This By You Is Change?

It's no secret that I think the national gay leadership has gotten much too cozy with the establishment. This applies particularly to their tendency to give Obama a pass on just about everything. Jim Burroway has interesting commentary on that, from a former Clinton staffer:

I was one of the 12 first-ever openly gay White House staff members to take up work the day following President Clinton’s inauguration. His respect for gay Americans was evident even when setbacks and disappointments slowed the change agenda, and he certainly did not deliberately nor unnecessarily scheme to sell out gay Americans on his first day in office to score points with opponents. Ordinary gay Americans will need to hold this new Administration to the tenets of its campaign and to the idealism of its Inaugural language — and to a fundamental expectation for respect. The Warren invitation remains a disgrace and a blemish on day one of the new Administration. Shame on Obama.

Aside from the sheer stupidity of giving that kind of forum to a man who is not going to support you no matter what, to think that the last-minute addition of an "equivalent" from our side -- and don't try to tell me that the inclusion of Gene Robinson was planned early on (if so, why keep it such a secret until now?), the idea that Obama is cold-blooded enough to sacrifice the interests of a major constituency in the pursuit of a fool's errand leads me to wonder just what we can expect on things that really do make a difference to a lot of people in this country? (I'm not really surprised at the "cold-blooded" part. I think you can figure that out.)

As for the national leadership -- well, it's because of this kind of vision that the Log Cabin Republicans are broke. Joe Salmonese and the rest should be all over Obama's ass, but then, they've been following the curve -- and not even the right curve -- for a couple of decades now.