Call Me A Hypocrite

Okay. I'll level with you. I've been known in comments and in posts to refer to Republicans by many and varied pet names -- Shrub, Chimpy McFlightsuit, Darth Cheney, Ad nauseam.


I think I even gave pet names to Palin and McCain. Call me a hypocrite. I can take it.

But I had an epiphany the other day. It appears to me, after reading a large number of political blog posts in the last month or so, that the name calling has gone into overdrive.


Now I must ask: Is it necessary?


I've seen some finely constructed arguments calling Bush the worst President ever, reduced to mush by this device. I know that voting for a McCain/Palin administration is a bad idea, but instead of making jokes about Palin's voice, hair, or making other derogatory statements outside the realm of satire, how about appealing to my desire for focused targeted information in a well-constructed essay? Name calling is not satire. It's just petty.


I'd say stop it already, but I'm torn about this. Like my fellow bloggers, I sometimes take the view that it's my blog, my rules. If you don't like what I wrote, click off.


By the same token, if we don't invite dissent and discussion on our blogs -- if we're always of a mind to tell dissenting bloggers to click off and not try to use reason to win over the other side -- what's the point of writing it? Venting?


As I watch the McCain/Palin campaign turn the invective dial to "11" against Barack Obama I'm appalled by their calling him a Muslim terrorist, a traitor, and unqualified to be President. An audience member at a Palin-led rally even shouted "kill him." We know that citizens who are voting for McCain/Palin are likely to be true believers who willfully ignore the woeful facts about the last eight years of Republican leadership. But we on the progressive left do our arguments no good when we resort to the same name calling.


Far be it from me to tell another blogger how to refer to Bush, Cheney, McCain and Palin, or even Obama and Biden for that matter. If they happen not to like them, they can call them what they want.

Not me.


No more name calling here.

You Can't Handle The Truth!

A few days ago I was caught in the fire of an indiscriminate tag by DCup to tell seven "untruths" about myself. I accepted it gladly, but as I pondered the assignment I began to realize how difficult it really was.

What made it so hard is that I'm not good at telling lies. Seriously.

Take my name for instance. It really is Spartacus and by drinking the right amount of alcohol or smoking a blunt stuffed with chronic or squinting your eyes to just the right-sized opening, you, too, will come to realize that I bear an uncanny likeness to the original Spartacus himself, Kirk Douglas.

At least this is what my BFF, Colin Powell, tells me. He's like me. He could never tell a lie to anyone, let alone a room full of diplomats at a session of the U.N. General Assembly. So when he told me back in 2003, after exposing WMDs in Iraq, he turned to me and said, "Spartacus, you look just like Kirk Douglas," I believed him. Of course, he was drunk, high, and squinting his eyes when he said it, but who cares? He's my BFF. I have to believe him.


Me and the General go back a long way; back to the days when I had more hair, wore really great-looking shirts, and actually worked at a real job -- lead male dancer at Chippendales in Plainview, NY. That's me on the left from back in the day. I took off my nicest shirt for this shot (the one I was wearing with Colin) because it wasn't part of the Chippendale's dress code. Pfft! What do they know about fashion?

I've moved onto bigger and better pursuits in the entertainment industry. While the money at Chippendale's was good, I felt that my talents were being wasted on gyrating my ass for under-sexed, over-indulged, middle-aged women.

I needed a change. So, I decided to make a change and I try my hand at acting.

The film I'm most proud of is the 2003 film The Station Agent where I played alongside Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson. The movie itself didn't do to well in theaters, but it was a critical success and has been getting alot of airtime on IFC lately. I've kicked around Hollywood quite a bit, having made several appearances in films and TV shows before and after this film (click on my pic to see my IMDB profile), but I really felt like I hit my stride on this one. For the record, Bobby Cannavale is my stage name.



Oh crap, this story just fell apart like a house of cards. I told you that I'm not good at telling lies and untruths about myself.

Really. I'm as transparent as the plexi-glass door I ran into out at Billy Joel's place in the Hamptons. I was helping him put out some hors d’oeuvres for his big 4th of July bash last year. My hands were full and I thought the door was open. I turned my head to ask Billy where he wanted me to place the serving plates, and SLAM! I was on the floor, dazed with my favorite shirt covered in prosciutto, olives, and diced tomatoes. What a scene!


Billy calls me every now and then to remind me of what a goof ball I was that day. And to think, I hadn't even started drinking when it happened. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, right?

And so it goes with lying. Or in this case, with telling untruths. Despite the title of this post, I've found most people quite capable of handling the unvarnished truth about almost anything. Naturally, there are exceptions to every rule -- like when you tell her "Those pants don't make your ass look fat"; or ask "have you lost weight?" In the end it all catches up with you. So, kids, if ya know what's good for you, don't do it.

If you don't believe me, take it from my close and dear friends The Rolling Stones. Even they know a thing or two about telling the unvarnished truth. They even wrote a song about it.