Mainstream media is completely hopeless.
On the other hand, it's their job. They're owned by commercial interests that need endless tons of consumers: selfish, heartless, and ignorant. Commerical media's reason for being is to promote ignorance not to mention the exteme selfishness of low mass culture.
Hollywood and the publishing industry take care of popular culture, by excluding all educated values and draging us though Rubeville on a daily basis. Sleaze culture dominates the entertainment industry so completely that their product is fit only for people under 40 who don't know the difference.
The formula is constant. Here are some fake boobs. Now drool. Don't notice that the characters are selfish pre schoolers in adult bodies, or that even middle class culure is nowhere to be found.
One of my favorite examples is the latest installment of Star Wars, in which there are two choices: either the total selflessness of the Jedi, or creep fest of the Sith. We can't have the public thinking they could spend one minute acting responsibly. No. Their every moment must be spent chasing cash and consumer goods.
Meanwhile the news media's job is to promote ignorance, which they do by excluding from the public square anything true, sensible, important, or practical, and anyone with brains or integrity. It's the same everywhere: tv news, magazines, newspapers. Even supposedly educated venues offer only an illusion of adult conversation.
Case in point: Salon has a book review today by Vincent Rossmeier arguing that Christianity and Darwinism should stop their fighting. Of course it's old news. Science and mainstream Christianity have gotten along for years, thanks all the same. What was more interesting was the fire breathing of the atheists who responded.
So they don't have the mental agility for a faith experience. They might do worse than just get over it. And stop insulting those who do. Better yet, they could get off their lazy asses and do some charity work. But I forget. They're still labouring under a hodgepodge ethical system built on game theory, darwinism, and who knows what else.
The whole performance is a back and forth between another dingbat journalist, ignorant book author, and a hundred or so foaming rationalists chewing on every non issue as if it were the key to the Universe, all to avoid the responsibilties of civilized living.
They also might have held their fire long enough to see that mainstream religion is on their side, and that fundamentalism is not just the enemy of rationalism, but is doing untold harm to innocents across the globe. But again, that would require an observant response. And after umpteen years of the media's infant formula, they wouldn't know an adult perspective if it sat on their face in a crotchless tuxedo.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Lemon Into Lemonade
Obama won, and I'm glad for African Americans. They really wanted him, and after all they've had to put up with, this is a huge day for them. It's historic, and about time.
And maybe the terrible things done to put him there have been worth it: the DNC's unspeakably unfair acts; the media smear campaign; Obama's age, race, and gender baiting; his supporter's false accusations and disgusting insults; and their bringing of republican smear tactics into the democratic party itself. They've turned the party into a creep fest that many core democrats wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.
It shows how far the powers that be were willing to go to do something nice for black folk. And there were people on all sides who voted for age, race, or gender.
Not me. I wanted Hillary because she's by far the most knowledgeable, and qualified. She had worked the hardest, so she deserved the job. And I would so have loved to listen to the Clinton's vast knowledge and flawless reasoning for eight years. If you want the best take on something, the most precise, balanced, accurate, practical, sensible, and elegant discourse, ask the Clintons. It's why Bill gets umpteen gazillion per speaking date.
Instead, we have to look forward to eight years of Obama's shallow rhetoric. He may not be the most qualified candidate in Tulsa, but he'll have people from the Clinton administration to show him how to govern. They wrote the book. And if the greatest policy experts of our time have been rudely pushed aside, their designs are back in center stage.
Today's agenda was developed almost entirely by the Clinton team: fiscal restraint, healthcare, clean energy (thank you Al), bipartisanship, and strategic investment. Obama probably wouldn't even have been considered if the Clintons hadn't brought minorities into their administration. So it was doubly ironic when his worshipers threw mud like the Mississippi on meth. Talk about ingrates.
If Americans are finally ready for some real change, and if we have the plans to deliver it, most of the credit should go to Bill and Hillary.
And maybe the terrible things done to put him there have been worth it: the DNC's unspeakably unfair acts; the media smear campaign; Obama's age, race, and gender baiting; his supporter's false accusations and disgusting insults; and their bringing of republican smear tactics into the democratic party itself. They've turned the party into a creep fest that many core democrats wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.
It shows how far the powers that be were willing to go to do something nice for black folk. And there were people on all sides who voted for age, race, or gender.
