I'm clearly not in the habit of trying to help the opposition, but I just received a wonderful bit of news in my inbox that might be of use to the John McCain campaign.
SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment), the world's oldest and largest non-profit agency dedicated to serving and advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors, has opened the first-ever fully-equipped Cyber Center for LGBT Seniors. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in NYC on July 15 at SAGE's offices.
I'm sure a few well-connected Log Cabin Republican friends can make a few calls to SAGE to get the heterosexual Arizona senator into one of the classes to help him learn how to cut on the computer and do a little web surfing to show younger voters that he "gets it" with The Google and the Internets.
"Our LGBT Senior Cyber Center has been a dream for SAGE for years because we know that computers and the internet are a great way for older people to stay connected to each other and the community, and that's what SAGE is all about," said Michael Adams, Executive Director of SAGE.The SAGE Cyber Center hosted classes that afternoon. Classes for beginners are being offered, two times a week, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 4:00 and 5:30pm by Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) for ten weeks. They will teach users how to operate the mouse and keyboard, as well as navigate Windows, the Internet and e-mail.
The proof is in the pudding -- the GOP nom will actually get a chance to work with gay youth in this program - what a bonus in terms of outreach!
Classes began earlier this year in intergenerational collaboration between SAGE, OATS, and the LGBT Community Center's Youth Enrichment Services (YES) program, in which youth acted as instructional assistants, providing some hands-on support to the seniors as the instructor takes them through the class.
I also received word from a rep that SAGE has an "amazing transgender woman who is a trainer - it would be a good learning experience for McCain in MANY ways..."
If folks at the McCain campaign are reading this post, here's the 411 -- to register for classes, he should contact Doreen Bermudez at 212-741-2247 x242. Or the Arizona senator may just want to do a nice photo op at the SAGE Cyber Center for LGBT Seniors to show he's down with technology and TEH GAYZ in one fell swoop, since his LCR allies have been promising us that we're going to be educated about why LGBTs should be pro-McCain.
SAGE
305 7th Avenue
6th Floor
New York, NY 10001
t: (212) 741-2247
f: (212) 366-1947
info@sageusa.org
For media inquiries, contact Cathy Renna (917-757-6123) or Simon Aronoff (202-510-6705) at Renna Communications. They'll be happy to help the "seasoned citizen" at the top of the GOP ticket make the most of the photo op and training session.
Related:
* G*d damn. Can we afford a computer illiterate doofus as POTUS?
Update: The cracker is gone. The post is worth reading because PZ explains how the puffery around the supposed sacredness of communion wafers is linked to finding excuses to torture and kill Jews. Something to consider if you have an urge to treat treacly Catholic nonsense, from opposition to birth control to sanctifying women who die in childbirth to acting like communion wafers and embryos are more important than people, like it's harmless goofery. It's interesting to see the emails he got, which resemble ones I've gotten in the past from people whose minds have been completely ruined by religion. Except they're even more crazy. I can say that most half-crazed emails I get make me laugh, but the pitiful ones from true believers just depress me. They're just broken people, and I blame the church.
The various complaints with Barack Obama's appearance in Germany have ranged from location to content. Now, we see another line of attack lining up: Obama's luring people with music and food.
A few years ago, there was a dustup between the right and left sides of the blogosphere over each side's books and intellectual history - the National Review crowd essentially declaring that because of writers like Hayek and Friedman, they had a stronger intellectual base (and therefore more ideological validity) than the Left, which tended to lack knowledge of its authors and thinkers. This ignored the common experience that many younger liberals have had with the Young Republican crowd, which tends to focus around having the same set of quotes from conservative authors tossed at you until they inevitably have to bring their ideological perspective into the here and now and Hayek gets reduced to a series of icky faces at the prospect of some dude wanting to bone them.
Dana Milbank at the WaPo delivers a stunning and accurate smackdown to the misguided, misleading and unhinged Elaine Donnelly of The Center for Military Readiness, who testified at yesterday's House Armed Services personnel subcommittee hearing on the law known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
