Margaret Carlson to Moderate Gay Debate; Post's Capehart Joins Questioner's Panel

Mark's post on new Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart caused me to stumble across this news from a few days ago: The gay cable channel Logo and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-left lobby, have announced that Margaret Carlson, a former White House correspondent and deputy Washington bureau chief of Time magazine, will moderate the August 9 Democratic candidates debate on Logo, and Capehart will join the questioning panel.

Carlson was a major booster of Hillary Clinton when she reported from the White House for Time. Capehart is a longtime member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Here's the official press release language:

Logo, a division of Viacom Inc.’s (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) MTV Networks and The Human Rights Campaign Foundation today announced that journalist Margaret Carlson, on special assignment for Logo, will moderate the Presidential Forum on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues to take place in Los Angeles on August 9, with 7 of the 8 Democratic candidates comfirmed to attend. Both organizations, which are co-sponsoring the forum, also announced that openly gay Washington Post editorial page writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning and openly gay journalist Jonathan Capehart will join Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Melissa Etheridge on the Forum panel.

Here are two of Carlson's gooey tributes to Hillary Clinton that made our year-end Best of Notable Quotables collections:

"As the icon of American womanhood, she is the medium through which the remaining anxieties over feminism are being played out....Perhaps in addition to the other items on her agenda, Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot where the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life all come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner does, only backward and in high heels, and with what was missing in [Lee] Atwater -- a lot of heart."
-- Time White House correspondent Margaret Carlson, May 10, 1993 edition.

"You might think Hillary Clinton was running for President. Granted, she is a remarkable woman. The first student commencement speaker at Wellesley, part of the first large wave of women to go to law school, a prominent partner in a major law firm, rated one of the top 100 lawyers in the country -- there is no doubt that she is her husband's professional and intellectual equal. But is this reason to turn her into `Willary Horton' for the '92 campaign, making her an emblem of all that is wrong with family values, working mothers, and modern women in general?"
-- Beginning of Time cover story by Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson, September 14, 1992 issue.