Not me. I wanted Hillary because she's by far the most knowledgeable, and qualified. She had worked the hardest, so she deserved the job. And I would so have loved to listen to the Clinton's vast knowledge and flawless reasoning for eight years. If you want the best take on something, the most precise, balanced, accurate, practical, sensible, and elegant discourse, ask the Clintons. It's why Bill gets umpteen gazillion per speaking date.
Instead, we have to look forward to eight years of Obama's shallow rhetoric. He may not be the most qualified candidate in Tulsa, but he'll have people from the Clinton administration to show him how to govern. They wrote the book. And if the greatest policy experts of our time have been rudely pushed aside, their designs are back in center stage.
Today's agenda was developed almost entirely by the Clinton team: fiscal restraint, healthcare, clean energy (thank you Al), bipartisanship, and strategic investment. Obama probably wouldn't even have been considered if the Clintons hadn't brought minorities into their administration. So it was doubly ironic when his worshipers threw mud like the Mississippi on meth. Talk about ingrates.
If Americans are finally ready for some real change, and if we have the plans to deliver it, most of the credit should go to Bill and Hillary.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Sonnet 4
For those queens only interested in super fine bodyflesh, get over it. Or look at Sea Man earlier in the blog. And stop your incessant whining.
Here's a sonnet about family life. I wrote it because I think it's charming when queers say nice things about heteros. I include it here because it's got two separate rhyme patterns, which I don't think had been done before in English verse.
Sonnet 4
A son like me in looks as well as thought,
A guarantee my hopes will be again,
In future places I have never been,
By running races I have never sought.
Our daughter in between the earth and sky,
Where beauty can be seen throughout the years.
A dove that finds a way through falling tears.
Above the ages past our spirits fly.
A wife like you on whom I can depend.
And always new to me, your gentle sighs
Are no less fair than the light inside your eyes,
Yet no less rare to be a lifelong friend.
I see into my heart the day I found
My dream of you, the autumn colors all around.
Here's a sonnet about family life. I wrote it because I think it's charming when queers say nice things about heteros. I include it here because it's got two separate rhyme patterns, which I don't think had been done before in English verse.
Sonnet 4
A son like me in looks as well as thought,
A guarantee my hopes will be again,
In future places I have never been,
By running races I have never sought.
Our daughter in between the earth and sky,
Where beauty can be seen throughout the years.
A dove that finds a way through falling tears.
Above the ages past our spirits fly.
A wife like you on whom I can depend.
And always new to me, your gentle sighs
Are no less fair than the light inside your eyes,
Yet no less rare to be a lifelong friend.
I see into my heart the day I found
My dream of you, the autumn colors all around.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Verse 12
This one is blank verse, from a sequence of poems about highlights of America History. This goes long because it's about the Battle of the Bulge, a topic that deserves leeway. Blank verse has the meter and length of a sonnet without the rhyme. 'Nuff said.
Four million soldiers gone, their cities done,
With industry destroyed in falling fire,
The proud Luftwaffe smashed, the Wermacht pressed
From East and West. Now madder, Hitler tried
By pushing through to Antwerp, then to block
A single port. Americans were told
To hold the line. Outnumbered, yet would stay
The steel advance, until a line was drawn.
When African Americans arrived,
The seven sixty first battalion thought
The master race should have a lesson taught.
Americans from every time and place.
A warrior’s battle. Grim they stood. Their souls
Restored. Three hundred ninety thousand rose.
Grave soldiers forced the Nazis back in loss
Where they’d begun. The Battle of the Bulge
Was won. And everything in war depends
Upon the bravery of men, a stone
Resolve that none shall pass with violence,
Or mock the innocence our world has known.
No craven Nazi ever understood
The freedoms calling in America.
Four million soldiers gone, their cities done,
With industry destroyed in falling fire,
The proud Luftwaffe smashed, the Wermacht pressed
From East and West. Now madder, Hitler tried
By pushing through to Antwerp, then to block
A single port. Americans were told
To hold the line. Outnumbered, yet would stay
The steel advance, until a line was drawn.
When African Americans arrived,
The seven sixty first battalion thought
The master race should have a lesson taught.
Americans from every time and place.
A warrior’s battle. Grim they stood. Their souls
Restored. Three hundred ninety thousand rose.
Grave soldiers forced the Nazis back in loss
Where they’d begun. The Battle of the Bulge
Was won. And everything in war depends
Upon the bravery of men, a stone
Resolve that none shall pass with violence,
Or mock the innocence our world has known.
