As hard as these relationships are to reconcile, the fact is you can gauge its potential by staring it right in the eye and accepting the ugly truth. Whether or not there is a future in the affair hinges on knowing if your affair partner has a future in their current marriage/relationship or if they even want one with you with the knowledge of a previously failed commitment. If they are single things can become more complicated.

I believed I was head over heels in love with my mistress, but also much to content to consider leaving my girlfriend. She was my stability and I wasn’t about to give up a sure thing for something wild, lusty, oddly intense and equally uncertain. There were just too many maybes and what ifs but ultimately I knew better – that leaving stability for uncertainty was no way to end a relationship and begin a new one.

The realization that my mistress was starting to move on, talk to other people romantically, and eventually date was just the jolt I needed. I couldn’t believe the woman I once felt so much for was moving on. But in the end, I realized it was exactly what I needed so that I could begin the tumultuous journey of rational, clear thought devoid of misdirected passion and its disastrous ramifications.

When dealing with instant attraction in affairs, whether physical or emotional, or what many describe as “lust at first sight,” its hard to keep in mind that like attracts like. The law of attraction dictates that our relationships are highly influenced by our expectations, focus, energy, consistency and how we feel. Eventually, you get what you ask for so be careful what you ask for.

Separating wants from needs to get to the root of the addiction and its behavioral manifestations (infidelity) is crucial. You must make yourself believe that to continue the affair will only bring heartache and sorrow because in the end, and it will eventually end, that’s is exactly what you will feel. Sad and heartbroken and only yourself to blame.

One way to address the root of the behavior doesn’t only involve you. It includes your affair partner and your significant other. You must find a way to unincorporate your needs from your affair partners lifestyle but that can only happen if it’s what you truly want. You have to want it without question, practically forcing yourself to do the right thing in the short term to reap the benefits in the long term.

If certain aspects of your relationship with your significant other have become stale and you begin looking elsewhere for intimacy and understanding, then fixing one part without working on the other will create ample opportunity for a blindside. When you’re putting tons of effort into adjusting thinking patterns with little to no adjustment as it relates to physical actions… you’ll end up right back where you started.

Honestly ask yourself if you want to be married or in a committed relationship, because that is the most important question you will need to answer before anything will truly change in your life.

Affairs are addictions and the temptation will always be there. For some, affairs are attempts to escape feelings and circumstances that are uncomfortable or not readily understood, coupled with a lack of desire to properly address the real underlying issue. A person with unresolved issues including past hurts that haven’t healed and/or needs that aren’t being met often escape to indulging in a number of vices. Things that can be deemed as addictive. Affairs are no different. Sometimes the escape is to another person. Addictions, like affairs, are entirely unhealthy.

As the person who has betrayed a significant other or spouse, it is your duty to seek an understanding of your own behavior. To simply concentrate on the behavior without understanding why you’ve done what you’ve done or what led to it it is counter productive. The lies and betrayal are morally wrong and there is no way around that but you’ll need to seek forgiveness from not only the one you betrayed but also yourself. This will come in time.

The road to ending an affair is a long and difficult one. You will grieve and sometimes the period of grief is long and drawn out. So getting your emotions under control is vital to gaining the knowledge and understanding necessary to figure out why you did it and how you can prevent it from happening again.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. How Long Does It Take To Get Over An Affair?
2. You Can’t Escape Your Cheating Past
3. The Dark Side of Affairs IV

image from canslerconsulting.com

They put on a big production staring all the famous political actors, and then go on about the business of deciding which non-defense related discretionary spending programs to freeze or cut. Now, mind you, they’re talking about a paltry 10% of total federal spending budget. In retrospect, it’s a tiny the part of the budget but the GOP seems hell bent on revamping it by excluding programs that benefit the poor and working classes and refusing to raise taxes on anyone to protect Americas wealthiest corporations and people.

A whopping 10% of the budget includes services for the poor, senior citizens, women and children yet the unemployed are being considered to go up on the chopping block. How interesting that a little over a year ago both parties sat their happily disgruntled asses on the floor of Congress and agreed to increase the debt by upwards of 337.5 billion dollars in 2011 by allowing tax cuts to go the wealthiest people in our nation. President Eisenhower taxed the richest Americans at 92% during his entire time in office. Were they simply naive then?

Let me follow that up with some proven, researched, facts and figures before I continue. The wealthiest 400 Americans have more riches than half of all American households combined.

Let me repeat that in layman’s terms. According to a very knowledgeable source, “the top 1% of households also known as (the upper class) own 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) have 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people own a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). Payroll taxes, are mostly paid by those with incomes below $100,000 per year.

I would like to add that the majority of income taxes go to the military (or rather the military industrial complex: owned by the wealthy. Since the rich have more to defend, should they not pay more in “defense spending?” Here’s a concept; taxes should be commensurate with wealth. The more you own the higher a percentage you should pay in taxes. And corporate welfare should be completely eliminated, not reformed.

Recently, there has been massive cause for shock and awe with the blatant attack not only on the middle class, but on societies most vulnerable and lowest class; the poor. This collective attack is no longer a stealth, camouflaged effort like with politics of old but one that is indeed weighing heavily on the minds of most Americans today because politicians have yet again made it seem as if caring for those who cannot care for themselves has somehow led us to the place our economy is currently at. The bottom of the barrel. This attack on the poor has trickled on up and is bound to affect the middle class because so many former middle class Americans now find themselves shopping at places like Walmart, Target, and other major discount retailers. They’re patronizing the local Aldi, Dollar Store, and Food Pantry because they’ve found themselves in a situation they’d never thought they’d be. They’re going without.

They are not without education, but they are without jobs or have seen their income severely reduced. They have lost their homes or they are on the brink, and their personal finances and savings are all but gone, reduced to the most common of denominators due to Wall Street executives purposely taking the American economy on a collision course with history. They, who’ve driven their stake into the American dream and were once considered apart of “the haves” cool clique are fast becoming one with the “have-nots”. Even those with jobs rightly feel the effects, having taken a bite out of politics and coming away with a terribly bitter taste in their mouths.

There was once a time when the attack on the poor was masked with political double talk, dodge ball tactics and screwball antics that made Congress resemble that of a largely divided middle school playground at recess. Gutless  attempts at major and minor regulatory changes that often face ridiculously fierce resistance, to debating the importance or lack thereof of things like block grants and welfare reform, as if these terms and programs aren’t solidly in place because they are dire necessities. Specifically, the poor and working poor (working class) have bared the brunt of this nation’s addiction to excess. Wall Street caused a crisis of epic proportions that the middle class is still paying for. Political administrations coupled with careless legislatures and lackluster regulators are at the root of the problem.

