do and some get hooked. If pot was legalized in the US and controlled in a manner similar to that of drinking alcohol, it would diminish its reputation as a "gateway drug".
don't get me wrong!!
Some people simply start using hard drugs and some don't. I don't think that there's a relation between pot/hash and harder drugs. You might as well bring alcohol/sugar/chocolate chip cookies into that equation. Pfft. Really.
Dutch, I understood and didn't mean to suggest that you were making the "gateway drug" argument. I agree with your observations and thoughts in regards to open vs. closed minded societies. Sorry for any confusion.
I have friends who have used pot to wean themselves off caffeine and nicotine and it has been used by heroin addicts to mitigate the effects of withdrawal. Turns out the "gateway drug" meme had the effect ass-backwards.
were any closer together he'd be a cyclops. I'm just guessing, of course, but I don't think his family tree branched much.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
hahaha, I was looking at him thinking much the same thing...
he has genetic damage literally written on his face.
it should not take much research to find
out who is curling o'hanlon's hair while
pounding his butt. more than likely he
is just another gay-bashing homophobe like
larry craig.
"18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They're often politically old-fashioned or conservative; they are not necessarily at the vanguard, in many cases, of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle."
Back then, with even MORE opposition to racial integration, was the question then one about "accepting alternative forms of skin color"???
18-year-olds are still kids. Their minds/brains/hearts are still being formed. They can vote, they can kill, yet here in CA they cannot have a beer.
In the military they learn discipline through hierarchy. You do/think/feel as I say 'cause I say so, basically.
Yet in that same hierarchy women are not protected - rape goes unpunished.
Fix 'middle-management' in the armed forces. Get those people out who feel they're too powerful to live by the rules. Get down on their asses, punish, demote. That's where it starts.
For that matter, they try kids at 14 as adults, yet they don't have any rights adults have. Screwed up system overall.
Guys can't control themselves because of testosterone. Well then, I guess rape is OK, because after all, the guy was only answering the calling of his hormones.
You know back in the segregated military days, I could see you saying
and thinking it's a perfectly reasonable rationale.
How is it people think Brookings is left of center or moderate with bastards like you in there? The fucking beltway wouldn't know a left hand if it bitch slapped them. Brookings, coming closer to AEI every day.
me-oww!
The old conservative idea that we shouldn't insist on civil rights for historically oppressed people ... because "some" people wouldn't like it.
Well, duh. If everyone liked it, legal recognition of civil rights for all would not be needed.
will you just please learn to tolerate their intolerance?*
*wingnut thinkering
Is the conservative belief that They are being persecuted, discriminated against when others are acknowledged to have the same rights as Them!
but they are being persecuted!
poor babies are running out of acceptable groups to hate.
there's always Muslims--for now, anyway.
me-oww!
They don't have the freedom to officially defend themselves and their loved ones in this war on terror. They don't have the freedom of civil marriage. They are getting less for their tax money than the rest of the population. Of course, with less freedoms the terrorist should hate them a tad less than the rest of us.
Got to stop thinking like a conservative would. My head is beginning to ache.
Lay off him, he's still a bit flustered from watching all that gay porn for, uh, research.
I'm 51 and I work on a military installation. These young men and women don't give a rat's a** about this DADT. They don't isten to all this crap especially from the right. These young people are the same young people you see at the mall hanging out with there friends. They do there job then they go home and do what young people do. In all my years on military installations I have never heard any person sitting around discussing DADT.
Ever notice that most these right wing nuts don't even look normal ? Right out of the Twilight Zone .
with a lot of service in the classrooms at Princeton. Muy macho.
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
I have seen a couple "testosterone-laden men who are tough guys" who happen to be gay who would love to kick this needle dick down the street.
Just saying.
Eighteen year olds in the military are men, but that O'Keefe clown is "just a kid"... do I have this right?
there are already gay people in the military! They are already serving along side "testosterone laden" meatheads as well as all the other different types of people who serve in our armed services.
Why do these idiots believe that somehow the repeal of DADT will make it impossible for straight and gay people to serve together when they are already doing so?
They are just worried that if gay people could be more open in our society, these wingnuts wouldn't be able to control their homo-erotic urges, and then everyone would know THEY are queer!
If these uptight sexually repressed conservative closet cases could go out and suck a little c**k every now and then - without having to worry about their lives being over, they probably wouldn't spend so much time being such viscious assholes to the rest of us.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
As I sit in my single-soldier room in the Thunderbird barracks here on Ft Huachuca, reading about this guy claiming that most of the young soldiers are conservative. I can't help but wonder, how long it took him to pull that claim out of a specific orifice. I know of two (thats 2)really right-wing people here on this post(and the town next to the base is very conservative), I do know of several other people who are right of center, but I also know of plenty more who are left. As I have said many times before, the military reflects society as a whole, so however the country is shifting, the military will reflect that.
I suppose people like this need to make these claims to feel better about not having served themselves or to deal with the fact that there are more Democrats who are veterans than the one or two Republicans who served.
When angry, count four, when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain-
I have spent enough time in jail, another place where you don't get to "pick your own roommates". I can't say I know of anyone who was "turned gay" because they had to spend time in close proximity to gays.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
are the cowering closeted queers. Especially the ones who have beards and have managed to pass.
me-oww!
And if those sissy gays are putting their lives on the line and serving their country, what does that make YOU, Michael?
Xe (Blackwater) has no problem with gays being in their army. When there are no Arab teens around to gang rape a good same sex orgy amongst comrades is an excellent time waster to wile away the long dull hours in a foreign occupation zone.
Frank Zappa - Make A Jazz Noise Here
"And the apparent belief of O'Hanlon that there's an inverse relationship between masculinity and acceptance of gay people ("testosterone-laden men who are tough guys")"
I think O'Hanlon has never seen quality gay porn....
O'Hanlon is talking bigotry-enabling nonsense. American soldiers in Kandahar are already serving alongside openly gay soldiers, albeit from other nation's militaries, to no ill effect.
...about how they 'feel' - assuming what this guy says is so, at least among some of 'em - about those that 'they' think are 'fags'? Kick their butts? If so, then my question is 'does the Uniform Code of Military Justice prosecute for 'hate crimes'?' Even the most 'peckerwood' of the grunts will soon learn that an extra five-year stint in Leavenworth is the price for their ignorance and intolerance.
Well it's been 27 years since I was in the Army so I can't say what it is like today. But 27 years ago you couldn't make a more false statement then that one. It was quite the opposite! The soldiers I served with were actually quite a bit more progressive then the average American. At least as far as social mores were concerned. I doubt it's much different today.
There are lots of testosterone-laden tough gay men out there.
This guy is SUCH a slug.. It would be a great public service to the country if he and his fat-ass twin brother were packed on a C-141, flown to eastern-Afghanistan and dropped out of the plane...parachutes included...I'll pay...
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