I suppose it'll be controversial to say it, but everyone is well aware that some of the people who claim to be "gay", or more properly homosexual, only claim that for publicity's sake or because it's supposed to be edgy. Others do, as they have weak personalities and adopt whatever trend is in the news, and its been in the news.
This doesn't mean that there aren't people with same sex attraction. There certainly are. Indeed, the people who claim to be gay as it's trendy are an insult to people who actually have same sex attraction.
This sort of things is common with every sort of attribute. Just a couple of years ago we had people who were claiming to be black, but weren't. Claiming to be a Native American is another one, with at least one U.S. Senator and one college professor down in Colorado claiming that. Claiming to be a veteran suffering from something is another, with all such people claiming that they saw really valiant service, rather than have worked in the mess hall in San Diego.
In the 30s, if you were of a certain type, being a Communist in certain circles was fun, until it suddenly wasn't.
Madonna has come out as gay.
She isn't.
She is, rather, in a stage of her life when she's no longer very interesting as window dressing. So she has to do something, now, doesn't she?
We might note that at this part, for people who have made such an extensive career as being heterosexual libertines, to claim that they're gay, really is a good indicator that its really not very interesting to people anymore. I'm sure she'd claim to be a cocker spaniel if that was trendy, but it isn't. For that matter, being gay isn't either.
If she really wants to be in the news, and she obviously does, she should join the Ukrainian army. But then, that'd take real guts.
Or confronting her superficial past and making amends might, but people rarely do that.
Lying Little Feather
And, speaking of pretend, you have heard of Marie Louise Cruz, but as Sacheen Little Feather. She became famous for appearing at the Academy Awards as the behest of Marlon Brando in order to receive his award for The Godfather. Dressed in buckskins, she represented herself as a Native American and the protest was for Native American justice.
She wasn't a Native American.
Upset by the representation of their late sister regarding their late father, her sisters have come forward and revealed that in fact they're all Mexican American and that their father, whom Cruz portrayed as an abusive alcoholic, in fact didn't drink nor abuse anyone in the family. He was, by their accounts, a hardworking immigrant who himself had had an abusive alcoholic father.
Cruz began portraying herself as a Native American in the very early 1970s, trying to obtain acting roles, which she was somewhat successful at doing, with the "Little Feather" persona. Like Madonna, she stripped herself of her attire to be photographed, prior to becoming well known, appearing in an intended Playboy photo spread that was called "Ten Little Indians", apparently, as it featured ten Native American women.
Or at least ten who were thought to be Native Americans.
There's a quote in a San Francisco area newspaper about this episode.
“Sacheen Littlefeather, the Bay Area Indian Princess, and nine other tribal beauties are sore at Hugh Hefner. Playboy ordered pictures of them, riding horseback nude in Woodside and other beauty spots, and then Hefner rejected the shots (by Mark Fraser and Mike Kornafel) as ‘not erotic enough.’ Why do them in the first place? ‘Well,’ explained Littlefeather ‘everybody says black is beautiful — we wanted to show that red is, too.’ ”
That's obviously out of a different era.
Having said that, the title, and the concept of photographically exploiting Native American women's bodies was really pretty shocking then, even if it is more so now.
Well, the real tragedy, I suppose, was to her family, particularly to her father, who wasn't what he was accused of being.
‘Dilbert’ comic stripped from nearly 80 newspapers
Dilbert is funny.
This isn't something you can say about every cartoon. Family Circle, for example, is not funny. It may have been once, but it isn't anymore.
The same is largely true of Garfield.
It has to do with Lee Enterprises, which owns our local newspaper, as well as the one in Billings, which in fact frequently share news stores.
Lee also includes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which in an act of rebellion, and which saw its 34 cartoons go to 10, has been publishing letters of protest from its readership.
All of which goes to attack the frankly, flaming BS claim that modern newspapers tend to make that they're vital to the local reader.
One of the claimed BS benefits to reducing the cartoons is that they were making room for local newstories. This is absurd, quite frankly, as anyone who ever picks up a thick old newspaper would know. Want more coverage, add it. Poof, it's there.
And additionally, often children, whose young interests the papers claim to hold dear, often are first introduced to newspapers through cartoons. Eliminate them, and there goes that readership.
Rotating door
A reporter from the local newspaper noted she's leaving.
No surprise, our local reporter position is a revolving door for cub reporters. It's sad, really. The national paper company brings them in, and as soon as they're trained up, they move on.