When you think of programs like Head Start, Earned Income Credit, school lunch programs, Medicaid, TANF, subsidized housing, WIC, and child care assistance, you don’t think about how pertinent it is for those services to be reduced or terminated because the need has always been great. Even 70% of Tea Party supporters don’t want to see  Medicare cuts. You think about the fact that those services are not often readily available to those falling within a certain need based demographic but they are put in place for the sake of importance and justification. These services are in place because of moral responsibility and duty. A need to prevent or curtail poverty, despair, homelessness, lack of access to health care for routine and emergency care and it’s safe to say that reducing aid to the poorest and most vulnerable in society will result in more people living miserable existences, more families going to bed hungry, and a growing lack of quality education because one is not afforded to them, etc.

Cutting spending to services that help the needy does not stimulate job growth or economic growth nor will it reduce the national debt by a long shot.

Final words:  This budget crises is a moral issue. Our elected leaders and career politicians have been corrupted by money and greed. Politicians are regularly caught up in a system that rewards baseless contempt for the little guy much in the same way that athletes get caught up in steroid abuse. The mindset is if others are doing it, why shouldn’t I.  Our government is riddled with junkies and nothing matters except ensuring a steady supply of the drug, which in this case purely equates to money. People need to understand that the flow of money never stops. One mans gain is another mans loss. When the stock market crashed, people made money and lots of it. When companies fail, if you play your cards right, you could profit hugely on their failure. And corporations are more than happy to be the drug – I mean money dealers. They own and control the cash flow . The only way to free our politicians and ultimately ourselves from the current level of corruption that has plagued every facet of corporate America reaching all the way up to our elected government officials is to take the faceless global players out of the politics game and revert back to governing for the good of the people of the country they purport to serve.

We have become a nation that idolizes wealth and because of that we are losing our connection to community, family and country. If we continue to equate being rich as virtuous and the primary testament to personal success we will continue on a collective decline, with more losers than winners just like the game is currently designed to project.

The super committee was created to reduce the federal deficit to the tune of over 1 trillion dollars but I would not be surprised if it ends up increasing it instead.

To monitor the Super Committee’s progress proceed to their website at http://www.deficitreduction.gov/public/.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. The Tea Party: A Misguided Movement
2. Tea Party Express Leader Mark Williams Booted For Racist ‘Satire’
3. Pissed Off Republicans And The Audacity Of The Tea Party

People have an inherent desire to believe in something that is clearly too good to be true. Where do we develop this warped sense of trust? It is the humanity that some of us were born with.  A gift that has been taken for granted and advantage of since the beginning of time. Gross incompetence allowed Bernie Madoff & Co. to thrive financially while bilking people, including family and close friends out of billions of dollars. The SEC, whose job it is to regulate the financial matters of the country, would rather adopt a skeptical approach to smaller investment companies who can easily dip under the radar, even when numerous people have filed complaints against them.

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. – Woodrow Wilson

Who does the government really protect? Is the importance any less because the entity is smaller than say a company such as Enron or Lehman Brothers? Corporations are allowed to cause harm to many, pay fines, get bail outs because they’re considered ‘too big to fail’ and yet they continue polluting, scamming, swindling and bilking Americans under the umbrella of those who are supposed to protect us – the little people. We have been lied to and people are finally waking up. They are tired of the blood, sweat and tears being toiled in the name of the almighty dollar when they’re told time and again that they are, in fact, small enough to fail and many do. Far too many Americans have suffered financially over the last decade. Those people are waking up.

Occupy Wall Street is what I like to describe, for the time being, as a disorganized protest and a stark rallying cry. This is one of the most unpredictable types of protest. It has the potential to balloon into something much greater than itself. Why? Because when protesters are willing to put themselves at risk without fear of retribution, absolutely anything becomes possible. When moral outrage begins, all it takes is heightened emotion to fuel the fire that will spread that outrage like a plague.

I estimate that this protest will do more in the way of actually helping President Obama’s re-election bid in 2012 than making sleazy Democrat and Republican legislatures (and their fundraising camps and lobbyists) truly understand the message – because neither party has any control of the movement at present time.

The Tea Party movement was infiltrated in the beginning and I expect the same might happen, if not already in process, with the Occupy Wall Street protests. This could have a domino affect on the 2012 election if President Obama starts vocally and publicly supporting the seeds of discontent that were planted and have grown ever since he took office in ‘08.

The real movement begins when people start to understand that there is a one party system in American politics – and it is run by an oligarchy. The party swap changes that happen every election cycle or so are nothing new. Case in point – since Obama was elected to office we’ve engaged in yet another military campaign – against (Libya) on the recommendation of Newt Gingrich, extended the Patriot Act set in motion by the George W. Bush administration and expanded TSA – airport pat down anyone? Facts likes these are hard to swallow no matter how small you cut it.

While chewing, ask yourself why the government which includes the current administration has failed to prosecute some of the biggest financial fraudsters that are largely to blame for the current state of the economy. It has been in perpetual upheaval since Bush left office and distant cousin Obama took it over. If you get an actual answer instead of the standard side by side comparison based excuse of  – ‘Bush did it way worse so we win’ – then you’re off to a pretty good start.

Next up: How to rebuild a civil society that has been deliberately and systematically dismantled from the bottom up.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Pissed Off Republicans And The Audacity Of The Tea Party
2. The Tea Party: A Misguided Movement
3. Politics As Warfare

The Earth is a vast astronomical beauty; a breathtaking celestial body of immense importance and it is being apart of this collective that I consider one of the most unique experiences that most of us will ever have in this lifetime. Everything I have done leading up to every new day has felt like an experience, a training ground in some respects, yet I know that through certain choices I’ve made in the past, I have deprived myself and so many others of mutually beneficial, positive experiences because I didn’t give credence to the idea that we are all connected some way, some how and everything we do carries with it significant meaning; the good, the bad and the ugly.

I remember being chosen to take part in the Space Program in the 8th grade. I was a year younger than everyone else and as nervous as a butterfly fluttering about; my stomach was in a ball of knots leading up to “take off”, but when it came time for us to be sequestered in our man-made space craft that covered almost the length of the school gymnasium’s stage, I suddenly felt at ease. I knew what my mission entailed and the experiments that we were to carry out, and with it, my goal was set. I had an agenda to carry out along with the other crew members, and we all knew well our purpose. That experience should have been a life changing one for me, but because I did not understand the importance of opportunities like that and others that were placed in front of me, I didn’t appreciate the experience then as much as I do when I look back now. That same year I was chosen among a select few students to learn Ham Radio, something I only now appreciate learning as an adult.

We all make difficult choices throughout our lives, not always on the basis of clear thinking, but still knowing and understanding through natural instinct that everything we do carries with it consequences both great and small. Daily, we lend our voice and passion to a continuation and progression of a subject matter; life and the continuation of it,  which is representative of every human being walking the earth today, covering all of society in one fell swoop. My heart had never stopped searching for a purpose, a meaning, a quest, and for the longest time I didn’t know or understand, or perhaps I wasn’t ready to know and subconsciously understand that I could not handle the truth once upon a time. The majority of human beings are stuck on that very same wheel going round and round with no fulfilling end in sight, but that is only temporary. We all become ready in our own time.

