In death at 92 Portland's iconic drag queen Darcelle XV gets headline coverage in local news. Take that anti-woke warriors..

 By Hal Brown

If you aren't familiar with Portland, Oregon and its LGBTQ+ scene you may not know who Darcelle XV is so you may want to look at Wikipedia here.

CC 2.0 on Wikipedia

I am often overwhelmed and always dismayed by the news about the anti-woke warriors like Ron DeSantis who thinks drag represents a toxin riskier than ricin, the book burners, and people like this.

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These feelings are mitigated at times when I realize that there are really good people holding the line against the anti-woke mob. I am hopeful when I read an article like this, coincidentally published in Salon today: 

The GOP is becoming more unhinged about LGBTQ people — which will only make them more unpopular

New research shows most Americans side with RuPaul and Kevin Bacon against Christian nationalists

While Portland's Darcelle XV dying isn't a call for celebration, living a full and fulfilling life until the age of 92 is.

This was in my email last night:

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I looked at the local TV news websites this morning and noted that this story was the top story on two of the three of them. One was KATU, a station owned by the far-right Sinclair corporation.

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This is what KGW looked like:

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This a morning it wasn't the lead on KOIN online but it might have been when it was posted late last night:

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This is a Google News search for Darcelle XV:

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Before yesterday Darcelle XV was featured in these articles:

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Here's the Gigantic Brewing story:

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All of this news coverage highlights the fact that here in progressive Portland by far the majority of us, including those in our newsrooms, are woke. Whether we are a member of the LGBTQ+ community or not we are proud to be wonderfully woke.

I feel for progressive in red states and experience a weird tinge of something akin to guilt, but not really guilt, that I live where I do. I have friends in Florida who moved there decades ago never anticipating what it would become, and like many in similar situations there and in other irredeemably red states, can't relocate to a blue state.

Addendum:

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Trump and DeSantis are no P.T. Barnums but they do play people for suckers

 By Hal Brown

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Link to article in The Independent | HUFFPOST article

With American democracy at stake in the 2024 election the kind of silliness shown above would be a mere sideshow one wouldn't really mind missing if you came late for actual circus. 

Some of my fond childhood memories are of my parents taking my sister and me to the the amazing Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus at Madison Square Garden include not only watching the great clown Emmett Kelly, the trapeze artists, the elephant parade, and lion and tiger tamers but also going to the basement to see the sideshow attractions. I remember my parents paid a quarter for the giant to hand me one on his enormous rings.

This being said, it is hard not to be intrigued by Trump's juvenile but successful obsession with calling his adversaries silly names. However, is Trump the 21st century political P.T. Barnum?

Most people, myself included, didn't know that the man frequently quoted as saying that there's a sucker born every minute (no proof he really said this) was also a politician.

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican. He was also the mayor of Bridgeport. (More on his life in politics.)

Even though he switched parties from Democratic to Republican he'd be considered a liberal Democrat today:

Barnum was significantly involved in politics. He mainly focused on race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up to the American Civil War. He opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, so he left the Democratic Party which endorsed slavery and became part of the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

As a showman he was known for perpetrating hoaxes:

In 1842 Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid. He leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator. Barnum justified his hoaxes by saying that they were advertisements to draw attention to the museum. "I don't believe in duping the public", he said, "but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them."

If you want to call him a liar rather than a hoaxer one could compare him to Trump and DeSantis. Barnum would certainly make a better president than either of these two.

Nixon was brought down by tapes. It could happen to Trump

 By Hal Brown

The original Nixon White House tape recorder is shown in an undated handout photo. (National Archives via AP)

One word stood out in this Salon article:

Judge orders Trump lawyer to reveal evidence in “criminal scheme” — and there may be tapes: report

Judge rules Trump duped his own lawyers in Mar-a-Lago case, orders attorney to testify and turn over transcriptions

Howell also ordered Corcoran to turn over records related to what she described as Trump's alleged "criminal scheme," according to the report. The report also revealed that Corcoran may have recorded his discussions with Trump, noting that the records include "handwritten notes, invoices and transcriptions of personal audio recordings."

Corcoran is the Trump lawyer that has been order to testify and turn over documents.

Here's more from Salon:

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said the evidence "could be absolutely dynamite."

"It appears that Corcoran took notes & maybe RECORDED Trump, his client (sense a pattern of mistrust by Trump lawyers?)," Litman tweeted. "If doc or taped evid shows Trump knows the subpoena is false, that is killer."

Note that the word "recorded" is in all caps.

Here's another article:

Prosecutors have said they have reason to believe efforts were made to "obstruct" their investigation. 

They want to ask Corcoran about an alleged call he had with Trump on June 24, 2022, around the time investigators were seeking to secure documents at Trump's home and video surveillance tapes of Mar-a-Lago, CBS News reported.

"Those could be very incriminating phone calls by themselves," Cunningham said. "If that material is handed over, that could be by itself enough to indict [Trump], quite possibly enough to send him to prison."

The word recorded and references to recordings immediately brought to mind the Nixon Oval Office tapes.

Hopefully everyone reading this is old enough to remember what they were or familiar with the history of Watergate. 

The release of the tape, 18 minute gap notwithstanding, led to this:

and eventually to this:

There was one recording of Trump that we know of that could have prevented him from becoming president in the first place. I don't need to reference it because I am not sure how many asterisks I should use in the word that showed how he objectified women. 

Of course nobody uses tapes these digital days, but you get the idea. It is possible that the recording from attorney Corcoran added to the recording Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (which you can lister to here) is a different case end up leading to the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.

One thing is for certain, if he goes down and ends up being given jail time, he won't be leaving Mar-a-Lago on a Marine helicopter (designated as Marine One if the president is onboard).