At War with The Daily Show Over 'Don't Ask/Don't Tell'

At Friday's White House Press Briefing, I asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs what I thought was an excellent question, and one which has garnered considerable attention from the blogosphere. Over the weekend, I found myself the recipient of heaps of gratitude from the LGBTQ community, a sad statement on the status of mainstream advocacy for gay equality.

I also found myself the target of a rather dismissive accusation from Comedy Central's Indecision Forever, who thought that this question had a too-familiar ring to it:

I wondering if you could describe the difference between the President's decision to intervene with regard to the abuse photos but not to intervene when it comes to discharging otherwise qualified soldiers because they're gay.

In the interest of setting the record straight, and of keeping the non-comedy central issue in focus, here's how I came up with that question.

At last Wednesday's White House Press Briefing, in between cellphone hijinks, the topic of the day was wall-to-wall detainee abuse photos. There seemed to be no question that could not be tweaked into a follow-up, which led to a lot of repetition on Robert Gibbs' part. The note that struck me, over and over again, was the idea that the President was acting to block the release of the photos because of the risk posed to our troops.

Several hours earlier, I had seen Lee Stranahan's excellent video, "Segregation," which deals with LGBTQ inequality, including "Don't ask/Don't tell." Also fresh in my mind was conservative website Hot Air's haymaking attempt at pretending that DADT is Barack Obama's fault. I decided not to ask my original question, about how the President's thread-the-needle position on gay marriage might hurt Democrats in the mid-terms, but instead to ask about the risk to our troops posed by DADT vs. the risk posed by photos that everyone knows exist.

Because of all the telephonic shenanigans, I didn't get a question in on Wednesday, so I kept Lee's video on my desktop and saved a headline in my blog software: President Obama Exercises Authority on Detainee Photos but Not Gay Soldiers.

Since the President was traveling to ASU to get his honorary degree in beer pong, there was no briefing on Thursday. I decided to hold my story one more day, and if I didn't get a question in on Friday, I would base my story around Lee's video.

I found out later that, as I sat in a movie theater watching Star Trek with my apprentice and her mom, The Daily Show ran an incisive bit of satire on the very same comparison.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Moral Kombat
thedailyshow.com
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Now, it is possible for a tinfoil-minded person to connect the dots between my headline, the several former Comedy Central employees who now work for Politics Daily, and Stewart's piece. Of course, that would be a crazy, unreasonable leap to make.

Imagine my consternation, then, when Comedy Central's Indecision Forever leveled the reverse accusation at me. I hadn't even seen the clip until Saturday, when I got that infamous 3am phone call from my friend Cube.

My initial reaction was apoplexy at the notion that, even if I had seen the clip, I was somehow expected to pause and allow Robert Gibbs to watch the bit on my laptop before asking my question. Adding insult to injury, two of the people who embedded that clip, Jason Linkins at HuffPo and Dennis DiClaudio at Indecision Forever, are web-friends of mine, and neither of them knew it was me in the clip!

As this week's Maureen Dowd feeding frenzy indicates, this isn't a funny accusation to make, and while Dennis softened it up and made it funny, the original guy really didn't.

I know this is hard for those of you who know me to believe, but this really isn't about ego. I'm still laughing at how none of my friends even knew it was me asking. For the record, all has been corrected, with no hard feelings.

My main problem has to do with the issue at hand. I've worked hard to represent gay rights in a fair and persuasive manner over the years, and the attention from this clip was a big part of that. It makes a difference if people think I'm just a Daily Show version of those "Baba Booey" guys on Howard Stern. It makes a difference in how they see the issue.

Which is that we are discharging otherwise qualified soldiers from the military simply because they are gay. We are depriving their fellow soldiers of their skill and expertise because we don't like their partners' matching 'nads.

Just as the central issue in Pelosi-gate is not what Nancy Pelosi knew and when, but whether we tortured people. If Nancy Pelosi knowing something makes it right, we're in big trouble.

Just as Maureen Dowd's lifting (inadvertant or not) of a paragraph from Josh Marshall doesn't negate the foregoing 19 paragraphs in which she makes the point that we might have tortured to obtain political propaganda.

So, in the final analysis, Indecision Forever's full-throated retraction (and that of its source) is not worth nearly as much to me as the fact that Jon Stewart and I copied each other on the message that "Don't ask/Don't Tell" is a danger to our troops.

Tommy on: Daily Dose:

• Comedy Central and Tommy Christopher in Feud
• Fox News' Question Hog Major Garrett Cops Major Attitude
• Obama's attempt to block photo release: Good idea, bad idea?
• Inside The White House Press Briefing Room
• I Have Only One Question: Is This Canon?