Randi Rhodes Is NOT Michael Savage

One of the things that annoys me about the transgender community is the conclusion jump.

It's a tendency to take a snippet of information and come up with a pessimistic scenario severely out of whack with the available evidence or presume that the jumped conclusion is true even though the weight of evidence doesn't support it.

We have that going on right now in the wake of Randi Rhodes' on-air comments slamming Ann Coulter.

…Y’know, one of my very, very gay women friends wrote me an email and said Honey, let me just explain something to you. When transsexual, when…when they’re going through the…the…the transgender op…they infuse the man with the female hormones, and they go wack-a-doodle on you. And, ah, Ann [Coulter] is obviously getting the hormones…big doses. That’s why she’s so bizarre right now.

Okay, I’m telling you, it was amazing to me to get that information.

This comment has one blogger comparing her to Michael Savage and another calling her a transphobe.

Hold up.

I agree that liberal/progressives have the potential to make negative statements about us and sometimes do. They have the potential to be transphobes. I have the knife wounds in my back from dealings and lobbying efforts with so-called allies over the last decade to prove it. Some of our progressive allies have done things that are just as nasty and neglectful of our community as anything the Reichers could throw at us.

While I don't like Randi's comment (but love her show), and have decried the tendency of genetic females and other peeps (straight and gay) to call women they don't like trannies, I like Ann Coulter even less and I've said nastier things about her in private conversation. Frankly, I think that we should smack Coulter around more frequently than we do now and feed her own words back to her.

But I think it's going a bit too far and it's a tad irresponsible when you assert that Randi Rhodes is a transphobe equivalent to Michael Savage and the evidence doesn't support it.

Michael Savage has a long history of making derogatory and racist comments on a wide range of people, including these winners about transgender peeps;

"The wages of sin are death. You're gonna cut off your willy, you're gonna wear women clothes, you're gonna hook, you're gonna wind up dead under a freeway, Johnson."

"You're never gonna make me respect the freak. I don't want to respect the freak. The freak ought to be glad they're allowed to walk around without begging for something."

One difference is that Michael Savage supports a political philosophy in which many of its adherents echo those statements. Some of them are in positions of power that enable them to carry out those wishes verbalized by him and convert them to public policy.

The other difference is that Randi is educable on transgender issues and Savage isn't.

BernNadette Stanis

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Back in 1974 a spin off show from Maude debuted on CBS called Good Times. The iconic show chronicled the trials, travails and sometimes comic pitfalls of the Evans family, who were trying to earn their piece of the American Dream while dealing with the reality of living in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago.

This was the first television show show to focus on an African-American lower income family. One of the things that made it entertaining to watch for many teenaged boys of my generation besides Jimmie Walker was BernNadette Stanis, who played Thelma Evans.

She was the Brooklyn born sistah that African-American boys of my generation drooled over. In my case I wanted to BE her, but that's a story for another time. ;)

We got to see for the first time on American television a young, smart, proud, strong-willed, beautiful and sexy sister who had dreams bigger than the environment she lived in. She was a good girl, which only enhanced the enjoyment that the fellas got when they saw her in her tastefully sexy clothes she got to wear as Thelma or showed off her graceful dance moves honed as a Julliard graduate.

The former Miss Black New York was our first sex symbol. She showed mainstream America that the stereotypes of folks that lived in the ghetto were wrong. There were beautiful peeps there in body, mind and spirit who had hopes, dreams, aspirations, integrity and class. We had the pleasure of seeing her on the small screen for seven seasons until Good Times went off the air in 1979.

BernNadette has done guest spots on various TV shows, most recently on Girlfriends in an episode when she played Maya's cousin. She was set up on a date with William, who blathered on and on in her presence about his teenage crush on Thelma.

She eventually got married and became the mother of two daughters. She is a writer and producer, and has acted in some stage plays, most notably one called Whatever Happened to Black Love that she also produced with her husband Kevin Fontana. She also had a role in He Say...She Say But What Does God Say? She's written a book on relationships called Situations 101 that she is currently promoting.

And yes fellas, BernNadette's still as beautiful, smart and sexy as she was in 1974.

Barry Bonds-Why All The Hateraid?

