Debates Give Kerry Last Chance to Make Case

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Bush and Sen. John Kerry open a series of debates on Thursday, voters will get their first chance to directly compare the White House candidates -- and Kerry will get perhaps his last chance to convince Americans he is up to the job."

His last chance?? It will still be five weeks and two debates before the election! The article quotes a political science professor saying that the debates (plural) are Kerry's last chance, but Reuters flips that right around into the first debate being Kerry's "perhaps last" chance.

What liberal media?

The Washington Post stayed with an initially-closeted gay teenager in Sand Springs for a year to see what it's really like to be gay in "Real America." The kid in question was harassed at school until he dropped out, is constantly pressured by his mother not to be who he is, and presents an impression of feeling inadequate in every dimension because he's not like his Oklahoma friends and because he's not like "sophisticated" gay kids from the coasts.

Still, he is 17, full of impulses. One day in PE class, a good-looking preppy guy on the bleachers strips off his T-shirt in the hot gymnasium. Before Michael can catch himself, his eyes drift. Stop looking at me, the other boy tells Michael in a voice loud enough to humiliate. This is the turning point at school. His secret is out.

"He was wanting to kick my ass," Michael later recalls. "I told my dad about it. He said, 'I'd kick your ass, too, if you were looking at me.' " Officially, ass-kicking is not allowed on school grounds since Oklahoma adopted anti-bullying laws. But Michael's life at Charles Page High turns miserable. He is called a faggot in the hallways. For his own safety, he starts avoiding places where he could be trapped.

While the rest of the country is laughing over "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Michael stops using the restroom during the seven-hour school day.

It's a four-part series, with this guy's part apparently concluding tomorrow. This is what happens to the people who are the objects of "Christian Love." If you think people like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell are not evil incarnate for having an "honest religious belief" that gay people should just stop being gay, read this article and learn what it does to the people they harass - sometimes to their death - just so they can continue to stay in power by leading the hate.

Paraphrasing the gospels, James Dobson's going to be pretty damn shocked when he's burning in Hell and asking, "Lord, lord, why is Matthew Shepard with you and I'm in such torment?"

It's annual tradition to hit the Oklahoma State Fair with friends one day, and Saturday was the day. It's always quite an...experience.

A few years ago, the State Fair Board turned over, and as far as anyone can tell, the new board is a bunch of people who had never really been to the fair before they got on the board. As far as I can gather, they went for the first time in 1999 or 2000 and appear to have been appalled by most of what they saw: lots of people, lots of vendors, too few bathrooms, too few trash cans. So they set out to fix it. The first year of the new fair board, all the ads for the State Fair of Oklahoma were about "Clean Bathrooms!" and "More Trash Cans!" I guess that's fine, but I'll bet most of the people going to the fair weren't going to see trash cans or bathrooms.

They paid for all that, though, and the new logo, changing the name to the "Oklahoma State Fair," and the rest by raising prices for admission and for vendors. They raised vendor prices so much that, the next year, the fair barely had half the vendors of the year before. It's bounced back about 20% since then, but most of the buildings still have about two-thirds as many booths as in the 1990s, and the "Made In Oklahoma" building has some kind of weird kiddie-agropolis instead of exhibits in its main hall.

On the bright side, they've completely redone the old "Modern Living" building as the "Centennial" building (preparing for the state's centennial in 2007), sponsored more exhibits, kept the good food vendors, and kept it clean. They also ditched the sponsorship of the Space Tower and Monorail and made them free rides for any fairgoer. (They told us last year was the Monorail's last year, that the track was going to be taken down, but it was there again this year. I felt betrayed.)

On the darker side, they've done this by eliminating six days of the fair. Instead of 17 days as usual (from a Friday through two weeks from the following Sunday), the Oklahoma State Fair opened on Thursday, September 16 (why?), and ends today, September 26. Only being open for two weekends (with both OU and OSU home games on the first one) makes it harder to attend, so Saturday was pretty crowded.

There were street signs up that read "Oklahoma State Fair guests are #1," and I believed it, because the parking situation was a big #2. I went in through gate #21 and they had me drive around the dirt fields and parking lots for about a mile before parking me near gate #25, letting other people merge in all the while. I wound up about half a mile from the gate, and had a similar walk back even from another entrance. A small idea: if the parking is full at gate #21, don't let people drive in there?

Other than that, it was a decent day of Fair Fun. I got a neck pillow for my chair, and a quick upper-body massage from some very strong Chinese masseurs. (The sign said it was Chinese stress relief, so I'm just assuming they were either Chinese or stressed.)

I ate some local fudge, and cheesecake dipped in chocolate on a stick. I didn't eat anything deep-fried, unlike some people I could name. I'll say this, though: I saw a deep-fried Twinkie on a stick, and I saw the stick removed, and the "creme" filling oozed out like something in a movie they'll never show on basic cable. I'll have nightmares.