The Provincetown holiday break was lovely.  Especially since 

after initial losses, I won our in-house vacation Scrabble tourney in a close final day best-of smackdown.  The whole town is still agog over the transformation of our former soviet era Grand Union into the modern, spic and span Stop and Shop.  There’s a cold cuts concierge in the deli! I have always thought that in the dead of winter there should be afternoon tea dances in the produce department. They’ve got an intercom.  The S&S management might be amenable.

And as if that were not enough mind-blowing news, there is new dog park just past the Temple of Cumberland Farms.  Shankpainter Road is where it’s happening! The recently completed Bark Park is a new gathering spot where even in the teeth of a New Year’s gale dogs were seen romping while owners huddled kvelling about the S&S. It’s so much fun, non-dog owners have brought toy stuffed dog animals, set them down and tried to pass.  The dog park has cut down on the numbers of dogs off the leash out on town trails.  No more  “He won’t hurt you!” shouts as a chocolate lab does a wild card tackle.  

 We took great walks, despite my Indian girlfriend’s grousing, “Winter is not part of my culture.” We had great dinners with hardy year-rounder friends and holiday visitors.  Every dinner conversation featured the inevitable dissection of the Rick “the P is silent” Warren inaugural invite and biotch slap.   That topic followed the how-did-we-lose-Prop-Eight discussion. I would point out that CA is on the verge of bankruptcy.  My message is more cautionary than causal: mess with the gays and your economy could suffer.  

Despite Melissa Etheridge’s best Bono for the Homos effort, gay people and our straight friends and families are still not hopping on the Saddleback.  We will not be appeased, not even if Rick Warren officiated at the wedding of Oprah and Gayle in the Oval Office.  That might do it for me. Nah.  Not even that. 

Due to forty mile an hour winds and drifting snow we had to cancel our annual New Year’s beach fire.  Each new year at sunset we have a beach fire and anyone can write down things they want to get rid of from the old year and toss them in the fire.  For the first time this year we had even added an internet component to our ritual.  Out of town friends emailed me their lists of disposables and, without looking at them shooting out of the printer, swear, I quickly origamied them into fire balls.  

On a calm January 2, Urvashi and I took all the lists out on the jetty and burned them up.  Black ash filigree danced and sizzled on the white snow.   It’s back to work and school!  Happy New Year.

So much for no-drama Obama. This holiday season we got an early gift stuffed in our fishnet stocking. Clinton at least waited until after his inauguration to throw us under the Straight Talk Express bus with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

As you have no doubt heard, Barack Obama invited Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Warren is the new breed of kinder gentler mega-pastor, who, and it pains him to say this, opposes women’s choice and homosexuals. Other Talibangelicals* are furious at Warren for accepting the invitation.  Or envious. Which is a sin.

In an explanation of laughably transparent disproportion Obama said, “Look, he invited me to speak at his church a few years ago.  So I’m inviting him to speak at my inauguration.”  Why not just have a hoops play date instead?

Warren had sermonized from his Southern California pulpit in favor of Prop Hate using the standard child abuse, bestiality and pedophilia lies. When gay protestors picketed his house after the election, he told a heart-warming story about how he had gone out to them and offered them coffee and doughnuts.  Call me ungrateful, but I’d rather have my civil rights than a French cruller.

We, the 70% of the gay vote for Obama are told it’s no big deal.  It’s not a cabinet appointment; it’s just a prayer. And p.s. we didn’t get a gay cabinet appointment.  We are told to wake up and smell the political coffee.  This is what it means to reach out to the other side. We are told to grow up.

And we gay people keep saying we’re just like straight people.  We are not.  We are much more tolerant.  We have been putting up with their tiresome phobia for long enough. What are they afraid of?  Why must they drag out Bible stories to justify their fears? Quit drinking.  Stop watching online porn for a minute.  Go to therapy. Quit taking it out on us.

Let’s have some real gay balls after this inauguration.  The gay movement is too big to fail. That’s exactly what they are afraid of.

