NOH8'n on Meghan

The Righteous and the Wicked - Red Hot Chili Peppers (mp3)
Left of Center - Suzanne Vega (mp3)

I like Meghan McCain.

Since the "are you saying she's hot" thing feels inevitable, I'll say OK, I think she's slightly hot.

Maybe she has a few extra pounds on her and will never fit down a drain like some supermodels. In that sense, she reminds me of a blonde Sara Rue back when Sara Rue was adorable and plus-sized and before she went all Christina Ricci with the I wanna be skinny like the other Stepford Actresses stuff.

She might lean a little too far right for my tastes, but she's a far more impressive speaker and voice for a younger generation than most anyone else getting their name out there and earning attention for it. If Meghan and Sarah Palin were on The Golden Girls together, Sarah would be the ditzy Betty White character to Meghan's Rue McClanahan, the slut who has flashes of wit and intelligence. (Barbara Bush would be Bea Arthur, and Ann Coulter would be the Estelle Getty old grandma.)

The young Ms. McCain will always have to fight the Ditzy Blonde stereotype, being that her life at times resembles that of Blair from The Facts of Life, but when you're rich and connected like Meghan, then you've got a better chance of fighting your stereotype than some poor black gal in South Dakota has of fighting hers, so I struggle to feel much pity.

I like Meghan McCain's writing. I enjoy that she's young enough to be honest, smart enough not to spout off about every little possible thing, and savvy enough to avoid being a mere mouthpiece or pawn for some portion of the Greater Political War. She can be shallow or quite insightful. In this country that feels increasingly Red v. Blue and decreasingly Purple, I find myself attracted to any and all signs of reasonable middle ground, which is to say I've given up on actual politicians, since they all seem to cater to their narrow "voting base" rather than real honest-to-God people.

This desire for purple ground found reward in the story of Meghan and her mom Cindy participating in NOH8, the campaign to lobby for same-sex marriage.

I'm sincerely excited that the discussion on homosexuality is slowly -- perhaps at glacier speed -- moving beyond a Red v. Blue issue. It's breaking down political barriers and increasingly being discussed as a civil rights issue, about freedom and equality rather than just Jesus and morality.

My cluelessness and insensitivity on matters of minority culture have been pointed out to me many times by friends and enemies, and I profess to be amazingly clueless about The Gay World, but it doesn't seem I need to know that much about the issue to believe, without reservation, that our country is better off giving them the same chances to fuck up marriage that heteros have enjoyed since Adam and Eve. God knows gays can't possibly fuck it up worse.

Part of me thinks we're scared of giving them this right because all of a sudden more gays might pull away from precisely the kinds of wilder lifestyle decisions that allow moralists and conservative Christians to trumpet the evil of their ways. The bathhouse and group sex stereotyping might be less popular if our society showed a willingness to view their relationships in the same light as those of opposite sex couples. If it's true that Paris Hilton only makes the Dumb Blonde stereotype harder to escape, maybe it's equally true that letting gays marry might help pull us back from the stereotype of all gay men being horny sex hounds and all gay women sneaking into smoky dyke dives for nooky.

The McCain women showing up in NOH8 propaganda is one more reminder of why -- before he sank into the game of politics and less "mavericky" -- I found John McCain so compelling and appealing as a political figure. A man whose wife and daughter can come out on the opposite side of a political issue from him is a man I respect, because it means they're allowed to have differing opinions under one roof and still get along.

This, obviously, is quite different from the Palin household, where Bristol accidentally reveals her understandably crappy opinion of abstinence as an effective method of birth control and is effectively hung from the rafters. She reemerges as some kind of national spokesmodel for Abstinence Only. In the Palin home, everyone eats the same amount of food at the same time and with the same utensils, or else Todd takes them out back and skins them alive.

The story of Levi and Bristol is a stark reminder that much of the Palin Family image is no more sincere than that of Lady GaGa. Were they allowed to live their isolationist dream in the far reaches of Alaska, perhaps they would have become more nuanced people. Slightly. But instead we pull them into the vortex and they become cartoon characters.

For now, at least, Meghan McCain has avoided becoming a simple caricature. Who knows whether it can last, since predictability and simple sloganeering seems to be the only real means to popularity in politics or culture, but I'm cheering for her even if I only agree with her 1/4 of the time. If she's the future of the Republican Party, at least I won't have to loathe it and can just respectfully disagree with it.

You go girl.