A New York Times headline remarked on the election of Annise Parker, "A Fallen Barrier, but Little Fanfare."
Houstonians might not be in a tizzy, but the rest of the country sure is. There has been a veritable national outcry of, "Wait, where??" since the results of Saturday's run-off came in, and the buzz hasn't slowed.
PerezHilton.com praised Parker's win, although the post mistakenly credited the people of Austin for her victory. Guess the author didn't think Houston could be so progressive. (The mistake has since been corrected.)
Jezebel ran a short, sweet, to-the-point update, but commentators seemed as surprised as the NYT. Sunny1 wrote: "I'm curious how much of this is really progress. My one Houston friend said she thinks a lot of it had to do with people deciding they'd rather have a white lesbian mayor than a black one." Need we remind Sunny's "one friend" in Houston that we've had a black mayor (Lee Brown) and that Parker and Gene Locke beat out straight white guy Peter Brown?
Political blog FiveThirtyEight pointed out and commended Bloomberg's coverage, which made no mention of Parker's sexuality whatsoever. How better to applaud Parker's sexuality not being newsworthy than to make an entire item out of the fact that someone didn't consider it news.
Some buzz is good; hopefully it comes with a little credit.
