Holiday Book Bonanza Begins Today

Our annual Holiday Book Bonanza begins today on the show, giving away books by authors who've been on the show throughout the year, many of them autographed by the authors. How it works: I will put out a question each day about something we have talked about within the hour, and the first callers with the correct answer wins.

We start with a book a day. Later in the month we'll give away a book an hour, and then eventually giving away book bundles. Good luck in winning a book!

Rick Warren Can't "Take Sides" on Gay Executions

Via Box Turtle Bulletin comes this Newsweek.com post in which we learn that Rick Warren, who in the past had ties to the Uganda pastor who helped spearhead legislation that would execute HIV-positive gay men if enacted, will not speak out against the legislation, saying that "it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."

On Meet the Press he said, speaking more generally on the gay issue, "As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides." As Newsweek's Lisa Miller points out, this is a guy who called abortion a "holocaust" and who certainly does what he can to stop it in this country and around the world. Surely, he believes, as a self-proclaimed moral leader, that one must speak up against injustice. That is, if he sees state executions of gay men as a true injustice at all -- or at least one that is worth upsetting the apple carts he so neatly set up in Uganda.

And is it a coincidence that the Obama administration -- in which Warren has a fan at the very top -- has not spoken out loudly enough against what's happening in Uganda and that the man who doles out the AIDS dollars (our taxpayer dollars, need I remind) on behalf of the president to Uganda, PEPFAR chief Eric Goosby, says pretty much what Warren says? According to Newsweek.com, Goosby says his job is "not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation."

That has got to be one of the most outrageous things I've heard so far from an Obama official: We're neutral on extermination.

UPDATE: Max Blumenthal has done a lot on Warren and his Uganda connections and I've had him on the show often. This piece he wrote back in January is a good refresher for the discussion now about Warren. Read the whole thing, but just wanted to pull out this passage that sums up Warren's investment in Uganda:

Days later, Warren emerged so enthusiastic after a meeting with First Lady Museveni, he announced a plan to make Uganda a “Purpose Driven Nation.” “The future of Christianity is not Europe or North America, but Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” he told a cheering throng at Makerere University. Then, Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi rose and predicted, “Someday, we will have a purpose driven continent!”

Did Highest-Ranking Gay Official Thwart Equal Rights?

A report published on TIME's web site just before the holiday has an explosive bit of information: the chief judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a while back that a lesbian federal employee who reports to him be given federal marriage benefits, and it was actually going to happen until the White House, through the Office of Personnel Management -- headed by openly gay appointee, John Berry -- refused to comply and directed the health insurance carrier of the employee not to proceed [all bold below is mine]:

The order was not published, and garnered little or no notice at the time. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts moved to comply with the judge's ruling, submitting [federal employee] Golinski's insurance form to Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the case would have probably gone away — had the Obama Administration not stepped in. "After the AO submitted Ms. Golinski's form, I thought this matter had concluded," [Judge] Kozinski wrote. "The Executive Branch, acting through the Office of Personnel Management, thought otherwise. It directed the insurance carrier not to process Ms. Golinski's form 2809, thwarting the relief I had ordered. I must now decide what further steps are necessary to protect Ms. Golinski and the integrity of the Judiciary's EDR [employee dispute resolution] plans."

Now Judge Kozinkski has ordered that OPM stop interfering, demanding last week that the Obama administration comply with his order:

Last week, the chief judge of one of America's most prominent federal courts ordered an Executive Branch agency to stop interfering with a court employee's efforts to secure health insurance coverage for her wife. "The Office of Personnel Management shall cease at once its interference with the jurisdiction of this tribunal," wrote Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He gave the Administration 30 days to permit Karen Golinski, a lawyer employed by the Ninth Circuit, to include the woman she married under California law last year on her family health-insurance plan.

If the Obama administration, which now has less than 30 days to respond, tries to fight this, not only will it undoubtedly cause another (and much bigger, in my opinion) firestorm within the LGBT community, but it's not clear that it actually can fight it, let alone win:

[Judge Kozinski's] order last week demanded that the executive branch reverse course, and gave the Administration 30 days to enroll Golinski's wife as her health-insurance beneficiary. He made clear that if it doesn't, he's ready to use the powers of his court to enforce his decree. University of California law professor Rory Little, a former Justice Department prosecutor and chief of appeals, called the order a "bombshell." "This is like exposing the tip of a huge iceberg that nobody knew even existed," he told TIME. "It's a fascinating question: Do the courts even have the power to do this? Where does it leave things procedurally? Where can the Administration appeal? I think there are five or six lawyers in the [Solicitor General's] office scurrying around right now trying to figure out what to do with this."