No craven Nazi ever understood
The freedoms calling in America.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Don't Cross The Bitter Queen
Straight society has Emily Post, Dear Abby, Judith Martin, and, here in the Northwest, the Uptight Seattlite. The culture is more jammed with manners experts than a West Hollywood gym is tight with spandexed monkey jewels.
So it’s long past time for gay etiquette. Unbeknownst to this rude, crude, and socially unacceptable rubfest, high gay culture is the very apex of civil decorum. But we shouldn't settle for just another snob, advising a more thoughtful approach to dry humping the dinner guests one by one behind the armoire.
The queer Ms. Man(ners) would be more edgy than the norm. The queer sensibility is more than just polite restraint in the middle of a bulimic’s twelve course dinner party. Besides delivering advice, he would give hetero society the good spanking it so richly deserves. Of course you can't just turn the hets over and whip their behinds to a candy apple red. So a verbal thrashing is the next best thing.
Unfortunately, the average sports enthusiast doesn’t know what's good for him. And precious few will have the sense to write in asking for advice in taste and manners. So letters will have to be manufactured. But that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s easy to spot the many vulgarities for which hetero culture should daily beg forgiveness. And this particular Ms. Man(ners) - oh pease smile on me intractable publishing elite - would have no trouble writing letters and answering them in one fell swoop.
To wit:
Dear Ms. Man(ners)
I can’t locate a barber to save my life. I always find myself at a hair salon where the stylists act like a Madonna video. This is really starting to piss me off. What gives?
Mr. Tough
Dear Mr.,
Gay men often work in the service sector because, unlike the general public, queers usually have a kind streak a mile wide. But our patience is not infinite, and before throwing attitude at the hair technician generously consenting to tackle your mop, you should think about what life will be like in the rest home, when the gay orderly has to hoist your giant ass onto the can for the umpteenth time. You won’t be so tough when they find you wedged behind the potty with a roll of three ply stuck up your butt.
Dear Ms. Man(ners),
I don’t mind gay people. Just don’t force it on me.
Cool Hand Luke
Dear Luke,
Time out while Miss Man(ners)’s boiling blood of rage drops to a simmer.
First, I totally agree. You should not have to fend off passes from horned out leather queens in the linen section of Bloomingdales. Much as I should not have to witness a hetero lip lock every three seconds on network television. But unless you’re dressed in a harness with cuffs, that shouldn’t be a problem. Try to keep some perspective.
Dear Ms. Man(ners),
My wife is thinking of a vacation in San Francisco. But I’m worried that the alien culture will keep me from having a good time.
Star Trek Rules
Dear Trekker,
Understood. Beautifully painted Victorians, excellent food, vast vistas, and urbane civility can be quite foreign. Normally I would suggest staying beneath the Bridge near the Palace of Fine Arts. If you’re really worried, though, there’s always Miami. I hear the summer temperatures are only a hundred and thirty. Don’t forget to bring the inhaler and medic alert bracelets.
So it’s long past time for gay etiquette. Unbeknownst to this rude, crude, and socially unacceptable rubfest, high gay culture is the very apex of civil decorum. But we shouldn't settle for just another snob, advising a more thoughtful approach to dry humping the dinner guests one by one behind the armoire.
The queer Ms. Man(ners) would be more edgy than the norm. The queer sensibility is more than just polite restraint in the middle of a bulimic’s twelve course dinner party. Besides delivering advice, he would give hetero society the good spanking it so richly deserves. Of course you can't just turn the hets over and whip their behinds to a candy apple red. So a verbal thrashing is the next best thing.
Unfortunately, the average sports enthusiast doesn’t know what's good for him. And precious few will have the sense to write in asking for advice in taste and manners. So letters will have to be manufactured. But that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s easy to spot the many vulgarities for which hetero culture should daily beg forgiveness. And this particular Ms. Man(ners) - oh pease smile on me intractable publishing elite - would have no trouble writing letters and answering them in one fell swoop.
To wit:
Dear Ms. Man(ners)
I can’t locate a barber to save my life. I always find myself at a hair salon where the stylists act like a Madonna video. This is really starting to piss me off. What gives?
Mr. Tough
Dear Mr.,
Gay men often work in the service sector because, unlike the general public, queers usually have a kind streak a mile wide. But our patience is not infinite, and before throwing attitude at the hair technician generously consenting to tackle your mop, you should think about what life will be like in the rest home, when the gay orderly has to hoist your giant ass onto the can for the umpteenth time. You won’t be so tough when they find you wedged behind the potty with a roll of three ply stuck up your butt.