I have come to a point in my life where I understand, at a very basic level, that every one of us affects the other in absolutely everything we do, everything we think and most importantly, that which we recognize as feelings and emotions vibrate all around us like an energy field, and those vibrations we uniquely refer to as vibes are realer than anything we have ever seen with the naked eye or felt with the gentlest of touch. Even self-destructive tendencies and behaviors bleed into a  great basin, the main chasm that affects countless people and things all around us. Our energy affects others just as their energies affect us. This is because each action carries with it a reaction and our energy is so powerful, we have a truly difficult time ever mastering it, if ever at all. I don’t wish to master, but simply to understand my purpose, my calling.

We must be responsible for the energy we draw from ourselves onto others, including the earth, which feels and is affected by everything we do to it, like dropping bombs. The earth relates to us and we to it because it is from there we come and go back to at our journey’s end. There is a great attempt underway to forge together or to tear apart, but to ultimately attain a level of understanding and enlightenment through spiritual uniformity while also retaining aspects of the individuality that makes us unique to ourselves even as we are one.

Waking up from an unreality that had been wholly unfulfilling and realizing that even though we’re denied vast amounts of knowledge dating back centuries to the very first man, history and truth are right in front of our eyes at every waking hour of every day, and we are not denied the right to live, breathe and pursue the truth of our past in spite of or despite it being purposely hidden in plain sight. Awakening from the deepest of slumbers is a mold-breaking, mind-blowing, toe curling occurrence because you don’t yet understand how awe inspiring this life we’ve been given truly is, but you know something incredible lurks just beneath the surface.

When a mission is not realized, the task cannot be completed. We have survived numerous previous civilizations, but our work is not yet complete.

I feel blessed in every way. For once you are awakened, there is no turning back. Willful ignorance is no longer an option, in fact, it is completely illogical to be content with living an absolute illusion. I include myself with a minority of like-minded free thinkers on their own quests to develop a greater understanding of the forces and powers that be that move us all either together or apart, i.e.  science, religion, dogma, superstition. When what we need to do literally to heal the world and make it a better, safer place for everyone is to respect each others journey and most importantly to respect each other as human beings.

Leading a horse to water does not automatically mean he’ll drink. You can plant a seed in ones mind; an idea, a mindset, but you must wait to see what blossoms and develops over time. I firmly believe that our experiences as human beings are the most unique, focused, and flexible freedom of thought and physical direction that we will ever experience in life, but not everyone gets to indulge in this priceless gift. Freedom is but a dream for some. It is our duty to make the absolute best out of life for ourselves and others, but how can that dream be realized when most don’t know what they’re here for. The need  to know is great, the desire for answers almost indescribable, but the thing I always keep in mind is that no matter what happens here on this Earth, God is greater than all of it.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Truth Be Told
2. Deciphering A Purpose
3. Black Women’s Interracial Dating Woes

I met my karma head on. After all, it was mine - I earned it, I deserved it, I knew it was coming and so I braced and prepared myself for the world of hurt the impact would cause. I stopped justifying my bad behavior and started facing my fears. I stopped running from commitment and seriously neglecting personal responsibilities and sacrificing my morals for a quick feel good fix.

I had to be completely honest with myself. I had to let the affair be a testament to my imperfect frailty. It is vital that you be honest with yourself and the person you’re having the affair with. I was in love with my mistress and there was a time following the affair when I couldn’t even admit that. When you’ve given a piece of your heart to someone, it is forever gone and you have to come to terms with that loss. The more you put it off, the worse off you become.

Cheating affects the lives of everyone around you. Because you’re not only lying to yourself, you’re lying to everyone else too. Living that lie often points to deeper issues that underlie the relationship you have with your significant other (yourself if you’re single or your partner if you’re in a relationship.) There’s usually something wrong or missing - a result of some negative force lying beneath the surface that is perpetually avoided or excused so that it continues. This immoral behavior is so easily recognized that it can be addressed or ignored altogether depending on what foot the shoe is on and who is wearing it. Cheating is easy and indiscriminate and it hurts innocent people who have absolutely nothing to do with the actions pursued, especially children.

Recognizing patterns of excess in our lives manifested through lust, sexual insatiability, physical and emotional attention wanted and sought using false promises of love and impassioned sex is a crucial step, but one that many cheaters often disregard until long after the affair has been exposed.

I didn’t have to read or do anything except to allow myself to experience the overwhelming weight of my actions as they crashed down on me, pulling me deeper still into a place I wasn’t  ready to go yet, to face questions about myself I wasn’t ready to answer. I had to feel a hurt so deep that felt so bad that any and all tears left within me dried completely up, leaving my heart feeling like a heavy burden upon my soul instead of being the life force that it is. Experiencing that kind of pain is what eventually caused me to snap out of the false comfort I’d created for myself and those around me for that 2 years time period.

I had to get played like a fool because that’s what I was and how I felt. Toward the end of my affair I was so hurt by the resulting actions of my ex and her attempts to protect herself from further pain by withdrawing, but not completely, that my emotions eventually shut down. The pain of loss that I felt was honest and true as far as I knew and while affected I let my words flow out of me like the emotions that had previously overwhelmed. I turned thoughts into words and emptied my heart. I was pissed off at myself and at her because I still wanted her, but I loved my girlfriend and there was no way to reconcile the two because what I had been doing was plain wrong.

In the end, life goes on, but what’s most difficult to remember is that love goes right along with it. Like people, love reinvents itself, yet remains timeless. We must do the same with the affairs aftershocks… by reinventing ourselves. Transfer any longing onto something beneficial or onto an available someone else. Seek outward inspiration like you sought that first fiery kiss that felt so good you could have floated up to heaven. Crave positivity and goodness, which cheating is not, like you crave peace of mind. When we mistreat our bodies through poor diet and lack of exercise, our bodies suffer and ultimately so do we. We are an extension of our physical selves. So to do our souls suffer greatly when we feed them garbage when what it really desires is healthy, life giving sustenance. Affairs are kind of like that. They are completely and utterly self destructive no matter how good the sex is or how far gone your emotions may be for the object of your affection. No matter how good it feels, a lie is a lie and it only serves to weaken our other truths and to delay our healing.

In the final chapter of my affair I penned a poem.

The Meanest Poem I Ever Wrote.