*Thank you Jim David

Just got word of another piece of coal from Benedict the Pope for our gay stockings this holiday season. I heard if from the smoky voiced Sylvia Polgolla in Rome, so it must be true. To review: as far as the Vatican is concerned, homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.   In his cheery holiday message, the unmarried Pope said saving heterosexuality from gay marriage is as critical as saving the rainforest. No word yet on whether he will be sharing his papal PowerPoint with Rick Warren for his inaugural invocation.

That a two thousand year old Christian identity movement is so threatened by a forty-year-old gay identity movement indicates to me that we must be doing something right.

One group doing things right is the Victory Fund. In early December I had the privilege of working at their Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute in Washington, DC.  The conference is designed to train and support LGBT candidates across the country. In addition to meeting gay elected officials, attendees heard from strategists and practitioners about the post-election political landscape. Representative Barney Frank, Chair of the Finance Committee took time from his work on the auto bailout to speak to conference attendees.  He assessed the LGBT progress and was optimistic about passage of several LGBT civil rights bills.

Of course Barney Frank made his remarks before Barack Obama’s Rick Warren announcement.  Among the things we learned from the Bush years is that when homophobia continues to be sanctioned at the highest level of government, it is an excuse for bad behavior among the very rank and file.

In crises like these, I’ve learned to just keep doing my job, which I am grateful for every day.  I just finished a CD recording of my third book, presciently titled, if I do say so myself, I Told You So.  The book and CD will be out in spring, 2009.  It was nice to be in a sound proofed booth wearing a giant sound-canceling headset.  I wanted to stay forever.  They finally had to ask me to leave because the booth was booked for another recording session.

When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand, go to the Apollo for the reunion of Labelle.  That’s what we did.  In the middle of a snowstorm.  Whoopi Goldberg brought the outrageously styling Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti Labelle to the stage to thunderous welcome.  They had kicked out six songs when the storm caused a power surge that shut down the sound system.  So they said. I think Nona caused it when she took her jacket off and flexed her 64-year-old biceps.  Or it could have been a sustained Patti note.  After two hours of Con Ed trying and pleasant milling fueled by free drinks, the Apollo management rescheduled for the next night.  We cancelled everything to be there.

An hour before we were going to make the trek again to Harlem, Nona called and said that Whoopi could not make it to introduce them again. Nona Hendryx asked me, moi, Kate Clinton, to introduce them.  Um.  Yes.  The Apollo was packed again, and I got to step out on that historic stage, welcome everybody back, and introduce Labelle.  Pinch me and funk the pope.  What a great way to end my 2008 tour.

Apparently Chicago was getting a little too big for its britches about their favorite son and it got a big old biotch slap. First Oprah announced that she literally had gotten too big for her britches.  She admitted - and what tacky person asked? - that she has hit the double centenary pound mark.  I’m sorry you feel so bad about it, Oprah, and for health’s sake you probably should try to shed a few pounds, but heck you are one big beautiful black woman, so don’t get all shamey, do what you can and look gorgeous in the meantime. It might be karma for that wheel barrel of fat you had carted out on stage a while back.

Then Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, with the very slim resume, got carted off for allegedly trying to sell Barrack Obama’s=2 0vacant Senate seat. It’s not like it’s never been done before, but you have to admire this guy’s level of transparency. Rod married Chicago alderman Dick Mell’s potty-mouthed daughter and rose to governor on a reform plank. Like the reform-minded guv from Alaska he got bored with the job and sought a national platform.  There are no transcripts of Palin trying to sell Sen. Ted Steven’s old seat.  Yet. Though we face huge state deficits, I hope my NY Governor Patterson doesn’t try to sell off Hillary Clinton’s senate seat.  And who knew being governor was such a giant yawn?

The “expletive laced” transcripts made young Rod sound like he was off his meds. The subpoenaed Team of Rovals linked the scandal to Barack Obama, Tony Rezko and maybe Boss Tweed.  With audacity of hype FOX news denounced the pay-to-play demands of the governor and wanted off with his bleeping bushy head.  Meantime the slobbying, mendacious GOP sees “ethics” as their mantra for the next election.  Gag me with a forklift.

