Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Roll Away June 2015

Wilmore Goes Left on Marriage Equality Haters

Let the word salads begin! In case you may have missed any of it, there's been plenty of twisting and turning of the good kings English including Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s scathing dissent in the
historic gay marriage ruling last week. In a word, Scalia's applesauce exclamation point was topped by his "jiggery pokery" outrage to it all. Just to let you in on its meaning, the term refers to matters that are dishonest, deceitful behavior or business or just plain old "trickery."

However, “Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore saved his best shots on Monday for Justice Clarence Thomas’ just-as-vile conservative ramblings, in which he used a slavery analogy to make the case for how the government had overstepped.
 
He wrote: “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved.”

“Do you even know what slavery is?” Wilmore asked. “Slavery is the complete stripping of humanity and dignity. That’s the point of slavery. When do you think slaves were whipped? Whenever they tried to dare to show any humanity or dignity.”

Chelsea Clinton's speaking fee: $65,000

      
When Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees proved too steep for one public university last year, school
officials reached for a less expensive alternative: her daughter, Chelsea.

According to a report from The Washington Post, representatives from the former secretary of state’s office gave officials at the University of Missouri-Kansas City a $275,000 quote for a one-time speaking fee.
 
“Yikes!” one official emailed another, according to the report. Rather than paying that much, UMKC opted to pay Chelsea $65,000 for a brief appearance in February 2014. The former first daughter spoke for 10 minutes before participating in a 20-minute Q&A session and posing for pictures.
According to the report, the school also considered booking less expensive alternatives, including Gloria Steinem ($30,000), Cokie Roberts ($40,000), Tina Brown ($50,000) and Lesley Stahl ($50,000).

A spokesman for Chelsea Clinton told the Post that as with her mother’s paid speeches at universities, she directed her speaking fee toward the Clinton Foundation.
A spokesman for the university said that Clinton’s fee was paid through private donations.
 

OutSports’ Cyd Zeigler to be honored for groundbreaking coverage

by Chuck Colbert

The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) will honor Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of OutSports.com, with its 2015 Lisa Ben Award on June 25 at a Los Angles fundraiser.

The Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Feature Coverage was established to honor a journalist whose body of work is distinguished by insight and impact through engaging features on LGBT individuals, the LGBT community, or LGBT issues. It bears the pen name of Edith Eyde, the creator and distributor of the first known U.S. lesbian publication and the inaugural winner of the award in 2014.

Cyd Zeigler,
co-founder of OutSports.com
Like Eyde, Zeigler identified an area of LGBT life that was largely uncovered by mainstream media and provided a service to the community. Together with co-founder Jim Buzinski, Zeigler has grown OutSports.com, founded in 1999, into a must-read for stories of LGBT athletes and sports issues and broadened the general public’s understanding of LGBT people in sport. He is credited with breaking several coming out stories involving now well-known athletes like retired NBA player John Amaechi and retired NFL player Wade Davis. OutSports was purchased by Vox Media in 2013, incorporating it into the sports website SB Nation.

“Cyd Zeigler’s such an important pioneer when it comes to telling the real story about the LGBT community and sports," said, NLGJA president Jen Christensen. "There’s a reason LGBT athletes come to him first with their stories. Our community is so lucky to have such an able hand steering this important narrative for both current LGBT athletes and for future pros who will now know that they can have some confidence that they can be out as there have been others before them."

Reached by telephone, Zeigler said that when he and Buzinski started writing about LGBT people in sports, “Nobody wanted to talk about it.” That is to say, “Gay people didn’t want to talk about sports, and people in sports didn’t want to talk about LGBT issues,” Zeigler explained. “Today that is totally transformed, and it seems as if OutSports has been at the center of closing the gap between those two worlds. Today I go to gay parties where people are talking about sports, and people in sports media want to talk about gay issues all the time.”

“One of the most powerful pieces for me has been the athletes reaching out to me to tell their stories, and being able to craft the coming out of so many people,” he said, naming college basketball player Derrick Gordon, professional football player Michael Sam and Stephen Alexander. The latter is the country’s first openly transgender high school coach, in Glocester, R.I.

“These stories have been so impactful to me, and I feel lucky to have been able to write them,” Zeigler said. Receiving the Ben Award, he said, “is a nice acknowledgment of the contributions to making that happen.”

A former associate editor of the New York Blade and sports editor for Genre magazine, Zeigler has written for a number of news outlets including Sports Illustrated and the New York Times and has appeared on ESPN, FOX Sports Radio, and CNN. He is a regular contributor on CBS Sports Radio. He is the co-author with Buzinski of “The Outsports Revolution: Truth and Myth in the World of Gay Sports.”

A Massachusetts native, Zeigler is a 1995 graduate of Stanford University where he studied communications. He also contributes to The Huffington Post, Out magazine, Playboy, and The Advocate.
 



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