On the night of April 9, 1974 I was an 11 year old watching with hopeful anticipation NBC's live telecasr of the LA Dodgers-Atlanta Braves game. I was hoping I'd get to see Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth's home run record before I had to go to bed.

I really didn't need to worry about that because this was one night my parents weren't enforcing my 10 PM CST bedtime. I was watching history in the making so I was going to be allowed to stay up until it happened.

At 8:07 PM CST in the fourth inning, Al Downing threw the fastball that ended up being blasted by Aaron 385 feet over the fence at the old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium for the record breaking homer. After watching all the ensuing hoopla, celebrations and speeches I ended up crawling into bed right on schedule.

Hammerin' Hank eventually pushed that record to 755 before he retired at the end of the 1976 season as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers. At the time, there was debate on whether the new record would be broken. I knew that it would probably happen someday. I wasn't like the folks in Babe Ruth's era who thought that no one would break his record of 714 homers. I doubt that they even considered the possibility that it would be broken by an African-American.

Enter Barry Bonds. Son of a major league ballplayer and godson of legendary home run king Willie Mays. Would seem to be the perfect story for baseball history.

But since Bonds has had a tempestuous relationship with sportswriters over his career, he has been reviled and criticized by them for what seems like ages. And since many of those sportswriters are of a lighter pigmentation, the negative rhetoric coming from their mouths about him borders on racist Pavlovian foaming at the mouth.

He has the opposite reputation with his fellow major league ballplayers.

He's been accused of taking steroids, but his critics conveniently gloss over the fact that he's never failed a drug test. All they have are circumstantial accusations of use. Before I judge Barry Bonds, I want more than circumstantial evidence so that I can make a reasoned and thoughtfully logical decision on whether he did or didn't and then react accordingly. Until that evidence comes forth from the 'He Cheated' crowd, I'm going to continue to enjoy watching him blast home runs into McCovey Cove or out of whatever major league ballpark he happens to be playing in.

I've gotten to the point that I'm sick of the monotonous Barry bashing, the calls for stripping him of the record, the calls for Major League baseball Commissioner Bud Selig not to be there the night (or day) he hits home run 756, the inflated, biased opinions of (white) sportswriters that he's cheated, blah blah blah.

I'm a little angry and disappointed that after all the hate mail and death threats that Hank Aaron received in the run up to his breaking Babe Ruth's record 37 years ago, that he of all people would have empathy for Bonds' plight. It's gleefully being reported that Aaron says that he won't be in whatever major league stadium Barry breaks his record in, even if it's in Atlanta.

So why are y'all and much of the general public chomping on generous portions of Hater Tots when it comes to Barry Bonds? He hit homer number 751 last night in Cincinnati and is only five homers shy from breaking the record.

The bottom line is I don't hear any hue and cry from those same white sports writers and many white baseball fans to strip Mark McGwire of his 1998 single season season home run record of 70 homers (which Barry broke when he hit 73 dingers in 2001). He was evasive in front of Congress back in 2005 when called to testify on the issue along with Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro.

It's known McGwire used andro, which was LEGAL at the time but later banned. Palmeiro tested positive a few months AFTER stating he'd never used them during that March 2005 hearing.

Where's all your outrage about that? Where's your outrage at Major League Baseball and Commissioner Selig for allowing it to happen in the first place?

Barry Bonds is one of the greatest players of all time and it may be a few decades before you see another like him. Seven time NL MVP. Voted once again as a starter on the All-Star Team. 22 years in the majors.

You Barry bashers need to come clean on the fact that some of you are conveniently dumping all your frustrations on his doorstep for what's happened in baseball concerning the steroid issue and it's being aided and abetted by some peeps who have personal axes to grind with him.

The 'Hate on Barry' mantra isn't endearing to many African-American baseball fans like myself. In a time when major league baseball is frantically searching for ways to bring African-Americans back to the ballparks and get them interested in the game again, you're trashing an African-American superstar who's on the cusp of breaking a historic record.

I don't want to hear another negative word uttered from a sportswriter or a non African-American baseball fan about Barry Bonds. It's obvious when it comes to him y'all are about as 'fair and balanced' as Faux News on the subject.