Dear Ms. Man(ners),
I don’t mind gay people. Just don’t force it on me.
Cool Hand Luke
Dear Luke,
Time out while Miss Man(ners)’s boiling blood of rage drops to a simmer.
First, I totally agree. You should not have to fend off passes from horned out leather queens in the linen section of Bloomingdales. Much as I should not have to witness a hetero lip lock every three seconds on network television. But unless you’re dressed in a harness with cuffs, that shouldn’t be a problem. Try to keep some perspective.
Dear Ms. Man(ners),
My wife is thinking of a vacation in San Francisco. But I’m worried that the alien culture will keep me from having a good time.
Star Trek Rules
Dear Trekker,
Understood. Beautifully painted Victorians, excellent food, vast vistas, and urbane civility can be quite foreign. Normally I would suggest staying beneath the Bridge near the Palace of Fine Arts. If you’re really worried, though, there’s always Miami. I hear the summer temperatures are only a hundred and thirty. Don’t forget to bring the inhaler and medic alert bracelets.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Verse 6
Ted Judah walked the high Sierra while
The civil war was pleading to be won.
He sold a job to Congress, and the plan
Began with calls for labor and the rules
of industry. Then Chinese workers hailed afar.
In baskets woven by their solid hands,
And hanging over space to plant the fuse,
Then swiftly raised, they dug the sheer cliff road.
In icy caves and tunnels every way,
Through massive peaks they blasted out the stone,
Some inches in a day. They won the race
To Promontory Summit, as they could,
Through finance from Durant, with stolid will,
A golden spike, and Lincoln’s fading sight.
The civil war was pleading to be won.
He sold a job to Congress, and the plan
Began with calls for labor and the rules
of industry. Then Chinese workers hailed afar.
In baskets woven by their solid hands,
And hanging over space to plant the fuse,
Then swiftly raised, they dug the sheer cliff road.
In icy caves and tunnels every way,
Through massive peaks they blasted out the stone,
Some inches in a day. They won the race
To Promontory Summit, as they could,
Through finance from Durant, with stolid will,
A golden spike, and Lincoln’s fading sight.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Gay Culture Back in the Closet
It’s gone too far. The media rush is on to hijack gay culture; and serve it up with roast hog and a cheap wine. Every producer in Hollywood is after a slice, and Blue Collar Comedy is backpedaling like there’s no tomorrow.
But high gay culture is a fantabulous mixture and deserves better. It includes our aesthetic sense; our tradition of high living; a taste for community; love for drama and the arts; appreciation for antiques and ye very olde things generally; respect for learning and talent; comic genius, or the phenomenom known as camp; and a fair-minded, generous attitude shaped by humor, oppression, dogged persistence, and some very fashionable eyewear.
Gay culture is also a delicate flower, and media hacks trying to please a mass audience would ruin it faster than Marlon Brando reciting Sonnet Thirty Nine with ben wa balls up his ass. In the wrong hands, aestheticism is a trailer park. Art goes to pop art. Irony means slapstick. Drama is a Rambo marathon. Dance is Lord of the Dance. Reason turns straight into science, technology, and global warming. And community is a gated suburb with just the right quota of securely mated lesbians of color with no tendency to show up in harness.
This must stop. The media flood is raging out of control, and we need to find a way to stuff Tom Arnold into the hole in the dyke, figuratively speaking of course.
We could start by giving out a large taste of low gay culture, like say, a skag drag singing Over The Rainbow in screw earrings, a beard, and too revealing mini skirt.
But we can’t even talk about the worst of gay culture, much less dump it on others. Self criticism has been made off limits by the pc brigade, and we are not allowed to discuss even our worst habits, like our objectifying and sexualizing and treating each other like dirt. The pc set call such talk ‘anti gay’. But they should be called ‘Auntie Gay’ for trying to stop us from being honest with ourselves.
We could try offering a scoshe of high gay culture. We could use camp to upgrade the old comedy routines. That would be the pr approach, and it could save us from another pogrom or two, or Friends marathon. Straight comedy is definately an idea whose time has come. And gone. From bits about sneezing at the salad bar and the wife’s visa balance, to monologues on driving in traffic, not to mention the girl friend shtick, straight comedy either induces coma or drives you screaming through a cast iron wall. But the masses are totally anal, and not in a good way, which is why their humor is overly tight. They might enjoy something a bit more relaxed. And a magnanimous gesture on our part could be strategic.
