The most interesting thing about the great Hoosier Hoo-Ha is how little thought the Indiana lege and Governor Pence gave to the *possible* implications of the whole mishigas. It’s true that 19 other states have similar laws but Indiana’s drew more attention from the MSM for two reasons. First, Pence is thought to have Presidential ambitions. Second, the Final Four will be in Indianapolis this weekend. The MSM has a short attention span but it loves to speculate about candidates and who among us doesn’t love March Madness? Btw, I’ve adopted the Wisconsin Badgers as my tournament team for the second year in a row.
Back to the pantsing of Mike Pence after the break.
Something heartening has come out of this: a substantial portion of the business community now thinks that discriminating against the LGBT community is bad for business. I suspect Pence shit his pants when he was criticized by the Chamber of Commerce and Eli Lilly. While it’s too late to move the Final Four (sorry, Chuck) the NCAA is making noises about denying future events because of the so-called religious freedom law. I’ll be interested to see if CBS mentions it on its coverage the way Bob Costas mentioned Putin’s homophobic law during NBC’s Olympics coverage. That’s a whole lot of coverage there y’all…
It’s apparent that one reason that Pence was caught with his pants down on this issue is that today’s conservatives don’t seem to talk to people they disagree with; or if they do, they never listen. It’s what comes of having an alternative “conservative” media environment and keeping your distance from the reality based community. It can set your Pence on fire, all I got out of it was this earworm:
I guess I should have had a Mellencamp tune in my head since this is an Indiana post. This one comes to mind:
Then there’s this song written by Indiana born Cole Porter, Don’t Pence Me In, which was an alternate title for this post. What can I say? Pence’s name is punworthy. I haven’t even started on the British money jokes:
One more reason the Indiana law is getting so much attention: It carves out a new area of discrimination missing from the previous iterations of the Rat Fucking Retrograde Act (RFRA), and that is that now businesses are classified as persons. And those persons can’t be sued when they deny service to their customers due to the business’s deeply held religious beliefs. Unless their victim is part of a protected class, which in Indiana doesn’t include sexual minorities.
Jim Nabors said that the 2014 Indy 500 was his last. C’mon, Jim, un-retire just so you can refuse to sing “Back Home Again In Indiana” in 2015. Or agree to sing it, then wander around and see how many funnel-cake vendors refuse to serve you.