And of course, another bombshell here is that the Office of Personnel Management was ordered by the White House to refuse to give a lesbian federal employee her court-ordered rights. John Berry, as head of that office, was thus apparently forced as an openly gay man to deny another gay person, and the LGBT movement itself, of rights, even in the face or a court order.Is this how openly gay appointees must operate within the Obama administration -- not as advocates on behalf of civil rights but rather as lackeys charged with blocking equal rights for their own kind? That, if true, is enormously troubling.

(h/t to Marc Love for tipping me off re: the TIME piece)

Daniel Boulud Stuffed Pumpkin Recipe

Happy Thanksgiving! As promised for days on the show, I'm finally putting the Stuffed Cheese Pumpkin recipe up, which comes from the New York chef Daniel Boulud. It is on the ABC News website (he did Nightline a couple of years ago) and it's the second recipe, after the Gratin. I've copied it below.

I have found that using my own mixture of brown sugar, rosemary, coriander, ground cloves, and nutmeg is fine if you don't have Boulud's Thanksgiving Blend of spices (which can only be found in a few stores). Jut put a little of each in a dish and mix it together. Also, I do not use the bacon, as I'm vegetarian.

Stuffed Cheese Pumpkin

Recipe courtesy of Daniel Boulud, adapted from a recipe prepared by his mother, Marie

Yield: 10-12 servings

Ingredients:

1 cheese pumpkin, approximately 10-12 pounds
1 kabocha squash (or butternut squash)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 loaf sourdough bread
1 clove garlic, peeled
3/4 pound apple wood smoked bacon, cut into approx ¼ inch thick batons
½ cup toasted and chopped pecans
½ cup toasted pumpkin seeds
1 bunch chives, sliced
1 lpound Gruyere cheese, grated
5 cups Half and Half
3 tablespoons Daniel Boulud's Thanksgiving Spice blend*
Salt and pepper to taste

* Available at Chef Central, Food Emporium (NY Metro), Home Goods, Zabars, www.pfaltzgraff.com and Gracious Homes

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Slice the kabocha squash in half, remove the seeds, rub the inside with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lie the squash flesh side down on a sheet tray lined with aluminum foil and bake for approximately 1 hour, or until cooked through (check with the tip of a paring knife).

Meanwhile, turn the cheese pumpkin upside down, and with a small serrated paring knife, remove a circular cap wide enough to later fill the pumpkin with stuffing (approximately 10 inches in diameter). Cut the sourdough bread into 1-inch thick slices and toast. Lightly rub the toasted bread with the clove of garlic.

In a medium saute pan over medium heat, add the bacon and cook, stirring, until crispy. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, drain on a paper-towel lined plate and set aside. When the cooked kabocha squash is cool enough to handle, remove the flesh with a spoon and cut into a rough dice. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the Half and Half with 2 tablespoons of Thanksgiving Spice Blend, and salt and pepper to taste.

Sprinkle the inside of the cheese pumpkin with salt, pepper and the remaining Thanksgiving Spice Blend. Begin filling the pumpkin, starting with a layer of bread, then half of the bacon, half of the pecans, half of the pumpkin seeds, half of the chives and half of the cheese. Pour in about half of the Half and Half mixture and lightly press down. Repeat with remaining filling ingredients to reach the top of the pumpkin. Pour in the remainder of the Half and Half to reach the top of the pumpkin. Return the cap to the pumpkin and transfer onto an aluminum foil lined baking tray. Bake for 1½ to 2 hours, or until the cheese pumpkin is cooked though.

Serve warm, scooping a bit of the cheese pumpkin from the sides along with the filling.

A Classic: Larry Craig's 2007 Biggest Turkey Award

Since I posted Carrie Prejean's audio statuette (below) for this 2009's Biggest Turkey of the Year Award, I thought I should post a classic: The audio statuette of Larry Craig's 2007 Award for Biggest Award. Our producer David Guggenheim does a great job with these. Many thanks to him!

