The Cooler

Just a few things for you this morning from the mainstream media feeds. Enjoy.

A- HuffPo: Babalu Blog gets called out on their homophobia.

It was inevitable that Richard Blanco's selection as President Obama's second inaugural poet would provoke a response from a predictably vocal segment of the Cuban exile community. But I was surprised at the shoddy screed Zoe Valdes, a writer of distinction, posted recently on the right-wing website, Babalu Blog. This assault on Blanco (translated from the original Spanish by Alberto de la Cruz) is digressive, self-contradictory and based on false premises. It warrants attention, however, as an admonition against allowing ideologically-driven emotion to overtake stylistic rigor and sound judgment.

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The problem is that Valdes builds her case upon this quicksand. She wants us to believe that politics, not merit, was behind Blanco's appearance at the Capitol. He checked off two demographic boxes: gay and Hispanic. But liberals would never have agreed to an unabashedly anti-Castro Cuban, so they tapped someone with "lukewarm points of view," an "Obamanista cynic" whose (fairly benign) criticism of his fellow exiles is, in Valdes' jaundiced eyes, "vulgar." And yet this arbiter of taste is not above resorting to slurs; she calls Blanco a "tacky queer" and a "gay asshole."

Blanco's sexuality is especially concerning; he's too out and proud for Valdes' taste. He can't "stop screaming from the rooftops that he is gay." But don't interpret this as homophobic. Valdes' siblings are gay. (The "some of my best friends" defense.) Not only that, she herself wouldn't mind playing for the other team: "I long to be gay and very promiscuous." What she objects to is Blanco's lack of cojones.

B- TC Palm: Life in our NRA world.

FORT PIERCE — A path of violence wove through Fort Pierce in a green pickup, leading teachers to keep children from boarding buses and making residents furiously dial 911 Thursday afternoon.

The gun-toting driver eventually stopped at Indian River State College, where he had a shootout with Fort Pierce police, and one student was injured before he was taken into custody.

"As the incident was going on, there was quite a bit of danger to the community," Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin said.

C- NBC Miami: Video, guy steals $14K jet ski in broad daylight.

D- WPLG: Squatters evicted from million dollar mansion.




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