It’s funny how someone who once loved you can so easily forget the good while at the same vividly remembering the bad times.
Because those bad instances somehow negate the good shit?
No, it’s because those bad times are what ultimately lead to the end of an error.
I mean the end of a long over-through relationship.
If the new girlfriend so easily had you from the start, then be honest, she really didn’t have to try all that hard.
You were left wide open and ripe for the picking.
You wanted someone to move in with and to keep your pussy dripping.
To restore your peace of mind and relinquish loves fate.
And there’s nothing wrong with that, just be real is what I’m saying.
It’s even worse that you were trying to restore your relationship with me.
At the same time forming a new one with your new shining King.
Again, be real with yourself, if you know how to that is.
So used to being fake with your family and friends.
If you must know, I always found that social awkwardness repulsive.
I noticed how it took no time for you to find your new shining knight, while at the same time you couldn’t even keep on your lights.
Asking me to continue assisting you financially, because you couldn’t pay your bills, but didn’t want your new girl to see.
I should have known you were phony, your contrast was stark.
Shouldn’t have paid a damn thing, let you both sit there in the dark.
Your credit was bad and I’m glad I didn’t let you destroy that too.
You’ve got some nerve writing about needing to be rescued.
I did plenty of that while you fucked your new piece in the bedroom.
You found someone who was interested in the outward exchanges while you still expressed your love and want for me daily.
Again, you disgust me and in the end I realized you were mostly out for my money.
Your new love was curious about why you needed to console yourself all the while telling her one thing while telling me something else.
You were whoring your debt out to the highest bidder, Me, while lying to her about your availability.
And I use the word love very lightly in your case since you have no idea what it actually consists of, you fucking fake.
You were telling your new love all the sweet nothings you’d told me.
Regurgitated bullshit expecting her to write to you like me, recite you poetry and give you nice pretty things like me?
She couldn’t get on my level if I gave her my vocabulary.
Calling her my old familiar names, yet all the while my dumb ass still paid your bills because….
- those mother fuckers were not getting paid.
How about that knight of yours be my banker for a day and make good on the debt that you left me unpaid.
Your soul belongs to no one and you are without shame… although you should own up to your share for shit you did back in the day, mate.
You are too damn old to be playing these games.
I guess it would be too much to say “act your age,” since you act like you never grew out of your “daddy’s girl” phase.
It is my hope that you never find another like any others you’ve ever been with before me; remember Melanie?
Poor thing.
Hopefully, this new one teaches you the value of being a real woman who can be true to herself and stop being fake ’cause for real though.
All I saw was fake, from your hair weave to the cheap glue you’d use to the eyelashes you’d apply using that same tacky ass glue.
I never got to tell you I loved you dancing or standing still,
I never got to tell you that sometimes your underarms smelled.
-
I LOVED YOU THAT MUCH even though I chuckle at the smell, I mean the thought of it now.
I used to wonder how you didn’t gag at yourself at times, but when you smell funk long enough you get used to it right?
All these things I kept inside because… well, at the time I truly loved you and I thought I was your shining knight.
Time’s allowed me to clear my heart and now it’s time to clear my mind.
You had every right to write that blog but even more telling was the glaring lack of response.
How your sentiments seemed corny and your testimonials a big front.
Do me a favor and put your page back on private from now on.
And please watch what you write because I’ll come out on top.
Funny how karma works and how I don’t wish the bad kind on anyone.
But if clearing my mind makes you wish that bad bitch on me, it’s only fair since I’m putting it out there for all to see.
Let’s just hope there’s no backlash ’cause you ain’t all roses, Missy.
I know damn well my shit stinks, but I bite back when I hear a motherfucker talkin’ shit about me.
Peace.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. The Dark Side of Valentine’s
2. The Dark Side Of Affairs Part I
3. The Dark Side Of Affairs Part II: Karma

She describes “Somi” (her nickname given to Osama) as a “monster, genius, poet, racist, woman-basher, very passionate, deeply sensitive, and confused” human being. She also speaks about his love of Western Culture –including an obsession with singer, actress, Whitney Houston – and Marijuana.

What has twitter been like for you?

Twitter brings the whole world together, but it’s been awful for me because I can write in English faster than I can think in English. I tell too much I’m afraid.

Can you give us a brief history of your life..for our readers who don’t know who you are?

I am an Egyptian-Sudanese-American novelist and poet. I was born in Omdurman, Sudan and my birth parents were murdered when I was six for speaking out against slavery and genocide in Sudan. I was then let for adoption and ended up with a Black American family in Washington,D.C. in 1979. I was eight and I grew up in America as an out-patient in Psychiatric Care. I credit the love of my Black American parents with saving my life and my sanity. I have become a successful television writer and novelist but most people know me right now because of Osama Bin Laden.

In 1993 after getting my American citizenship, I traveled back to North Africa and became a model and actress. I was young and dumb and became the mistress of Sudan’s Vice President Hasan al Turabi and later Osama Bin laden. Hasan mentored Osama and the son of Hasan, Isam, was Osama’s closest friend. The relationship was against my will but I have not denied doing everything I could to make Osama happy because I feared for my life.

A diplomat of the Sudanese government (Nadeem Gamal Ibrahim Quttub) wrote a book claiming you married Bin Laden, that you had a child with him and that you were happy. Mr. Quttub says  that you’re just pretending to hate Osama because you’re in America.

That’s completely false. His entire book is a lie. I have never loved Osama and I was never his wife.

When you heard the news of Bin Laden’s death how did you feel?

I felt a huge range of things. It’s hard to say to an American audience what I felt…they wouldn’t understand all of it. But I am glad he’s dead and I applaud President Obama for making the world a safer place. There is a misconception that I loved Osama and that’s not true. I never loved Osama. I had to survive and thus I did whatever was necessary to do that. Many have misconstrued my articulation of his complexity as romantic love. It’s more pity and compassion, because I actually knew him as a person long before he was famous.

Do you feel like the U.S. Had the right to go into Pakistan to find Bin Laden?

Humans never have the right to do anything on either side, so I will not take sides. All men are guilty of everything we’re suffering.

What kind of relationship did you and Osama Bin Laden have?

It started very abusive with rape. Then out of fear for my life I did everything to please him; I catered to him. It lasted for six months and it changed constantly. We had a lot of sex, but I also accompanied him and his men on hunting expeditions every Friday at Dahkla and we wrote poetry together. He liked to smoke a lot of weed and ramble for hours about how the world would be once he saved us by forcing the planet to become Muslim.

Did you know about his 3 other wives?

He had four wives in 1996 when I knew him. As far as I knew, they were in Khartoum. The lead wife, Najwa, hated me and tried to be difficult to no avail.

Recently you sent out a pic that showed nudity on twitter..would you say you’re comfortable with your body?

I come from a Nilotic river culture in Sudan. I don’t see nudity as sexual or particularly unconventional. I believe it’s an abomination for a woman’s breasts to be covered. I am a Womanist.

How people first react to you when they found out you were Osama Bin Laden’s mistress?

