Like 2 peas in a pod
Compare republican Congressman Jim Kolbe to Hollywood scriptwriter Bruce Vilanch.
Jim Kolbe is probably best known as the congressman trying to eliminate the penny. I have seen him in interviews citing the fact that pennys are often left in a cup at retail checkouts to show that an actual minted penny is valueless. Combine that with the fact that a penny stamped by the united states mint costs more than one cent to manufacture and the necessity of the coils becomes quite questionable.
This is not to say he wants to eliminate the idea of cents. It would still exist “on paper†but would just not be minted into coins. It would work much in the way that gas prices are computed in tents of a cent or property taxes calculated in tents of a cent and then just rounded off to the nearest whole number. If economic transactions paid for in cash were to be rounded to the nearest nickel, there would be no need for the physical coil of a penny.
But there is more to Jim Kolbe. He is a careerer politician who started working in congress as a page while he was still in high school. He has served 11 consecutive terms in his position. He is a military veteran and heads the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations as well as heading the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Bruce Vilanch, in sharp contrast, is best known by most people as the center right square in the updated version of the game show Hollywood squares produced by Whoopi Goldberg. He is an entrenched insider of the Hollywood scene and is close friends with many celebrity elites.
He is notoriously anti-establishment, going so far as to wear a t-shirt to the Academy Awards (witch he helped script.) His jokes are closer to being political rants than anything actually inspiring a chuckle. He studied theater in college and dressed in drag for the role of Edna Turnblad in the musical Hairspray. And he is a committed AIDS activist.
So what do these two men have in common? Nothing.
Well, aside from the fact that they are both men who are sexually attracted to other men. Yet Jim Kolbe is slandered as a sellout and an ‘Uncle Tom’ while Bruce Vilanch is praised with praised and held up as a shining beacon of how homosexuality should be.
Is there such a thing as a “gay agenda� Probably not. I have never been one who puts much faith in conspiracy theories. But when Bruce Vilanch is considered a hero and Jim Kolbe is considered a villain, it does make me think that there is more at play besides just sexual orientation alone.