Camp, after all, is the first, last, and only word in humor. For example, at the salad bar, you should graze like a hog beast newly escaped from Jenny Craig and her most nut-cracking henchwomen. Filling the gut with low-cal roughage is the best way to avoid wallowing in a pastry tray like a starving whale hog from Alabama. And while driving in traffic, mind your own business. Never look wild animals directly in the eye, or do anything to give the public an excuse for a tent meeting. Dodging self-righteous crusaders would make you late for the retirement home where you give tender loving care to old people abandoned by their self righteously crusading families.
Offloading a smidge of camp, or a Gidge if you will, shouldn't ruin gay culture as we know it. And a small taste might keep the straight world from swallowing it whole, in a manor of speaking. But it’s a risky gambit. Straights have a nasty habit of stealing other people’s inventions. Lord knows they've made a mountain of cash on African American music. And they’ve been trying to absorb camp since forever, but luckily the first attempts failed.
It was back in ’64, when the scheming professor, Susan Sontag, scrawled her Notes on Camp. That's usually the first step in turning gay culture over to the unworthy masses. They send in the academics to define something, and in the process redefine it as their own invention. Ironically, Sontag’s essay was so dry and boring, she could have been writing about George Bush’s bachelor party. And people ignored it.
Academics are a notoriously humorless lot, and it’s no surprise that even one of their most cunning shills would have misunderestimated gay humor. They also lean towards the arrogant. But it must have taken a Swedish clinic full of testosterone injections for an uptight lady professor to tackle a carefree subject like camp. The girl was out of her element from the word go, as the following table illustrates.
A Long Overdue Comparison
SONTAG………………………..CAMP
Straight……………………….Gay
Woman………………………..By and for men
Ambitious……………………...You go girl
No sense of humor……………A pack of drag queens in bright blue wigs
…………………………………screaming with laughter.
Perfect Grammar……………….Wha? Who zat?! Gimmee sum.
The academic establishment……High culture in a low cut dress
………………………………….with side vents and boob tassels
Corny from the word go------A pack of drag queens in brite blue
-------------wigs screaming with laughter
Excruciatingly complex verbal
descriptions with endless…………A phalanx of quite effeminate
variations in tone and…………….males in wigs of shining aquamarine,
contextual subtlety………………..screaming with laughter
Overly serious…………………..Overly sneerious
Widely respected……………….Come over here so I can slap you.
Paranoid………………………...Please to get over thy self,
…………………………………..Mistress of the Mother Boots.
With a performance like that, it should be obvious that cultural criticism should be left to civilized folk. But no. We’re still drowning in wannabes telling us what is and what is not the acceptable FoRMaT!?!. I for one avoid the hack machine whenever possible, but the last example I saw was Joe Queenan’s book, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon.
First he complains about what’s dumb in video, when every young queer in Doc Martins and designer jeans knows the virtues of stupidity. They’re fun. And funny. And they have a butt load of categories in the camp play book: like stupid things that try to be serious but fail and so have a good bit of jazz, and stupid things we like just for their being stupid, etc…
The queen man has the nerve to tell us what's good and bad in the media. Do tell. Good is what he likes. Bad is what he does not like. And he does not like Geraldo. Or Victor Victoria. No reason. He just does not like them. Is it because they have something to do with minorities? And could he be more obvious? His day job was writing for the TV Guide, but he says only three words in the entire book about the moronic trash on television. We are now deep in the Universe of Irony. A writer for TV Guide doing cultural criticism is like Jerry Fallwell giving sensitivity training to Newt Gingrich, while gutting a live deer and slapping around a row of ten year olds assembling electronics in a Eurasian sweat shop.
Queen to Knight’s Bishop Sixty Nine
The essence of camp is turning the world on its head. The Universe in general can be a tad impolite, or savage and brutal and heartless and cruel. Take your pick. But with camp, we escape all that and create a world of our own, a place where laughter echoes like Pavarotti’s orgasm, and scorn is flung at Arnold in a pink bikini.
And camp is too precious a jewel to be slapped willy nelly onto the market. As Sontag did to camp, and Queenan does to criticism, so would the masses do to high gay culture in general. In the process we will have lost some of our greatest works. And what will have been gained? Zilch. Straight culture is not offering even a lopsided deal, like equal rights in exchange for a decent brunch menu. That would be generous on our part. But no. Het culture takes what it wants, turns it into trash, leaves the rest, and offers nothing in return but pro wrestling.
