Anyone who is a registered Republican and lives in Philadelphia, please go to the polls tomorrow to vote for Steve Odabashian and only Steve Odabashian. Those of us who have been lucky enough to know Steve are well aware of the fact that he is not a seasoned politician. If we was, we probably couldn’t stand him. Instead, Steve is a caring, thoughtful, and compassionate human being who is running for this office not for money, glory, or power, but because he loves this city and he wants to help it reach its potential. Not to mention that he has won 3 Quizzo Bowls with an intellect that, quite frankly dwarfs most of his opponents (who combined have won 0 Quizzo Bowls.) Please get out to vote tomorrow, and please vote Steve-O. Furthermore, if any of you are free and want to help Steve out tomorrow, please contact him on facebook.

As most of you know, Lambda star Steve-O is running for City Council. As you may not know, he has enlisted our good friend Chip Chantry to help with the campaign. The results are predictably insane. Here is Steve’s campaign website.

RELATED: Chip and Johnny star in Dr. Hank’s Used Catheter Emporium.

I was reading this piece about Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair, and got to this text of a speech she gave in Missouri about how smart she and her followers are: “They talk down to us. Especially here in the heartland. Oh, man. They think that, if we were just smart enough, we’d be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell ’em, and I do tell ’em, Oh, we’re plenty smart, oh yeah—we know what’s goin’ on. And we don’t like what’s goin’ on. And we’re not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.”

I couldn’t help but notice that a staggering 62 of the 72 words (86%) in that paragraph were exactly one syllable long. And 3 of the “big words” were goin’, goin’, and gonna. Don’t let anybody tell you and your followers that they are simple, Sarah. After all, you do know a 4 syllable word (especially). I don’t exactly hang out with rocket scientists, but I can’t imagine any of my friends using almost exclusively one syllable words. Hell, I can’t imagine that if I had a discussion with my 3 year old niece, 86% of her words would be one syllable long.

Well, this experiment isn’t exactly scientific, but I thought, “Why don’t I check out the last 72 words Paris Hilton has written on twitter?” Palin can’t possibly have a more limited vocab than Ms. Cocaine Gum herself, right? Wrong. Of the last 72 words Paris has written on twitter (not including @s, links, people’s names, or xoxo), 55 of them were one syllable long (76%). Dunno if this means anything, but it looks like these geniuses who follow Sarah Palin would be a bit overwhelmed if Paris “Big Words” Hilton took the stage.

A few days ago, Virginia’s recently elected Governor Bob McDonnell decided to renew something that was begun in Virginia under George Allen in the 1990s: a month to honor the Confederacy. To make matters worse, he made no mention of slavery in the proclamation that ushered in April as Confederate History Month. But what had me seeing red was his subsequent defense of leaving slavery out of the initial proclamation: “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.“

There are few things that get under my skin worse than bullshit revisionist Civil War history. I am no expert on the Civil War, but I know enough to know that it was fought for one primary reason: because the South wanted to expand slavery into the West, and the North wanted it to die a natural death, and knew that it would not do so if it expanded. The South wanted the citizens of the new states to determine if they were to be slave states, and the Federal government wanted to say that they did not have that choice. Therefore it was on some level a state’s rights issue: but by far the most important right the South wanted the states to have was the right to buy and sell human slaves. The “state’s rights” cause was a means to an end, not the issue itself. To say that slavery wasn’t one of the “most significant issues” to Confederates in Virginia is simply not true. It was THE issue, and anyone saying otherwise is either lying, ignorant, or racist. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War. Period. There is nothing I have ever read or heard (and keep in mind, I grew up in Virginia, so I’ve heard plenty of the “State’s rights” and “self-government” theories) that has led me to even have one shred of doubt as to this fact.

I admire many things about Robert E. Lee, and I have no problem with honoring the Civil War dead. I myself lost Confederate ancestors in the War. I appreciate the fact that the memory of the war is kept alive. It is important for any country to remember what once tore it apart. But to try to rewrite history, to deny that slavery was not only one of the issues, but the overriding issue that caused the South to form a Confederacy and for the Civil War to occur, is akin to denying the Holocaust or claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. You can line up the facts however you want to to make your point, but at the end of the day, you are on the wrong side of the facts.

When the governor of a state says that slavery was not “a significant issue” in the Civil War, it is beyond wrong. It is dangerous. It encourages his constituents to accept something that is false as the truth, and encourages them to belittle the evils of the institution of slavery, and to not claim the responsibility of their ancestors. Slavery was accepted by almost all of the civilized world as being an evil practice in 1860, and therefore while we those of us in the South can still love and appreciate our ancestors, we must also acknowledge the mistake they made in fighting for an unjust cause.

Though the whole episode is a disgrace and has certainly caused me embarrassment as a native of Virginia, McDonnell’s apology and addition to the proclamation are impressive enough to make me forgive him, though I certainly won’t forget why it came to this.

“The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

Slavery led to the Civil War. The Confederacy fought for it, not only so that they could own slaves, but so that people in other states and in future generations could suppress the freedom of an entire race of people as well. The Confederacy should certainly be duly noted, but neither celebrated nor applauded. As Frederick Douglass said in 1878, “There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war, which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget.”

I grew up in the South. My ancestors have lived in Virginia since the 1600s. I am extremely proud of my Southern heritage and of my Virginian heritage. I am not proud of my Confederate heritage. I think it is important for forward thinking people in the South to acknowledge and people in the North to understand: though they have been often claimed by fringe groups as being one and the same, Southern heritage and Confederate heritage are two remarkably different things. One is the result of hundreds of years of wonderful culture, delicious food, pride in much of our shared history, and generation after generation of people who are taught manners, kindness, and respect for their fellow man. The other lasted four and was born of an unjust cause. There are some in the South who are proud of both. I am not one of those people, and I think it is reprehensible and embarrassing that Virginia’s governor is.