Hope you get lots of votes for your blog - and please can your readers also vote for this British blog that's also up for the awards:

http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/

It essentially brings together the creative community in Birmingham (UK) and gives a space for reviews, shout outs, adverts but rather than being made by paid officials at a newspaper it's all run by local artists.

It's fun, funky and focuses on stuff that mainstream media misses.

In other words, it's really rather ace.

Another good reason to vote for this blog is that its main competition comes from Melanie Phillips. She is a columnist for the Daily Mail, a right-wing British tabloid newspaper with a long-standing history of antipathy towards gays. She herself is, like Michael Savage, virulently anti-gay and would doubtless be a huge supporter of Prop 8. Created in Birmingham has sneaked ahead of her, but only just, so every vote really does count!

Vote today!

Chris

Sounds to me like San Francisco has a radio talk show host problem! The SFPD officers who are getting this training are probably fine with it. They're probably fine with the trans cop. And that just galls the shit out of this guy. He doesn't care? Funny. Hoist on his own petard! He couldn't even get other hatemongers to call in. What a loser.

Michael Savage is an ass. I looked for another word to put there but that is, in fact, the kindest one I can find.

Asses serve a function.

Savage? Not so much.

I'd rank him several rungs below Jesse Helms on the evolutionary scale.

Alright!!!!!!!!

"If gay men can say that trans people need therapy, not surgery and Lesbians can advocate for removing the T from LGBT to "improve our image" by "getting rid of the freaks," perhaps that is why Savage feels safe going after the T peope. Because he knows that there will be no reaction from the LGBT organisations that supposedly represent them..."

And to you Donna, my compliments on finally exposing to many of us, yes, there are things that are not to be dealt with in a gentle or "positive" fashion and that there is a line in the sand, overwhich you grow sharpened teeth.

It's a great change for you I approve of it entirely and hope we will see more of it.

As a matter of fact, if you read Maura's point, then multiply that 10 times, over many years of activism, education and tolerance on our part, you can understand why many older activists have given up being nice to everyone about having to swallow our pride so many times.

Having that one space where Transgender people live in their minds and continue to suppress for the sake of political expediency and acceptance in the GLB communities, let alone the troglodytes like Savage, that feeling that there is a line not to cross with us. In fact, for each year in this fight for our human rights, that line gets just a little closer to the person who set it, and the anger and frustration come to the surface that much faster.

Unlike gays and lesbians who are now planning their retirement to Key West in a few years, transgender people who never had jobs in the first place with retirement benefits are still wondering how they are going to make it over this depression after already being themselves depressed for so long. Then they have to live with people like Savage on the airwaves, blasting them every time they hear him.

I listened to the The Agenda today and Joe was out. Nothing was said about this hate speech issue.

So lets face it, it's nice to be nice sometimes, but these are not the times to be nice after ENDA. Live with it. Get mad and expose the beast and let the Gods of War rule. Well, we can at least be pissed and talk about it frankly.

So Donna, I was happy to see your line in the sand and hope that you can keep pushing it away from you. That shows great strength in the short run, but it draws deeply on your reservoir of charm over the long run, and eventually can push people over the edge where they start to see the victims at fault for their fate and then they just disappear. This has happened to many of our very best advocates and activists over the years.
It can become very tiresome and even debilitating for people to have to smile and hold that line in the sand at bay.

Frankly, I have the same attitude as Maura, and after many years, that line in the sand becomes harder to hold back and the "activist evil doers" start to emerge from deep in my bowels. simply pouring out over people like Barney Frank when he tries to imitate someone who is less Transphobic than a year and half ago.

I agree with Polar's January 10th post. Michael Savage (AKA Michael Weiner) is in fact a dickhead and his mouth is the anus. And what proceeds from his oral anus is a smelly gas that he uses to form his words.
The sad thing here as my partner points out is that if he had applied his diatribe to a spacific race, religion, or ethnicity, he's reputation would be drawn and quartered both in court and by the media. Perhaps his unchecked attitude to others is one of the reasons that SF has a high murder rate. The Trans-community needs a legal fund developed to take him, and others of his ilk, on in the court system.