Bob Moser
Bob Moser is senior editor at National Journal and author of Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority (Times Books). He is the former editor of The Texas Observer, senior editor/writer at The Nation, and executive editor of The American Prospect.
Recent Articles
Daily Meme: Fred Phelps, God's Gift to Gay Rights
Bob MoserMar 21, 2014You've no doubt heard that Fred Phelps, the terror of Topeka, Kansas, and patriarch of the "God Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist church, died late Wednesday night at 84. While Phelps came to infamy picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard and countless other gay men, that was only the beginning of his family church's two-decade hate tour across the country, as Jay Michaelson reminds us: " they expanded their targets to include women, Jews, Barack Obama, and eventually, anyone associated with the United States itself —including dead soldiers, whose distraught relatives were mystified to find fire-breathing fundamentalists shouting at funerals." For the LGBT rights movement, there's no question that Phelps was, in Richard Kim's words, "a useful bigot." Phelps exposed the lie behind the old Christian copout, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." He said it himself: “It’s pure nonsense to say that God loves the sinner but hates the sin. He hates the sin, and he hates the sinner...
Daily Meme: Of Ferns and Bellwethers
Bob MoserMar 11, 2014Pity the poor political pundit. We're eight months away from a mid-term election that will likely change nothing in the partisan political balance, the Conservative Political Action Conference and its clown car of presidential contenders has closed up shop, the do-nothing Congress persists in doing nothing—but even so, clickable content must be concocted. And so, today, we have much (much, much) ado about ... ferns and bellwethers. In case you've been in a blissful media-free zone all day, the headline news of the day is that President Obama went on Zack Galifianakis's faux talk show, "Between the Ferns." The commander-in-chief did a respectable job of deadpanning and "droning" on about healthcare.gov. If you are so inclined, you can read virtually identical reviews and analyses of the six-minute spot at several million outlets including The New York Times , TPM , US News , Politico , HuffPo , CNN , and, just to arbitrarily stop the list right here, The American Prospect . Cliff...
Daily Meme: Love, Tolerance, and CPAC
Bob MoserMar 07, 2014For the millions of American reality-show junkies who just can't wait for the return of 2012's most outrageous hit show—the Republican presidential debates—this week's Conservative Political Action Conference has offered a tantalizing sneak preview. Just about every potential 2016 cast member was in D.C.—and everybody had something to prove. For Chris Christie, excluded last year but invited back now that he's being "attacked" by the media—instant conservative cred!—had to show he could get the 'wingers on their feet. Which, Christie being Christie, was a snap, especially with guaranteed-to-please counterfactuals like this one about Democrats: “They’re the party of intolerance. Not us.” (And hey, if you doubt for a second that Republicans are indeed the lonely beacons of open-mindedness in this land, check out the instantly famous photo of the near-empty conference room where they held their minority outreach panel on Thursday.) Bobby...
Daily Meme: The Slippery Slope to Sodom
Bob MoserFeb 27, 2014Stupid, thoughtless, socialistic atheist types might view yesterday's veto of a "gay Jim Crow" measure by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer as a simple nod to pragmatism , considering the national outcry against the bill, which would have made it legal to refuse service to same-sex couples. But the far right knows the real score: Brewer is just the latest casualty of a national menace. As Rush Limbaugh put it, Brewer was " bullied by the homosexual lobby ." Bullying is wrong, of course, and gay people really must stop picking on people with twice their rights. But the growing threat of gay bullies is only a small part of a far larger—heck, existential—problem. As Tea Party Nation's Judson Phillips declared, post-veto: "Tyranny is on the march!" America's historically oppressed Christians are once again the victims, as Fox News Business host Todd Starnes tweeted: "AZ Gov. Jan Brewer makes Christians in her state second-class citizens." Who could doubt now that the "Jihad of...
Daily Meme: Kansas Is For Haters
Bob MoserFeb 14, 2014Back in the day, if you wanted to locate the quintessence of American intolerance and backwardness, you had to look South—the deeper South, the better. But the Alabamas and Mississippis are now looking relatively fair-minded and rational compared to the nation's new standard-bearer of hatred and stupidity: once-moderate Kansas. This week's lead item from the one-time home of reasonable Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Bob Dole: a bill to legalize discrimination against gay couples passed the state house, and will likely soon become law. Not only would the bill let private business refuse service to gays and lesbians if such people offend their "religious beliefs" , it would—even more shockingly—allow state government employees—ambulance drivers, for instance, or social-service workers—to do the same. The upshot, as Prospect alumnus Jamelle Bouie puts it, amounts to nothing short of " anti-gay Jim Crow . " As Chris Johnson notes at the Washington...
