Don’t You Just Hate Stupid Politics?

A couple days ago the Philadelphia Gay News made headlines by bashing Obama Barack for failing to do an interview with them. Instead of being unbiased , like ‘true’ journalist, the gay paper decided to flaunt our lesbian overlord, Hilliary Clinton and ‘blanked-out’ a section of the paper that was reserved for Obama. Now a cry-baby has emerged and he has something to tell the PGN. Check out the ridiculous exchange of email between after the jump.

“I have been incensed by an article that recently appeared in a publication called the “Philadelphia Gay News”. I won’t link to it as I don’t want to support its popularity. In essence, the article reported on an interview with Hillary Clinton and then accuses Barack Obama of avoiding the “gay media”. Although the article admitted that Obama sat down for an interview with The Advocate last year, it implied that this didn’t count because this was only in response to the McClurkin controversy.

My umbrage climbed to new heights when it was revealed that the publisher of the article/paper, Mark Segal, is a donor to the Clinton campaign!

Well, I took my umbrage to the Internet tubes and entered into correspondence with Mr. Segal. Here’s the chain so far — I’ll update it if I receive anything else from him or his cohorts.”

Dear Mr. Segal and Ms. Blazucki,

I read today your article in the Philadelphia Gay News entitled “Clinton Talks; Obama Balks”. After reading it, I felt compelled to write to you to tell you how dismayed I was to see such a slanted and accusatorial article.

Under the auspices of writing an article about your interview with Hillary Clinton, you take great pains to smear Barack Obama in a very unflattering light.

This is especially troubling, considering the fact that Mr. Segal is a donor to the Clinton campaign. You failed to disclose this important fact in your article and, as a result, unsuspecting readers might think that this article was a unbiased piece of journalism, rather than a slanted missive penned by someone who who donated at least $1,000 to the Clinton campaign.

Senator Barack Obama is an amazing advocate for LGBT rights and issues and has spoken out in various hostile venues on the importance of the repeal of DOMA and the elimination of homophobia. Senator Obama has spoken directly to out community’s issues and does not cynically view us as some demographic segment to which to pander.

I hope you will consider printing a correction to your article, which you deem so important as to prominently pre-empt all other content on your website with a note that discloses Mr. Segal’s financial relationship to the Clinton campaign.

Very truly yours

[Monitor]

The dude received a reply from Mark a day later…

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I humbly must disagree with your facts and your false sense of our editor’s position.

We state very clearly that Senator Obama spoke with The Advocate, but only after the controversy caused by his travels with an anti gay minister, and that was a limited interview. In our research, not only do we mention that interview but we ourselves were surprised to discover that the Senator has only one other interview in the gay press, which was a full interview. That was back in 2004 and given to the “Windy City Times” in Chicago.

btw, the interview and editorial were from Philadelphia Gay News, Sue O’Connell has no affiliation with PGN other then a loose configuration PGN shares with other Local LGBT publications.

A Candidate asking for our vote, must be willing to speak to our community, and not only at fund raisers where their are limited people and taking our dollars, but the full community. That can only truly be accomplished by doing what candidates do for every other community. speak to our community press.

We will continue to make our pages available to Senator Obama. It is his decision if he wishes to speak to our community. We have also suggested that their are other local LGBT publications which he might consider. He’s an inspiring man, and i hope he graces our press.

btw, the interview were from Philadelphia Gay News, Sue O’Connell has no affiliation with PGN other then a loose configuration PGN has with other Local publications.

Mark Segal
Publisher
Philadelphia Gay News

And again he received another response from Mark, but the text seem a little copy-and-pasted and didn’t answer any of the guys question. so in a response email he wrote back to Mark:

Dear Mr. Segal,

I thank you for your reply email but it appears that you might have cut-and-pasted a reply to me from an email you wrote to someone else.

As I noted in my original email, I find it troubling that the article in question did not contain a disclosure that you, Mr. Segal, are a donor to the Clinton campaign. Disclosures such as this, when there is an actual or perceptible conflict of interest, are commonplace in journalism and routinely appear when a reporter has a particular tie to the subject matter of the article.

In addition, I take strong exception to this statement in your email:

A Candidate asking for our vote, must be willing to speak to our community, and not only at fund raisers where their are limited people and taking our dollars, but the full community. That can only truly be accomplished by doing what candidates do for every other community. speak to our community press.

This is both misleading and inaccurate, for two reasons.

Firstly, Senator Obama has spoken to millions of people, including a variety of audiences hostile to LGBT causes, in televised appearances at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church and Rick Warren’s church, about the damage that homophobia causes. I challenge you to research an article on any instance where Hillary Clinton has appeared in front of a hostile audience and spoken out on LGBT issues.

Lastly, you say that Obama “must be willing to speak to our community” and, in response, I can assure you that he is, in fact, speaking to our community. The gay ghettoization of the post-Stonewall era is steadily eroding, as evidenced by the straight gentrification of previously gay strongholds such as the Castro and West Hollywood. Part and parcel of this de-ghettoization is the diminished need and market for “gay only” media. When I found word of your article on Clinton and Obama, this was the first time that I — and most of my friends — had bothered to open a “gay publication” in over 10 years. Barack Obama speaks to each and every one of us because we are all, at our root, Americans. And when Barack Obama speaks to Americans, Gay Americans, and Transgendered Americans, he doesn’t need to do so through the mouthpiece of some myopic “gay publication”. He speaks to me through ABC News. He speaks to me through The Economist. And he speaks to me through his rallies and campaign emails.

I encourage you to, at the very least, print a correction to your article that points out your conflict of interest. Additionally, I encourage you to look beyond your small one-town paper and realize that gay people no longer rely on the “gay media”. To your point, you and your ilk are NOT my community press and do not speak for millions of gays and lesbians across our country.

Your very truly,
[Monitor]

“I am Barack Obama and I approve this message”

This anonymous guy is probably Hilliary :) I can’t believe someone has enough time on their hands to just sit there and complain, or maybe we do? If there’s anything to be learned here - it’s that this anonymous guy should be running for some government office because he’s so freak’n pushy. Geez, who in the hell sends email just to have conversation with something that could possibly be a bot. Gays do the darnest thing.