It is sad that selling vacant senate seats is seen as a viable revenue stream in this economy. Desperate times.  While America shopped, our unregulated capital markets turned into ponzi scum and high stakes poker parlors.  Desperate measures.  The damage continues to trickle down and very good, decent, hardworking people, who shower before and after work, are being hammered.

Ironically gay and straight are equal in the great leveling juggernaut of this recession. The LGBT community is reeling. Individual memberships, donations and corporate funding have dried up and LGBT groups are cutting staff or going under. The Day Without Gay is real and it’s here and threatens to turn into weeks and months.

Now more than ever it’s time fo r our own version of pay-to-play. In whatever year-end giving we can afford we need to support our LGBT centers and organizations, local, state, national and international.  We also need to support straight organizations run by courageous out LGBT leaders. We need to lean on our straight allies to pay up with us.

It’s time for some Pay-to-Gay.

The weather’s getting colder, but the movies are getting hotter. Get the Moviefone Toolbar and see Moviefone’s holiday movie guide today.

It is two weeks since the election of Barack Obama.  It is still true.  It makes me smile every morning.  Then I read the paper about the Armageddon that is our financial system and it harshes my mellow.  But after CA, AZ, FL Prop Hates, it has been a shallow mellow.

Nothing like a little road trip to get the spirits up.  The night before I left, I joined 16,000 of my closest, maddest friends at a protest at the Mormon Church near Lincoln Center in Manhattan.  The Morons had spent 25 million in support of Prop Hate. Teamed with the Catholic Church, they are like the Hate Fed, bailing out immoral ballot initiatives.   My sign said, “Tax This Church.” Another witty sign said, “Et tu Donnie and Marie?”  My favorite was, “Joseph Smith had 20 wives and I can’t have one.” It felt good to scream.  I saw old friends, but the crowd was mostly young.  And they were ripping mad.

I flew on a tiny plane in our unregulated airline industry, to Pittsburgh, the football craziest town I’ve ever been in, and did a show at the University sponsored by the Rainbow Alliance.  The students were still high from election night.  They told stories of the spontaneous partying in the streets on election night and they too were ripping mad about the anti-gay wins.

The next night I performed in Alexandria, in the newly blue state of Virginia.   The Group of 20 was in DC and traffic was at a standstill for people trying to get to the show.  The summit had been hastily assembled by our Lame Fuck who welcomed the participating countries with a feeble speech about free trade. The principles of our economy are sound. Could he leave now?  I had hoped that Carla Bruni, the breathy gorgeous new wife of France’s President Sarkozy would steal away and come to the show. Mais non.

Tant pis.  The Birchmere is a big sprawling roadhouse of a club and it was wild.  For the last eight years DC residents have been under house arrest.  That night they were free and raucous and ready to party.  The show was a pure joy.  They are past ready for a new administration and are planning to party with millions on Inauguration Day.

They too experienced the kick in the gut that was Prop Hate, but seemed cautiously optimistic about not having an avowed homophobe in chief.  Like many other cities they were planning big gay protests for the next day.

Like General MacArthur, but much cuter, I promised them I would return. I reminded them, as I remind you now, that the night before the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama we are going to meet at the Ellipse at 6pm to sage the bad spirits out of the White House. Be there or be square.

While the American family and our extended international family were whooping it up for the historic Obama victory, I banged pans and wept for joy with the best of them. But I also  had that dissociated, not-quite-part-of-feeling I had at family gatherings when I was young. Actually, I have never felt gayer.

Make no mistake.  Election night 2008 was an amazing reparative night, a triumphant trifecta signaling the end of Nixon’s southern strategy, the Reagan Revolution and the Bush Regime.   If Bush could have considered his first presidential selection and his second slim election as mandates, then we can certainly call the Obama victory a landslide.

It was a landside and it crushed us, as California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas passed anti-gay ballot initiatives.  It was a bittersweet night.

