Well. THAT went well.

The United States of America, land of opportunity and exceptionalism, celebrated its first day yesterday with its military able to openly accept servicemen and women of all sexual orientations.

In greater Boston, the people celebrated by ripping down an LGBT flag outside a Unitarian church. (This isn't yours, is it, liddle_oldman? Or is yours the one they mention in Watertown, which had its  flag ripped down and torched two years ago?)

And closer to our home (one district over from where we live), a brutally bullied young man, two weeks into his high school career, killed himself.

Meanwhile, there was no great reaction from the pack of rats scurrying to take over the country 14 months from now. Instead, we have to rely on their past statements to know how they feel.

How about you, famed pray-away-the-gayer Michele Bachmann?

In 2006, Bachmann told the Minnesota state legislature that passing an anti-bullying bill would be a waste of time.

    I think for all of us, our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies. … Always have been, always will be. I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get to the point of zero tolerance. … What does it mean. … Will we be expecting boys to be girls?

Sigh.

We have to do better than "It gets better." We have to help MAKE it better. Call out the bullies when they first start showing those tendencies, and teach them love and acceptance even if it means they're in timeout or worse, even if it's our own Little Darling Special Snowflake little boy. (Or girl- they can be just as mean and intolerant.)

And for God's sake, people, vote. Because we're dealing with a political enemy which (as a recent metaquoter put it and as I've thought myself many times in recent years) thinks that The Handmaid's Tale is a how-to manual. 

Want. Or want to, anyway.

I heard an extended interview on Talk of the Nation this afternoon with Maria Bello, who's attempting the seemingly impossible task of filling Helen Mirren's sensible high-heeled shoes in the US adaptation of Prime Suspect.  I can't say I'm up on any of her filmography, but she sounds like a down-to-earth actress looking the right way at a challenging role. I want to watch it, and I want to like it. Still, I just hope this doesn't wind up on the scrap heap of mistranslated Episodes that have made it this way across the Williams in recent years.

One of the oddest bits of all (found, with equal irony, on another public broadcasting website) was the showrunner's answer to the top-mindest question I had, of why they changed Jane's last name:

"Cause, you know, Helen Mirren's always going to be Jane Tennison, which is fine 'cause she deserves to be," Cunningham explains. "But Maria deserves to be her own character, is why I changed her last name."

I do hope this trend doesn't catch on too well- either the random importing or the renaming. Otherwise, some strange Saturday evening in a TARDIS far far away, we might very well be subjected to Gynecologist Why.

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In any event, no matter what becomes of this, it's just two Sundays to Dexter. Good luck with HIM, Jane.