Barnard College will offer abortion pills for students
Barnard applies a reproductive justice and gender-affirming framework to all of its student health and well-being services, and particularly to reproductive healthcare. In the post-Roe context, we are bolstering these services," Catallozzi and Grinage said.
More freedom, less government, and more cash?
The State gave out $6,600,000 in rent relief, funded by the Federal Government, last month.
This is interesting for a state that claims to hate Federal money like a Bar Tender hates the Temperance Union. We hate it just enough to hold our hands out.
I wonder how the "Less government, more freedom" party, at least one of whom new members is a prominent landlord, will react to this.
Will they turn down the Federal money?
Intellectual consistency would demand they would, tenants out on the street or not.
7 comments:
The quirky comedian Jerrod Carmichael in his appearance on SNL:
"Carmichael addressed his sexuality during his Saturday Night Live hosting debut, where he joked about the perks of being gay while living in New York City.
"'If you say you're gay in New York, you can ride the bus for free and they just give you free pizza,' he said in his monologue. 'Honestly, if you're gay in New York, you get to host Saturday Night Live. This is the gayest thing you can possibly do. Like, I came out right onto the stage. We're basically in an Andy Warhol fever dream right now.'"
In fact, there has been little advantage to being openly gay up to the present moment. In 1950s-'60s Britain, when homosexuality was a criminal offense, the law was widely known as "The Blackmailer's Charter."
On the other hand, there are distinct advantages to identifying as a racial minority, unless the race is Asian.
As far as having been a Communist, I have never understood the admiration for those poor Hollywood/Aire souls who suffered the scourges of the McCarthy blacklist for having been fellow travelers in the 1930s, meaning supporting Stalinism. It was their earnest desire for change–such as the Holodomor, I guess–that clouded their judgment, we are reliably told. Rightly, no one wants to forgive those who also wanted change in the same era, and saw it in Berlin.
To me, the one unforgivable public declaration is of atheism. It is not a matter of the disbelief but the sheer arrogance of thinking it is essential for us to hear about your faith in no faith. That little pipsqueak Ron Reagan, Jr., makes PSAs telling us he has been a giaour–the curse of the Thesaurus–since age 13 (I defy you, BTW, to name any admitted nonbeliever who did not arrive at this incredibly rational and profoundly unshakeable–to them–conclusion anywhere after puberty)–smugly announcing that as an atheist, he has no need to fear Hell. Every faithless person says this; yet on his deathbed, Maugham made his friend assure him that he had not been wrong about the absence of God and an afterlife, worried he may have been mistaken. If I have not made myself clear, let me just say about your tenets, I COULD NOT CARE LESS.
Tom
Sheridan, WY
That shuld have been "Hollywood/Bel Aire."
And that should have been "should."
Re "Dilbert" from Wikipedia–sounds familiar:
The week of September 19, 2022, Dilbert was pulled from an estimated 77 newspapers after recent plotlines in the strip poked fun at woke culture and corporate ESG strategies. Part of the plotline involved an African American character who "identifies as white", and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay. Said Adams of his strip being pulled, "It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics, but why they decided what was in and what was out, that's not known to anybody except them, I guess."
The timing on the Dilbert yanking was hard not to notice. It's also hard not to notice that a lot of corporations, whose only real obligation is to their shareholder's bottom lines, are taking a rather woke view in their policies and marketing.
Interestingly, as noted elsewhere on this blog, a former Levis executive has written a book on this, and Levis can be accused of woke marketing, as its never gotten over having been adopted by the youth culture in the late 1950s and so it tries to retain what it regards as a progressive, youthful, edge. That's only one example, but it is pretty clear that there are things corporate bodies can say, and can't say, at least if they don't want to be subject to rebukes ranging from mild to virtue signaling.
California born, I always saw Levi's–button front, copper riveted, 501s of course–as an icon of the state. Levi Strauss actually had no connection to the Gold Rush, but definitely to working men and "rebels"–real ones, especially WWII veterans somewhat adrift after combat. Levi's, with turned up hems, were John Wayne (alas, a draft dodger), James Dean, and remarkably, Albert Einstein! When Brando's character is asked in "The Wild One" what he's rebelling against, his answer–"Whattaya got?"–would be unimaginable in the mouth of somebody in cargo pants. When you could buy new ones with already frayed knees, it heralded the end of civilization.
Tom
Sheridan, WY
The mention of World War Two reminds me that Levis actually weren't the number 1 jean brand in the US until after the war. Lee Riders were more popular until then. The war spread Levis around.
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