Though you wouldn't know it to look at Melissa's top ten hits -- er hit -- she's been around for many, many years. Sadly for her that not only means she ended up with her current face, it also means there's a history trailing her. Melissa 2008, meet Melissa 2001:
I liked that we chose Rolling Stone as the place to share our story. It's a liberal magazine and there was no fear of someone going to interview the Reverend So-and-So about same-sex marriage and parenting. I knew Jann would handle the story right.
In 2001, writing her remedial non-tell-all The Truth Is . . ., Melissa felt that her 2000 decision to sort-of-tell her family's story on the cover of Rolling Stone was a good decision because no one would interject "Reverend So-and-So [talking] about same-sex marriage and parenting." But it's okay with her, this year, if the homophobic Warren presides over the inauguration.
Melissa is and has always been a natural born liar. For those who don't grasp that, quickly, she knew Jann was the one to go with because Jann is gay and semi-out-of-the-closet. She appeared on the cover with David Crosby and his wife, with her wife and their kids. And, thing is, she and her wife were already splitting up. Yeah, while Melissa and family were on the cover of Rolling Stone beaming, the relationship was already in the toilet and she and Julie were breaking up. Melissa admits the last part in her book. So maybe in 2011, Melissa will admit that it wasn't right for Rick Warren to be invited to the inauguration as a guest of honor?
Who knows and, at this point, who gives a damn. Melissa Etheridge's sad and pathetic ass is as over as her career.
But what she illustrates is a refusal to call out the Christ-child Barack. A desire to serve up more Chicken Sop for the Soul.
And that illustrates how bad things are going to be for the next four years if the left doesn't get its damn act together.
Here's how it's going to work repeatedly, Barack will toss some group under the bus (as he did throughout his primary and general election campaigns). And his enablers like Etheridge (and so many others) will rush to assure it's no big deal, it's not really important, and we need to focus on the big picture.
Here's the big picture, the left supports men and women, straights, gays, bi and trans, Latino, White, African-American, Asian-American, bi- and multi-racial. If the left remains true to its roots its a huge grouping that has considerable power.
When we allow certain groups to be chipped away, we lose our power.
When we say homophobia's no big deal and, sure, invited a homophobia to preside at the inauguration, we're being disrespectful and hateful. That "we" can -- as Melissa Etheridge proves -- include gays and lesbians themselves. And when Barack can have us exclude one another, he's got no large group who can hold him in check, who can object to what he does (which reportedly includes his exploring creating a domestic version of the CIA).
While Etheridge licked and fondled Barack's balls as though he were her hero Bruce last week, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Green Party and World Can't Wait spoke out against the invitation to homophobe and sexist Rick Warren. It's going to take all of that and more to have a government be responsive to a people.