Is this ad parody portraying Rick Perry as gay, "bullying," or just darn funny?

Clearly Rick Perry's anti-gay "I'm a man!" ad has backfired big time. It's now become a meme, and the butt (ooh!) of all jokes. The question arises as to when it's okay to make fun of someone in a gay way. One of our readers thought it was just like bullying when we poke fun at Perry for all the runors about his "lifestyle" (oh, did it again), or when we posted that photo yesterday showing Richard Simmons jumping out from behind Perry in the ad, which was making fun of Perry because of the earlier on AMERICAblog Elections making fun of the fact that Perry appeared to be wearing Heath Ledger's Brokeback Mountain jacket in the anti-gay ad. Is that making fun of gays, or is it using gay culture to make fun of Perry? And is there a difference.

Watch the latest remix of the Perry ad. Then we'll talk.



I'm just not feeling the bullying. First off, if we are gay does that mean we can make fun of someone else as "gay"? I think it's certainly more in my/our right than a straight person making fun of someone for being gay. Why? First off, it's highly unlikely that the butt of my joke is the fact that being gay is bad. In fact, the entire point of jokes like this is that the guy on the receiving end like Perry (the "bottom," for lack of a better word) thinks it's bad to be gay, not the guy making the joke. The joke is the irony of juxtaposing a flaming homophobe and, well, flaming.

So bottoms up, I say.