newsweek
By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 12 years ago

Newsweek cover: the first gay president


Newsweek is excited about its cover this week, a “take THAT!” response to the sensationalistic breast-feeding cover which graced Time last week. The Newsweek cover features an image Barack Obama, with a rainbow halo above his head. The headline is as nuanced as the graphic and reads “The First Gay President.” Here is the article behind the cover, by Andrew Sullivan.

In other throwing-the-word-gay-around  news, while Rand Paul didn’t call Obama gay, he did state that he wasn’t sure the President’s position on marriage “could get any gayer.”  Oh, Rand. You crack us up, as usual! Rand’s undeniably hilarious comments drew criticism from people like Tony Perkins. It’s one thing to stigmatize homosexuality and to fight against gay people’s rights. But it’s another thing to joke about it. That’s just mean.

Readers, I’m turning this one over to you. What’s your take on Newsweek’s latest attempt to court controversy with their “First Gay President” cover?

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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