At first, because they only had my birth name…Naima Bint Harith, they were very professional and serious. I was treated with utmost respect. But after they saw that I was Black, and as many stated, not even Mixed Black…they became hostile and very cruel. Particularly Peter Bergen, a supposed Bin Laden expert, who makes his fortune writing books about Osama. He did a smear campaign against me and was very cruel and punishing. He said that I was jeopardizing the credibility of the books he’d already written. Americans didn’t want a Black woman to be called Egyptian for some reason. That was another issue. Derrick Bell, the famous American legal scholar told me that they didn’t want to put a Black face on Egypt.

In the raid..they found a huge cache of porn..was Osama a porn addict?

He loved sex period, but he was deeply ashamed of it. His men watched the porn probably more than he did. But yes, he watched. He had a thing for Whitney Houston and to a much lesser degree Julia Roberts and Iman. But that movie “The BodyGuard” was a big deal with Osama. He watched it all the time. He obsessed over Whitney Houston and rambled on about kidnapping her one day.

What’s something about Osama Bin Laden that people may not know?

That he rarely ever yelled. He was extremely sensitive and very soft spoken. He cried once when I saw him order someone in Ethiopia to be killed. He was a genius intellectually, he had a huge heart…but our Arab culture…and I can say this because I’m half Arab. Our Arab culture and the Islamic religion creates the breeding ground for this delusional type of warfare and machismo. Osama was a victim of Arab Islam as far as I’m concerned.

How has your life changed since your newfound fame? Better or worse?

My life is simply different. I am not comfortable in public, I fear for my children and we live in hiding. We move a lot. I am trying to continue my literary career with my latest novel, The Sexy Part of the Bible. It’s getting rave reviews and I’m glad that so many Black women love this book.

Do you like hip-hop music? If yes..who’s your favorite artists?

I like the old school hip hop. I grew up on KRS ONE, MC Lyte, Eric B. and Rakim. I guess Lauryn Hill would be my favorite hip hop artist.  But what I hate about Hip Hop culture is the chronic Colorism, the Anti-Black imagery in the videos and magazines. They all want to be White, everything is all about
Mulatto women, they’re all fake and bling bling. I don’t enjoy the Anti-Black images and the hatred for the mother of our race, the Dark skinned black woman. She is the real true Black woman, the Mother of Africa and all humans. It’s a disgrace that she is not celebrated as young, beautiful and hip and hopping because she’s the eternal goddess. Don’t give a fuck what rappers say. They’ve become the new White trash.

What are your future plans? Any movies or documentaries in the works?

The rights to my autobiography, “Diary of a Lost Girl” are up for sale and I hope to see it made into a movie. I want Naomie Harris to play me. If not her, then I really believe the model Naomi Campbell should be given a chance. She’s interested in the part.

Eso Won Books in Los Angeles has banned your new novel “The Sexy Part of the Bible.” Why did they do that?

They haven’t given any answer other than they feel that I hate Black men and mixed race/biracial people—which is totally not true. But from earlier novels I’ve written, they feel that I unfairly attack Black Men and that my refusal to see Mixed people as Black means I hate them. It doesn’t. No one in Africa sees Mixed/Biracial as Blacks. Period. It’s an African thing its not personal. I love anyone who loves me.

Any shout-outs or acknowledgments that you’d like to do?

Yes, a shout out to Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, for making my latest book “The Sexy Part of the Bible” available in England and Africa. It reveals the horrors of skin bleaching in African cultures and that’s a story that needs to be examined. I also thank him for letting Jesus be Black and leaving the controversial sex scene with Jesus in. Many find the book shocking, but it’s important to challenge the status quo and to make new artistic expressions.

Official Website
http://www.kolaboof.com

Kola’s Books on AALBC.com
http://aalbc.com/authors/kola_boof.htm

www.twitter.com/Kolaboof

Buy her latest book “The Sexy Part of the Bible” on Amazon.

This Exclusive Interview is courtesy of:  The Black Urban Times

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Leisha Hailey of Uh Huh Her
2. When The Mistress Feels Cheated
3. Newt Gingrich’s Family Values and the Politics of Infidelity

Vladimir Marker

Kamora Herrington, who leads the mentoring program for True Colors, a Hartford-based youth and family services organization for gay, lesbian and transgender teens, had this to say about the comedian’s anti-gay remarks:

Dear Tracy,

I woke up to your apology this morning and was disappointed. You apologized to your fans and the gay and lesbian community; that missed the point for me.

You know that your words offended the gay community because Kevin Rogers, an out gay man, was able to blog about his experience and share it with the world.

I can’t pretend to know Mr. Rogers’ situation, but I’m going to assume that he’s found a way to live his life in an out and proud manner, and while your tirade against us was offensive to him, it didn’t create a life or death situation.

Mr. Morgan, I’d like you to consider your position in the Black community. While you are a comedian and people expect that most of what comes out of your mouth will be jokes, there are certain cultural norms that you have the ability to perpetuate or reject or come up with something in between. Personally, I’d say examine them, but that’s me.

When you perpetuate negative stereotypes towards the gay community, much less violence towards us, you’re reinforcing the belief that Black people hate gay people. I’m tired of defending my community against my community and you don’t make my job any easier by inserting yet another quotable example of Black people hating on gay people into the cultural and political discourse.

Mr. Morgan I am a bi-racial, lesbian mother who works with LGBT teens on a daily basis. Most of these teens are youth of color – that’s us Tracy. Because of what they see and hear on t.v. and the radio they know that when they come out as gay they are losing the Black community. Imagine if someone told you being funny wasn’t a Black thing so you could only hang out with white comedians. And if you’d try to hang out with Black folks they’d reject you. And when you hang out with your white comedian friends, sometimes some of them would make Black folk jokes because Black folks are funny. That just doesn’t feel right. Does it?

Mr. Morgan you’re an intelligent man. You wouldn’t be where you are and have achieved the accomplishments you’ve achieved if you weren’t. While my Black comedian example is a bit of a stretch I hope you get my point. Our children need to be accepted and loved for who they are. When you ridicule and advocate violence towards us as teens; when we’re just growing into who we are, you validate stereotypes and create unsafe living situations for our children…hear me out.

Other than Mr. Rogers, I don’t know who was in the audience that evening. But let’s say there was a Black single mother in the audience who’s just figured out that her son is ‘that way.’ She hasn’t told any of her girlfriends, they’re just out to have a good time. Then you start Tracy. Her son is the same age as the son you’d stab. And you tell your joke and her friends laugh…and she laughs.

What happens next, Tracy? I can tell you what I see. I’d LOVE to tell you what I see. Better yet, I’d love for you to come to my office and SEE what I see. Your apology may have come from the heart, but it missed the point. Some people will be happy with it, some won’t, some are going to want to flush out your bank account.