Biggest Turkey of 2009: Carrie Prejean

After four hours of giving out several dozen Turkey Awards on our annual Turkey of the Year Awards on the show, Carrie Prejean took the grand prize, Biggest Turkey of the Year. Here is her special audio statuette, one of over 40 audio statuettes we gave out today.

Turkey of the Year Awards

It's time once again for our annual Turkey of the Year Awards in which we hand out audio statuettes on the show to this year's turkeys -- the losers, liars, and lemmings of 2009 -- and replay the memorable interviews with some of them from the show. Yes, it's silly fun, but we need it.

It's all happening Wednesday 2-6 ET, as you're driving to your Thanksgiving destination or just hanging out at the office making as if you're working but listening to the show online while counting the minutes before you get the hell out of there for the weekend. You're all invited to call in with your nominations, and we'll hand out the awards. You can also post your nomination here as well or on FB or Twitter or wherever else we connect, now or during the show (especially if you can't call because you're listening at work!). And remember, we'll be naming the Biggest Turkey of the Year as well, and asking everyone to call in and vote.

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today's Show: Death Of The LGBT Media?

4:30pm EST: Michael Triplett, freelance journalist and member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, asks with the closing of the Washington Blade and news that the Advocate will no longer be a stand alone magazine, is LGBT media dead? He joins the show this afternoon to explain.

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today's Show:Why Doesn't Brian Bond Talk to Anyone?

3:30pm EST: Pam Spaulding, editor of Pam's House Blend, joins the show this afternoon to speak with us about the attention her interview with deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement (a.k.a. the White House LGBT liason) Brian Bond has received and why he's been invisible and inaccessible.

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today's Show: The Tactics Of The Opposition

4:30pm EST: Melissa Murray is an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and has studied the influence that fear-mongering television ads against marriage equality have on voters in the midst of a ballot measure campaign, saying in an AP interview, "Parents are always thinking about how do I keep unwanted influences out of my children's lives, and it's a lot harder to do that as a parent if that influence is the state... That's the fear they are tapping into. ... and they are just going to keep repackaging it, because it works."

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free three-day pass or, if you have an iPhone, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Today's Show: Who Created Major Hasan?

3:30pm EST: The media has been in overdrive over the past two weeks over the shooting at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan and whether or not to consider this a terrorist attack, pushed by gasbags on the right who insinuate that any Muslim who commits a crime -- indeed, sometimes, any Muslim who does anything -- is a terrorist. Robert Wright, senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote an op-ed this weekend in the New York Times, looking at the arguments and joins me to talk about his piece, "Who Created Major Hasan?"

Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 2-6 pm ET on Sirius XM's OutQ: Sirius 109, XM 98 and on the Sirius XM iPhone app. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free seven-day pass or, if you have an iPhone, go to the app store and download Sirius XM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.

Sarah Palin's Ties to Hatemongers

Max Blumenthal came on the show last week and we discussed Sarah Palin's connections to some pretty extremist individuals (audio below.) Beyond some of the gay press (and of course the gay and progressive blogs), not much of the media is focused on Sarah Palin's intimate ties to white supremacists and homophobes as her media machine is rolling out across the country. These aren't people who are a few individuals removed. These are the people she has supported in Alaska; people she has turned to in crisis, like Robert Stacy McCain, who helped her deal with the rumors of her divorce; and Lynn Vincent, a virulently antigay evangelical Christian who ghostwrote her book. I've written about former Washington Times editor and Palin buddy Robert Stacy McCain in years past, in a column that keeps coming back. Max Blumental of The Daily Beast wrote about him a bit too, as well as about Vincent ( a close colleague of Stacy McCain's) in a recent column.

Max came on the show last week and we discussed these ties to Palin and how they're being ignored. In the attempt by some in the media to marginalize Palin by treating her as a celebrity with no substance, they're ignoring the hate she festers, the people she brings out and the characters to whom she's connected. Listen to my discussion with Max if you didn't hear it live last week.




Also, Andy Towle has posted more from the "informed Palin fan base." Check it out.