We learned three lessons.

First, progressive straight people do not, will not, see the moral equality of gay people.  Except for the efforts of the ACLU, the rights of gay people are rarely championed by progressives.  The moral sanctity of their marriage is inexplicably undermined by gay marriage.  In the forty years since Stonewall we have achieved only a hollow, virtual equality.  Like Sarah Palin, we too can be thrown under the bus.

Second, religion is the opposite of the people. While Black Churches certainly helped pass Prop Hate, the White Churches can not get off Dred Scott free.   In an image-burnishing move, multi-wived Mormons poured millions into Prop Hate. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, with its zero experience of marriage, contributed thousands. Democracy and religion are a bad mix.

Third, gay people cannot win if our own people do not care.  If gay people remain partially or fully closeted, and do not openly support gay organizations which train those much maligned but highly effective “community organizers”, we will never win full equality. It has been forty years since the Stonewall Riots and we still do not think, yes, we can.

So excuse me, if I seem an ungracious party-pooper, quickly becoming more bitter than sweet. If gay people are not full American citizens, let’s stop paying taxes and re-invest in ourselves. It is past time for pro-active strategies, for our own ballot initiative to make divorce illegal and all divorced people disenfranchised felons. It is time for a general strike or a rainbow flu.  Until further notice, all gay people should go rogue.

My friend Sally had a special request for her birthday party – fondu! Get your sticks out, that pot of cheese soup is making a comeback. During the party, I noticed some scary double dipping. It’s the beginning of flu season, but I said nothing. Gals were yacking and dipping bread squares, meat cubes, veggies and I didn’t want to bring them down. I dipped my napkin once by mistake. I was waiting for the pot of chocolate at the end of the rainbow. More dipping of marshmellowish squares and fruit, though I would have been happy to pick the pot off the sterno flame, drop my head back and chug it.

How perfect that the day after the fondu fete, I would fly to Wisconsin, proud home of, you guessed it, the Cheesheads! I flew into Madison, Wisconsin and was picked up there by the director of the Young Theater at The University of Wisconsin, Whitewater campus. Ken Kohberger has produced me in Western Illinois and Keene, New Hampshire. We caught up as we drove through a beautiful fall landscape that reminded me of my upstate New York home.  Minus the cheese.

That afternoon I met several LGBT student activists from Impulse, the LGBT student organization and the Pride Center. We chatted about their activism, coming out, campus tolerance and my ancient history. The audience at the show that night in their gorgeous theater was a lovely mix of students, subscription series patrons, faculty and LGBTers from all over Wisconsin. Never say anything less than a flat out rave for Bret Favre, former Green Bay Packers QB.  We learn and grow.

The next day it was off to dear old Detroit for a show at the wonderful new LGBT Center in Ferndale, MI. The center is about a year old, a huge improvement over the former space and ably directed by Leslie Thompson. MI has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and is really hurting. Fundraising, a challenge any time, is especially difficult now. But the crowd crammed into the performance space at the center, after taking tours of the many wonderful floors of the building and we squeezed some more money out of them for the Center. I met more of the community of center-supporters at an after-party at a local brewery. I missed the cheese fondu, but met lots of long-time and new followers.

I just wrapped up a month of Super-Tuesdays at the Gotham Comedy Club here in New York. It’s been a month of bad to worse on Wall Street, so it was good to see people come out to the club for a few laughs.  It was good to be together.

After twenty months and a billion dollars, it’s finally on to Election Day. My adrenal system is shot and I don’t think it’s all the fondu! Vote early! Not often. That would make those anti-Acorn nutjobs blow up. Be positive! And plan a Fondu Victory party! Think Yes-Vember. We can.

In between two of my monthlong October run of Super-Tuesday shows at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York, I happily headed off to Massachusetts. No not to get married, silly. For Women’s Week! After four glorious days of being in Provincetown, it is tough to get back to New York City. After being with all those thousands of lesbians, I do enjoy presuming that every woman I see here in NYC is a lesbian. We like to think the best of people.