I don’t want your dollar. I don’t want your apology. I want your ear, your time, and your understanding. Come to my office and meet the LGBT teens I work with or find other organizations and inpiduals working to support these marginalized children. Because again, Tracy they are us. Please, educate yourself on who these children whom you would theoretically stab are and consider their parents when you tell these jokes. When Mr. Rogers went home, he blogged. The theoretical mother out with her friends may have found a different outlet for her emotions. I’ve seen mothers like the one I described handle it in the most beautiful after-school special way. But I’ve seen far too many families torn apart by scenarios similar to the one you described on June 3rd.

Sincerely,

Kamora Le’Ella

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. TNG TV: Chris Pureka Sings Out Against Queer Teen Suicide
2. On Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Rant
3. DADT’s Third Party Use And Abuse: The Case Of Jene Newsome

via Facebook

Welcome to the Internet! Where that 23 year old blonde bombshell from Southern California that likes you for your smile and personality is really a 300 pound middle aged white guy living in his parents basement somewhere down in BumFuck, Egypt, America. Pretending to be a lesbian on online is about as old as the Internet itself. If you’re a lesbian who has pursued other women online, it’s more likely than not that you’ve come across a man pretending to be a woman at some point. If you’ve ever visited the website Lez Get Real you can regrettably join rank with the rest of the duped.

Back when I first started following the lesbian news site, Lez Get Real, it was my understanding that the website was owned by Julie Phineas, a woman I had the pleasure of briefly conversing with via e-mail in 2009, and whose bio on this website states:

LezGetReal.com

This project allowed me to work side by side with the site owner to develop and produce a popular lesbian news site online. This site began as a blog on Blogger.com, where we established a loyal following and team of bloggers. I handled the initial recruiting as well as the editing and publishing of articles on a regular basis. After migrating to the Wordpress platform when the site gained popularity, I handled much of the site migration including template customization, content strategy and the design of the site header using online photo editing software. The logo is by GotLogos.com. This website went on to make a positive difference in the lesbian community and gained popularity and linkbacks from sites like PerezHilton.com. I completed production on this project in July 2009 and the owner has maintained the site ever since.

But is it safe to assume that Julie Phineas knew explicitly that Paula Brooks, site owner and editor of Lez Get Real, was really a man? And by now you know the truth is out about the blogger of A Gay Girl in Damascus. She is also really a man posing as a lesbian. Tom MacMaster, 40-year-old purported Middle-East activist studying for a Masters Degree at Edinburgh University in Scotland. MacMaster, who is married and from Atlanta, Georgia created the online persona and named her Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari; a beautiful, young, lesbian woman living in Damascus, Syria. The blog grabbed the national spotlight when Amina,whose blog had become very popular by then and had amassed a following, was reportedly kidnapped and then declared missing on June 7, 2011.

MacMaster started the blog on February 19, 2011. The blog title accurately described it as being about “an out Syrian lesbian’s thoughts on life, the universe and so on …” And what made it really stand out was that it was started several weeks prior to the start of the Syrian uprisings, also known as the Arab Spring.

I live in Damascus, Syria. It’s a repressive police state. Most LGBT people are still deep in the closet or staying as invisible as possible. But I have set up a blog announcing my sexuality, with my name and my photo. Am I crazy? Maybe. [...] I have to begin by doing something bold and visible. I can, because I’m a dual national and have benefits of politically connected relatives, be more visible than many women here. I’m already out to my family … and I want to be an example to others … to know that one of is trying..

I am somewhat reminded of Orson Wells’ radio adaptation of The War of The Worlds which caused panic and chaos by those who believed the terrifying narrative was real.

But this is no such thing. There’s a clear difference between openly fictionalizing or placing a spin on real events and perpetrating a triple-double whammy by pretending to be someone or something you’re not. No theater training in the world could have aptly prepared Tom MacMaster or Paula Brooks aka Bill Gather and all of the people they lied to for the resulting backlash.

This is one of those chapters in faction (a mix of fiction and fact) where by the end of the story the truth is greater and more interesting than fiction. MacMaster was in the process of writing the story of his life, and he will likely try to capitalize on all of the events leading up to it now. Here’s a quasi academic who doesn’t, at first sight, correlate the difference between fact and fiction and hurt and pain that he’s caused to many. He is so oddly transparent that he and his wife decided to go on vacation in the midst of all the chaos; in the midst of a grand internet hoax coming to light. It’s classic sociopathic behavior from a narcissist and I hope those who read his graduate dissertation pay very close attention to  his detail.

The initial apology MacMaster issued was further testament to his abuse and misuse of an unspoken American birthright: white male privilege.

He claims he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and that would be somewhat understandable if it were just one person at the root of his hurt; that being himself. But there are many hundreds, if not thousands of lives he has greatly and negatively affected.

Tom MacMaster didn’t create Amina’s voice, he took away someone else’s by perpetuating lies. He put real gay bloggers in Syria and every place where homosexuality is illegal in danger by building a wall of lies with which to rest his political, religious, and social ideology upon.

He was and probably still is a wanna-be fiction writer who discovered a way to make an audience keep coming back for more by sensationalizing shit. He fabricated a fictional characters life, and took advantage of good people and a harrowing situation in Syria. His own political endeavors were further emboldened by the feedback he started to receive, and loads of people who wanted to do nothing but help, support, and continue following Amina’s life and activism throughout it all were duped. The fact that he used a fake Syrian lesbian woman’s voice to establish a level of trust and credibility when none was deserved makes his boldness all the more insulting.

People from all over the world rely on bloggers from the Middle-East, Africa, America, India, etc, to report on what’s happening around them. MacMaster joins a growing list of bloggers who learned how to effectively manipulate not only people, but also the media in their quest for attention and/or fame.

It’s really no surprise that people live out very complex fantasies anonymously online every single day. They accomplish this by way of chat rooms, blogs, forums, dating sites, etc, but isn’t there a line that should never ever be crossed when it comes to merging fantasy and reality? It’s my belief that there is, and at the very least our moral compass should not reach beyond possibly, unwittingly putting peoples lives in danger or their careers at stake. Lying about things that could potentially grievously affect people on a grand scale makes a case for greater accountability from all bloggers, including those like me who’ve never claimed to be be journalists, but like to be able to put up a good defense if ever checked.

Another interesting factor is how he only conducted interviews and correspondence by e-mail. Amina’s “girlfriend” whom she was scheduled to meet in Europe is understandably devastated by the revelations. She claims to have had no idea that MacMaster was Amina it is believable due to the fact that they’d never met in person, communicated online, and he reluctantly admitted that she was one of the people he hurt.

Perhaps the most striking is the audacity of his actions of which he’s not the first and certainly won’t be the last. Instead of supporting the efforts of real activists, he’d concocted a fairy tale while living in the comfortable and safe confines of his home, pretending he knew what it was like to be a Syrian lesbian.

In the newest apology published on Sunday, MacMaster called his fictional diary of a Syrian revolutionary an attempt “to illuminate” the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, “for a western audience.” He also wrote: “I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

And then there’s this: “Syrian state media has picked up on the story and is using it as evidence that the opposition they face in the Middle East are made up of fabricated voices from European and American implants.”

