Jo Jo Laine RIP

Jo Jo Laine, who died on Sunday aged 53 after falling down a flight of stairs, led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.

Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene.

Daily Telegraph 10/24/2006

Saddam's Death Penalty

I remain opposed to the dealth penalty in all circumstances. This trial should have taken place in the Hague, not in some hobbled together and inept Iraqi court.

The Observer 11/5/2006

Right Wing Gay Scandals

First Mark Foley, then Ted Haggard.

I don't really have any sympathy for them as Republicans, but I do have a great deal of sympathy for them as men enlosed and psychologically damaged by the closet. The Haggard case my be worse, since his wife and kids are now indubitably hurt.

Everybody's life runs by a different clock: when it's good time for one person to come out, its not necessarily right to another. Those of us who do come out do face a more or less limited form of public discrimination: on the other hand there is the basic freedom of being oneself. This "everyone is on their own clock" is the basic arguement against "outing."

The problem is when the hypocrisy becomes transparently foul. When people have accepted themselves as homosexual but continue to publically attack gay people, visit public gay places, and then expect the rest of us to conspire in their closet.

A Harpers Article on Ted Haggard and Colorado Springs 11/2/2006 [h/t Andrew Sullivan]