It is probably just as well I left Ptown when I did. The weeping and wailing is upon the Red Sox land after they lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Does Sarah Palin’s pastor know about the devil thing?

I arrived in Ptown on Wednesday evening, just in time to stop in and meet LA producer, Andrea Meyerson’s gang of gals on a Women on a Roll field trip. They were dining at the glorious Red Inn overlooking the bay, dappled silver by a full moon. It was great to meet the LA gals and some of the wonderful new lesbian comics.

Thursday was my 184th Annual Kate Clinton touch football game at the park at the base of the Pilgrim Monument. We had a spirited game, no one was injured, though the next day a gimpy lesbian limped by, while her femme partner glowered at me. We had excellent color commentary by roving bands of lesbo-comics. They all used the bullhorn my girlfriend gave me for my birthday. She thinks of it as a sexual device.

We had a brief half-time show by NYC’s Dykes on Mikes and a visit from Michelle Clunie (Queer As Folk) and Erin Daniels (The L Word), stars of the locally produced play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove They were gracious, signed autographs and raised money for breast cancer awareness not only at our game but also at events throughout the weekend.

Though the weather turned unseasonably cold, the weekend was a giant warm success with shows and parties all over town. It was good to be together. It felt like circling up the wagons and hunkering down with friends around a campfire while all around us winds of financial stress and campaign uncertainty buffeted our tiny bivouac of comity.

I left, not necessarily rested, but refreshed and ready for the final push of the campaign, grateful I have a job in this economy and hopeful about the change to come.

Happy Vernal Equinox!

I come from a family of winkers. I swear if my family had been on the Titanic, the last thing I would have seen my Dad do as he sank beneath the cold, dark sea would have been one last wink and gone.

The wink could be quick and crisp, a nano-flick that moved few other facial muscles. It could be slow and tight, a cyclopean clench that suggested Bell’s Palsy. It had several speeds. It was intentional or automatic. It was a family facial semaphore with several meanings: “Good morning.” “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” “I’m just joshing you.” “We’re in this together.” It was by turns welcoming, mocking, denying, reassuring, or conspiratorial.

Like many family tics, we didn’t not notice it, until a friend visited for the weekend and asked after, “Why do you all wink at each other?” “We do?” “Are you kidding? All the time. Walking into a room. When someone else is talking. At first I thought your brother was flirting with me at dinner. He just wanted the mashed potatoes.”

Despite my long experience decoding winks, I just caught the very tail end of Sarah Palin’s v-p debate wink as one perfectly made-up eyelid rose again to the open position. “Did she just wink?” I asked. I had been momentarily distracted, not by daubing my Palin Bingo card [I did not win] but by turning to shush my galpal. As I turned back, I saw the vapor trail of what I knew was a wink. Damn!

Moderator Gwen Ifill, had been drudged all week as partisan because she’s writing a book about the new generation of black politicians. That was no reason to break her ankle. Ifill did her level best, though she did not ask one question about immigration or abortion. Could Palin have pulled another answer out of her energy package? Palin, the inexperienced Reaganette, attempted to “there-you-go-again” Biden’s experience and establish rapport not with the politicos out there on the east coast but with the mind-if-I-call-you-Joe-Six-Packs in Smallville, USA.

Like Biden, I also got choked up during the debate. Sadly the only moment of unanimity of the night was that both candidates oppose gay marriage. Apparently the B of LGBT stands for bipartisan, not bisexual. Palin practically wiped her hands and chirped tolerantly, “I’m so glad we agree on that Joe.” After all our LGBT support and hard work for the Obama-Biden ticket, it was sickening. Mind if I call you chicken, Joe?

What I find staggering is that, in the midst of wars and financial collapse, we are talking seriously and at all about McCain’s Folly. Sarah Palin is a folksy, well-trained, Wikipedia-deep, by-George-she’s-got-it, bush-to-nowhere. Fine for governor up there in Alaska, but not for vice-president down here on planet earth. She is way over her head. She will wink just before we all sink.