Despite claims that he never intended to hurt anyone I have to say that he’s not only done just that, he’s cast a cloud of doubt over every blogger whose ever had a story to tell.

He cared about getting a narrative, his narrative across. And it should be said that there’s nothing wrong with anonymity or online personas, but among the weaved web of lies MacMaster spun they include stealing another woman’s identity and using her photos to represent Amina in the flesh.

When MacMaster couldn’t keep up the facade any longer, for whatever reason, he stupidly claimed that Amina had been kidnapped by the Syrian government. Her world was about to come crashing down, but then again so was his.

After a woman in Britain said the photographs circulating around the Internet were of her and not the Syrian-American blogger in Damascus doubts began to swirl to the surface as to Amina’s real identity.

The London woman, Jelena Lecic, discovered the use of her photos when an article written in Guardian used one of them. She contacted Guardian and asked them to remove the photos before any action was taken. Amina’s online girlfriend, Sandra Bagaria, the woman who raised alarm about her arrest was also suspected of being Amina, but she is not.

The fraud was elaborate, but poorly executed. What’s not fake is that people are being killed and tortured in Syria, yet the real attention is being placed on McMaster’s disaster. I blame myself for contributing to it, but I don’t apologize for speaking my piece.

For weeks, a touching display of care, concern, and activism on the part of Amina’s supporters was at the forefront for many. Journalists, bloggers, and human rights advocates came together to find ways to pressure government institutions to look further into Amina’s disappearance.

Another victim is Linda S. Carbonell, Managing Editor of Lez Get Real. For having to defend Bill Graber better known as Paula Brooks, who first came under fire for using a pseudonym on the site, then for offering a safe haven to Amina, subsequently losing a main site supporter due to her doubts about the existence of Amina, to actually being a man himself who pretended to be a lesbian.

Both Paula and I have close family members who work for the government. Ginny Thomas is the only person in the government arrogant enough to ignore the restrictions on free speech that are imposed on AMERICAN government workers and their families. Paula and I have always worked under pseudonyms to protect our families. Furthermore, because our site is blatantly and unapologetically liberal, we risk our own jobs if our site is connected to us. America is not free. It just pretends to be.” —Linda S. Carbonell, managing editor

As of early this morning, it was my hope that Paula was exactly who she says she was because according to Liz Henry at bookmaniac.org:

“Brooks had not communicated by voice to the reporters — only over email or chat. Brooks’ online presence looked a bit thin. Ben and Ali tried to verify any of the facts of her education and employment, and could not find evidence of Paula Brooks’ existence. I spoke with people who were close to Brooks and should have met her — but who had never seen her. I have no direct evidence that Brooks is Tom MacMaster, but circumstantial evidence shows it is a good avenue for research. If Brooks is *another distinct hoaxer*, that will be very odd, and will need more investigation.” http://bookmaniac.org/chasing-amina/

Bill Graber is a 58 year old former Air Force pilot who said he used the site to argue in favor of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal.  Follow the Washington Post article about it here, Paula Brooks, Editor of Lez Get Real, is a man. Linda S. Carbonell, managing editor for LezGetReal said this following the break:

Ownership of the site is being turned over to me and Bridgette. Nothing has ever appeared on this site that wasn’t factually based. Yes, we post opinions, but we don’t post fiction. The issues remain – the disenfranchisement of Americans for race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, poverty – these things are still happening. In 18 months we will have one of the most important elections in our nation’s history, an election that will determine the future of our nation and possibly the world. That has not changed just because Paula Brooks turned out to be guy who let an on-line persona get away from him. Bill has been trying to ease out of the site for a couple of months now. He would have been “retired” in late August.

The bottom line is MacMaster’s apology lacks substance, genuine remorse and the level of emotion found within the blogs he fabricated to his audience for so long. He’s a lying sack. Paula Brooks’ unraveling is equally disturbing, however like Lez Get Real, I’m waiting for his statement.

MacMaster said this before making two subsequent follow up apologies:

Look, if I was the genius who had pulled this off, I would say, ‘Yeah,’ and write a book,” said MacMaster, reached in Istanbul, where he is vacationing with his wife, a graduate student working on a PhD in international relations.

He also said: “I am not the blogger in question. Whomever that person ‘really’ is, I have doubtless interacted with her at some point. I do not know further than that about her. When I first read the news story, I momentarily thought I had an idea who she was. As time has progressed that seems much less likely. I understand there are a number of unusual coincidences regarding the blogger and either me or my wife. Those are, as far as I am aware, simply unusual. I am not going to make more of that.” source: www.electronicintifada.net

Big fat fraudulent liar.

In another odd twist, the Centre for Syrian Studies where MacMaster’s wife, Britta Froelicher is an Associate Fellow, was partially funded by the Syrian government. He says although his wife is a student (I read expert) of the region, he was the sole author on the blog. I doubt there is any truth to the statement. She has a lot more to lose, thus it’s understandable that her husband would take the bulk of the fall.

Lez Get Real, a lesbian news site I had come to respect has suffered a major blow for MacMaster’s and Brooks recklessness. The reporter on African issues, who prompted me to write about corrective rape in Africa on my blog was reportedly driven from the website for questioning Amina’s authenticity.

Finally, MacMaster/Amina was shopping his memoir for possible publication. Read here, http://www.minalhajratwala.com/2011/06/a-thousand-sighs-memoir-of-a-hoax/

The memoir can be read/downloaded here: http://www.minalhajratwala.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/A-Thousand-Sighs-Part-I.pdf

“All of a sudden, after having years of rejection letters, I was getting a whole lot of positive feedback for some fiction I had written. That certainly fed my vanity.”

At least we have a good idea about his next move. I would say a poorly written book is on the horizon, but I don’t know a single person less deserving of another 15 minutes. Not yet at least.

Had MacMaster not been such a sloppy fraud, he’d have realized that glorifying Amina’s fake life to such a degree as to fabricate her high-profile kidnapping in a country experiencing high levels of unrest would bring more attention to her cause. Perhaps that’s what he wanted to happen. I certainly don’t buy the explanation that he wanted her to fade away multiple times before coming up with the plot to fake her kidnapping. The events that unfolded were sensational and I do believe MacMaster was eating up every last bit of the fanfare the posts were generating.

Watch his interview with London based newspaper Guardian:

Response: Yeah, whatever, man.

Dear Tom,

People are really dying in Syria.

It is not a joke. You are.

You have made fools of people who believed in you.

But now, thankfully, this chapter is ending.

You are no friend of the gay community.

Your deceit has left a stinging welt that will undoubtedly be felt by those connected to you in all the various ways for many years to come.

Please do us gays and lesbians a favor and refrain from pretending to know anything about what it feels like to walk in our shoes.

