"I'm Reading from Your Book, Dude."

I've been neglecting Rachel Maddow. I'm usually working or spending time with the fam, so I haven't been able to spend any quality time with my favorite Rhodes Scholar and political commentator. I miss her, because after watching The Rachel Maddow Show I feel like a fully-informed citizen...with facts and shit.

So today I stopped by After Ellen, clicked on RachelWatch, and stumbled upon their "best of" Rachel segments. One of the videos is Rachel's interview with Richard Cohen, author of Coming Out Straight, a book lauded as "authoritative" by the Ugandan "kill the gays" peeps. During the interview she quotes Cohen, directly from his book, and he looks surprised to hear what he "wrote." Twice.

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Look, I'm a ghostwriter, so I really can't fault the guy for having one, but I can get on his ass for not knowing what's in his own damn book. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that he did have a ghost. I'm not really keyed in to the whole ex-gay genre (duh), so I'm not sure who writes for those freaks folks. I wouldn't know who to call to find out who ghosted his treasure trove of truth and happiness, but not remembering what's in your book is a dead giveaway that you either didn't write it, or at least hired someone to edit (i.e., rewrite) it.

Sometimes ghostwriters make stuff up. A shocker, I know. All the more reason to know what's being published in your name. It's one thing to make shit up to help people feel better, but to make shit up to scare the crap out of them--well, we know the consequences of that now, don't we? And if you're going to make stuff up, at least try to remember it.

Everyone is so freakin' scared of the "gay agenda" in part because of people like Cohen, who use words like "indoctrination" and cite "facts" about child molesters. If I didn't know any better--and I do know better--I would be freaked out, too. Ugandans are so freaked out about the big bad scary gay people, they decided to just go ahead and execute the "predators."

Gotta love Rachel--her lie-busting, myth-debunking is quality television, and a service to us all. All of that "risk factor" talk from Cohen makes homos sound like cancer patients, except less noble. But Rachel, who is clearly outraged (and pretty annoyed), manages to focus on the facts, rather than rail against Cohen's core message. A little tip, Cohen: when you're being interviewed by "just-the-facts" Rachel, it's best to bone up on what you've claimed in the past.

Read your own book, dude.