Mary Matalin: It's Fine to Slap Women Around

(Via CrooksandLiars)
Mary Matalin, who, in addition to being a CNN commentator and Republican political consultant, is "editor-in-chief" of Simon & Schuster's Threshold Books. There are enough conflicts of interest there to warn anybody less arrogant that that some topics, including Sarah Palin's book, shouldn't be weighed in on, lest you appear as if you're defending your friends and political allies as well as your own business interests. But this isn't someone less arrogant by a long shot.

In this CNN.com piece Matalin whines on about not acquiring the Sarah Palin book for her imprint. Then she goes on to a) say that it will have a hard time making money; and b) that Palin "napalms" too many bridges and complains too much in the book, particularly about people Matalin loves and adores. Her advice? Palin, even if she was mistreated, should have just sucked it up and taken it, and put it all behind her. That's when Matalin tells the story of a women on a Republican campaign who got slapped across the face by a "big" man and, rightly, just accepted it:

Time is the most valuable commodity on a campaign and you just can't waste it thinking about how to choose your words carefully or get your job done more diplomatically. If someone isn't in tears every day, that day wasn't all it could be advancing the campaign. I once witnessed an experienced (big) man slap a professional female colleague across the face over an ad buy... and no one thought anything of it, starting with the woman. In fact, she would have been insulted if anyone told her she should have been insulted.

Wow, just speechless after that.

Saturday Back Talk

Here are some of the listener survey comments I read on the show this week. If you're a listener and haven't taken the survey, please do so by scrolling down and clicking through on the right. Thanks!


St. Louis, MO (Sirius)
By and large I agree with your views. I enjoy the fact that even on serious issues, you are able to make a few jokes without lessening the impact of the topic. I do sometimes feel that as a heterosexual listener I am in a group excluded when talking about ways to bring about change and fight for equality for all. I am sure, however, that homosexuals, and especially transgender people have felt this way much more often.

El Dorado, KS (XM)
You have made me see things differently, in a more liberal light, and stirred up my activist emotions and made me realize that equality is my number one issue. I used to be more Republican-thinking, because I believe in lower taxes and and strong foreign policy. You have changed my opinions though, by making me see just how much the right wing is against me, by being against my equality. When I see things in the news, I can't wait to turn on your show and hear what you will have to say about it. I also LOVE when and how you go up against IDIOT guests. You are a great defender/instigator for our equal rights.

Pittsburgh, PA (XM)
I hear things on your show before I hear them anywhere else, if at all. It is so hard to be informed today, in this age of news as a product. On TV, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC all run the same 4-5 news stories, and that's all we get to learn about. With your show, and a few others on TV, like Rachel Maddow and Keith, I get to hear about other issues than the 4 or 5 issues some mega-corporation wants to ram down my throat.

Prospect, KY (Sirius)
Michelangelo, I have been listening to your show since you use to have somewhat of a co-host. I use to have a problem with your infamous "pause" or "silence" - often I thought an asteroid hit the satellite. We do not always agree, which is good. I did have a fault with your show - but it seems you have corrected the problem, the opening of your show. I use to HATE it, it was ridiculous for even someone from Kentucky. I am very thankful that you changed the intro. I do hope you are able to take a break now and then.

Marlinton, WV (Sirius)
Without Sirius OutQ radio, we would be lost out here in the hinterlands. You inform, entertain and validate us!

Miami, FL (Sirius)
You do a great job focusing on the needs of the LGBT community. So much happening in our lives now, we need a powerful voice on the radio discussing our issues and you do it very well. You make your listeners think about the hot topics and focus on all the issues at hand.

Arlington, VA (XM)
Great coverage of the National Equality March!

Fremont, CA (Sirius)
I enjoy the show and the viewpoints that Michelangelo has. This show allows different points of view to happen, although I do not agree with everything that is said by both Michelangelo or the callers and guests. Also, unlike others I notice no weird ways that Michelangelo pronounces words.

Pittsburgh, PA (XM)
I only stumbled onto your show after XM picked up OutQ. Of course I also have known who you are and was aware of your contributions to gay culture -- and quite frankly I disapproved of your past actions. That was then. Now I have been transformed into an emerging activist and am informed greatly by your show and where it leads me. I appreciate your guests and listeners greatly, but am more appreciative of how you guide and steer the dialogue. Informed, fair, intelligent, and forward thinking. Thanks for helping me reach my potential as a proud gay middle aged man!