You know nothing of our struggles, only that your privilege has allowed you to use, abuse and then discard of our community like a fanatic dictator when your gay facade no longer served your purpose.

Your actions are disgraceful and insulting to boot.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, the opportunity won’t likely present itself again, we hope.

Good day to you.

-

Knowledge

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

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Their opinions, however wayward, are usually filled with your run of the mill bigoted hypocritical sentiments such as “love the sinner – not the sin,” while assuring us that they aren’t the confused damn fools they make themselves out to be for conveniently leaving out parts of the bible they find irrelevant. Is it not evident that discrimination of any form breeds more discrimination. Sadly, it’s as if the religious right, which constitutes a considerable collective of the Black Church, hasn’t learned some important history lessons relating to bigotry and hypocrisy that have been harshly taught through the ages.

(Queue American’s celebrating their newly fought freedom from the British at the end of the Revolutionary War, while slavery was in full affect in the South in America.)

It’s as if their idea of Christianity, taught to black slaves by ancestral slave masters who wanted to “save their souls” while forbidding them from following the religious practices of their forgotten native homeland – Africa, is the one and only way and it is all they know.

Newer generations of well intentioned followers are still being bamboozled. It’s safe to say that if every active gay black church member had the courage to come out of the closet, the black Church or “Spiritual Body” as a whole, as they like to be called, would be left in a state of complete and utter shock, and the move would effectively silence most of the anti-gay bigotry preached from the pulpit.

We are all made in God’s image, and since God is love why would he condemn His people for wanting to express and share that God given affection with another human being? The notion that he would send anyone to hell for doing so is absolutely ridiculous, which is understandably a terrifying concept for the average Christian in-name-only to comprehend.

“Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one. Which one seems unnatural now?”

image by Ryan Grant Long

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

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2. Black Churches Resent Gay Civil Rights Comparisons
3. ‘Pastor’ Eddie Long: Pulpit Pimping, Abuse of Power & Muscle Shirts

image: seanmart.com

Upon further examination, it seems more likely that he is one of the smartest people in their political circle because they agree with and give credence to his ideology. What they consider brilliance is little more than masterful manipulation with words, actions, or both. And quite frankly, it takes a pretty smart person to pull it off for as long as Newt Gingrich has.

In politics, infidelity runs so deep that it is no longer considered a career ender when an affair is brought to light. Except, of course, if one has engaged in an affair of the toe tapping (Larry Craig), intern harassing (Mark Foley) homosexual variety. For Republicans, being outed as, or associated with anything gay is, by all accounts, “the” political career killer.

The winds of change shift every time a repentent bible thumber who has been exposed for adultery is forgiven, because they have repented and now have God on their side.

It should be noted that, at one time, adultery was an automatic disqualification for those who aspired to public and/or political office. This is no longer the case. Few people would agree that Newton Leroy Gringrich’s past serial adultery makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. No thanks due in part to former President William Jefferson Clinton who made famous the phrase, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” when every Congressman and their mother knew the omission was patently false.

Little known to most Americans until around 2007 was the true story of how Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House and one of the most powerful men in Washington at the time, was engaged in his own extramarital affair. He was in the midst of the affair when he, along with a slew of other red-handed hypocrites, headed Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. Under Gingrich’s direct leadership, the GOP launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at exposing Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky to the American people.

Newt had this to say about the revelation of his affair:

“The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge. I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being.’ As a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept … perjury in your highest officials.”

The difference lies in the fact that Newt didn’t deny his affair during testimony, while under oath, in a court of law. And because he was never asked he had absolutely no chance to deny the affair, nor did he have reason to admit to it. Admittedly, he is absolutely correct in the legal sense. Clinton was impeached because he lied while under oath, resulting from affairs with Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Lewinsky and others, and not because he had sexual relationships with these women.

As one of the most recognized members of the GOP, the party best known for shouting its family values, morals, and the sanctity of marriage from the rooftops, Gingrich embodies American Conservativism. He also embodies that of a serial adulterer, sex addict, and your run of the mill misogynist.

Say what you will, but in the tumultuous world of politics, Newt is a survivor who can parlay with the best of them. He, at one time, vocally criticized every single wrongdoing of the Democratic Party to try to bring them down.

Of the big Republican and Democratic nominees pondering a run for the office of the President in 2008, a surprising number could have been considered, at one time or another, serial adulterers.

“Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Gingrich even ran for office in ‘78 under the slogan “Let Our Family Represent Your Family” while cheating on his wife. He would go on to divorce her following the election. Let’s not forget the despicable John Edwards (D) who carried on an affair and fathered a child while his wife fought the battle of her life against terminal breast cancer.

But back to Gingrich, whose affairs are most alluring because he frequently campaigned under the family values platform. A short timeline follows:

He divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged his affair with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years his junior. His first marriage, to former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. They married at 18, but he reportedly begins secretly dating her at the tender age of 16, while still in high school.

“The Cato Institute records that Gingrich “famously visited Jackie, his first wife, in the hospital where she was recovering from uterine cancer surgery to discuss details of the impending divorce. He later resisted paying alimony and child support for his two daughters, causing a church to take up a collection. For all of his talk of religious faith and the importance of God, Gingrich left his congregation over the pastor’s criticism of his divorce.”

After 18 years of marriage to his second wife, he asked for a divorce. He’d been having an affair with his soon to be, and current third wife, for 6 years prior. He decided to follow in her footsteps and convert to Roman Catholicism, after which time he was granted an annulment of his second marriage of 18 years. The reason for the annulment was that his former wife had been previously married, and his current wife was active in the church, including singing in the choir, all the while sleeping with the married Gingrich. Apparently, annulment looks better on paper than divorce.

If Bill and Hillary Clinton’s marriage can be publicly dissected on the front page of every newsstand, why should the marital infidelities of other GOP and Democratic candidates be off limits?

The bottom line is this, what bothers most people about Gingrich is not that he cheated on his first wife while she was sick, and his second wife while she was sick, but it is that he had and still has the gall to get on a national podium and lecture the rest of us about family values and morality. He’s not a big fan of taking his own advice.

How can you lecture anyone about the sanctity of marriage while so blatantly ignoring those very ideals yourself? We can all agree that infidelity does not disqualify a man or woman from public office, nor should it. We’d be unable to run the country if that were the case, but it does disqualify them from making lectures and soap box speeches that point to that very thing. It’s his glaring hypocrisy that knows no bounds, and speaks to a character lacking integrity. It’s his defense of “the sanctity of marriage,” and his anti-same sex marriage stance. Here is a man who clearly has no respect for marriage’s sanctity outside of it being an institution that suits him whenever he feels fit, and when his wife, whoever she may be at the time, is without illness.

President “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Gingrich? Ugh. Will a serious GOP candidate please stand up? Republicans will have to come a lot better than this.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

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