There is one way out. And it isn’t a song by the Allman Brothers in which Dwayne on slide and Dickie on electric trade off leads in a classic performance for the ages. Gay people need to reclaim their culture and build a giant wall of broken china around it, with a barbed wire fence and attack dogs, or Joan Rivers.
First, get Michelangelo’s work out of the claws of the Vatican, the very institution that has treated us like dirt for ten centuries. The Sistine Chapel should be given over to queer management and closed to the general public. To get in, you would need a same sex date to French kiss deeply in front of digital cameras. Straight comedians in drag would be thrown in jail with horny leather queens and their most inventive toys. Film stars would be dressed by bag ladies and coifed by Japanese gardeners. Screenplays would be cobbled together by beer advertisers, which, come to think of it, would not be much of a change. Logic, reason, and rhetoric would all be surgically removed from the Universities with a rusty butter knife and olive fork. Sontag and her ilk would go back to applying leaches to one another. Queenan would be court jester in perpetuity, complete with funny hat and jingle bell shoes, although how you would know the difference between him and Brian Williams is beyond my comprehension.
But high gay culture is a fantabulous mixture and deserves better. It includes our aesthetic sense; our tradition of high living; a taste for community; love for drama and the arts; appreciation for antiques and ye very olde things generally; respect for learning and talent; comic genius, or the phenomenom known as camp; and a fair-minded, generous attitude shaped by humor, oppression, dogged persistence, and some very fashionable eyewear.
Gay culture is also a delicate flower, and media hacks trying to please a mass audience would ruin it faster than Marlon Brando reciting Sonnet Thirty Nine with ben wa balls up his ass. In the wrong hands, aestheticism is a trailer park. Art goes to pop art. Irony means slapstick. Drama is a Rambo marathon. Dance is Lord of the Dance. Reason turns straight into science, technology, and global warming. And community is a gated suburb with just the right quota of securely mated lesbians of color with no tendency to show up in harness.
This must stop. The media flood is raging out of control, and we need to find a way to stuff Tom Arnold into the hole in the dyke, figuratively speaking of course.
We could start by giving out a large taste of low gay culture, like say, a skag drag singing Over The Rainbow in screw earrings, a beard, and too revealing mini skirt.
But we can’t even talk about the worst of gay culture, much less dump it on others. Self criticism has been made off limits by the pc brigade, and we are not allowed to discuss even our worst habits, like our objectifying and sexualizing and treating each other like dirt. The pc set call such talk ‘anti gay’. But they should be called ‘Auntie Gay’ for trying to stop us from being honest with ourselves.
We could try offering a scoshe of high gay culture. We could use camp to upgrade the old comedy routines. That would be the pr approach, and it could save us from another pogrom or two, or Friends marathon. Straight comedy is definately an idea whose time has come. And gone. From bits about sneezing at the salad bar and the wife’s visa balance, to monologues on driving in traffic, not to mention the girl friend shtick, straight comedy either induces coma or drives you screaming through a cast iron wall. But the masses are totally anal, and not in a good way, which is why their humor is overly tight. They might enjoy something a bit more relaxed. And a magnanimous gesture on our part could be strategic.
Camp, after all, is the first, last, and only word in humor. For example, at the salad bar, you should graze like a hog beast newly escaped from Jenny Craig and her most nut-cracking henchwomen. Filling the gut with low-cal roughage is the best way to avoid wallowing in a pastry tray like a starving whale hog from Alabama. And while driving in traffic, mind your own business. Never look wild animals directly in the eye, or do anything to give the public an excuse for a tent meeting. Dodging self-righteous crusaders would make you late for the retirement home where you give tender loving care to old people abandoned by their self righteously crusading families.
Offloading a smidge of camp, or a Gidge if you will, shouldn't ruin gay culture as we know it. And a small taste might keep the straight world from swallowing it whole, in a manor of speaking. But it’s a risky gambit. Straights have a nasty habit of stealing other people’s inventions. Lord knows they've made a mountain of cash on African American music. And they’ve been trying to absorb camp since forever, but luckily the first attempts failed.
It was back in ’64, when the scheming professor, Susan Sontag, scrawled her Notes on Camp. That's usually the first step in turning gay culture over to the unworthy masses. They send in the academics to define something, and in the process redefine it as their own invention. Ironically, Sontag’s essay was so dry and boring, she could have been writing about George Bush’s bachelor party. And people ignored it.
