I went to a book reading tonite for Dan Savage's new book: Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. He was really amazingly funny and a great speaker and question answerer, i think he's actually much better in person than he is in writing. Furthermore he managed to restore my faith in liberalism.

I suppose that comment takes a bit of explaining. Basically, although my politics nowadays are more liberal than conservative I am still more often annoyed by liberals than i am by conservatives. Things like wearing little ribons on ones lapel for some cause, or camping out in tents for a living wage, just rub me the wrong way. I often find liberalism so childish, and so obsessed with symbolism over outcomes. I think being un-PC is a good thing, and i often find liberals sadly lacking in humor when it comes to politics. Dan Savage on the other hand makes jokes to a liberal audience in berkeley about how his book not being nominated for Lambda book award is like going to the special olympics and not getting a medal. More importantly he made it very clear why his politics were worth fighting for and actually made a difference other than just making one feel good that you're trying to do good for other people. (I guess that's what annoys me about liberalism the whole "well we're trying to do our best and if it doesn't actually accomplish anything you can't blame us" thing.) But Dan Savage very eloquently and humorously showed that the pursuit of happiness is a pretty damn important thing, and that its worth fighting for, and that we're winning that war. And he didn't pull punches. His anger towards Bill Bennet was also directed towards those in the Gay community who tried to stop him from being able to adopt because he strayed too far from the "rainbow reservation", when someone asked about decriminalizing marijuana he pointed out with genuine outrage the hypocrasy of decriminalizing possesion but not dealing: "[loosely quoted] these people are risking their necks for your happiness and when they get caught we run the other way. If smoking pot isn't so bad, than why is it bad to sell it? There should be an organization out there of people who smoke pot who pay the legal fees of their dealers if they get caught, we shouldn't just leave them out to dry."

If there were more people out there like him then I could proudly say I was a liberal.