Academics are a notoriously humorless lot, and it’s no surprise that even one of their most cunning shills would have misunderestimated gay humor. They also lean towards the arrogant. But it must have taken a Swedish clinic full of testosterone injections for an uptight lady professor to tackle a carefree subject like camp. The girl was out of her element from the word go, as the following table illustrates.
A Long Overdue Comparison
SONTAG………………………..CAMP
Straight……………………….Gay
Woman………………………..By and for men
Ambitious……………………...You go girl
No sense of humor……………A pack of drag queens in bright blue wigs
…………………………………screaming with laughter.
Perfect Grammar……………….Wha? Who zat?! Gimmee sum.
The academic establishment……High culture in a low cut dress
………………………………….with side vents and boob tassels
Corny from the word go------A pack of drag queens in brite blue
-------------wigs screaming with laughter
Excruciatingly complex verbal
descriptions with endless…………A phalanx of quite effeminate
variations in tone and…………….males in wigs of shining aquamarine,
contextual subtlety………………..screaming with laughter
Overly serious…………………..Overly sneerious
Widely respected……………….Come over here so I can slap you.
Paranoid………………………...Please to get over thy self,
…………………………………..Mistress of the Mother Boots.
With a performance like that, it should be obvious that cultural criticism should be left to civilized folk. But no. We’re still drowning in wannabes telling us what is and what is not the acceptable FoRMaT!?!. I for one avoid the hack machine whenever possible, but the last example I saw was Joe Queenan’s book, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon.
First he complains about what’s dumb in video, when every young queer in Doc Martins and designer jeans knows the virtues of stupidity. They’re fun. And funny. And they have a butt load of categories in the camp play book: like stupid things that try to be serious but fail and so have a good bit of jazz, and stupid things we like just for their being stupid, etc…
The queen man has the nerve to tell us what's good and bad in the media. Do tell. Good is what he likes. Bad is what he does not like. And he does not like Geraldo. Or Victor Victoria. No reason. He just does not like them. Is it because they have something to do with minorities? And could he be more obvious? His day job was writing for the TV Guide, but he says only three words in the entire book about the moronic trash on television. We are now deep in the Universe of Irony. A writer for TV Guide doing cultural criticism is like Jerry Fallwell giving sensitivity training to Newt Gingrich, while gutting a live deer and slapping around a row of ten year olds assembling electronics in a Eurasian sweat shop.
Queen to Knight’s Bishop Sixty Nine
The essence of camp is turning the world on its head. The Universe in general can be a tad impolite, or savage and brutal and heartless and cruel. Take your pick. But with camp, we escape all that and create a world of our own, a place where laughter echoes like Pavarotti’s orgasm, and scorn is flung at Arnold in a pink bikini.
And camp is too precious a jewel to be slapped willy nelly onto the market. As Sontag did to camp, and Queenan does to criticism, so would the masses do to high gay culture in general. In the process we will have lost some of our greatest works. And what will have been gained? Zilch. Straight culture is not offering even a lopsided deal, like equal rights in exchange for a decent brunch menu. That would be generous on our part. But no. Het culture takes what it wants, turns it into trash, leaves the rest, and offers nothing in return but pro wrestling.
There is one way out. And it isn’t a song by the Allman Brothers in which Dwayne on slide and Dickie on electric trade off leads in a classic performance for the ages. Gay people need to reclaim their culture and build a giant wall of broken china around it, with a barbed wire fence and attack dogs, or Joan Rivers.
First, get Michelangelo’s work out of the claws of the Vatican, the very institution that has treated us like dirt for ten centuries. The Sistine Chapel should be given over to queer management and closed to the general public. To get in, you would need a same sex date to French kiss deeply in front of digital cameras. Straight comedians in drag would be thrown in jail with horny leather queens and their most inventive toys. Film stars would be dressed by bag ladies and coifed by Japanese gardeners. Screenplays would be cobbled together by beer advertisers, which, come to think of it, would not be much of a change. Logic, reason, and rhetoric would all be surgically removed from the Universities with a rusty butter knife and olive fork. Sontag and her ilk would go back to applying leaches to one another. Queenan would be court jester in perpetuity, complete with funny hat and jingle bell shoes, although how you would know the difference between him and Brian Williams is beyond my comprehension.
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