No mo' of these 'mo's in 2007 ... please!
The days are dark and dreary now. Sunset comes too early in the day and cold winds begin to sweep down the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Flipping up the collar of my jacket as I left work today, I felt the sting of the season's first ice pellets. Two thoughts occurred to me. First, winter is just around the corner; and, second, it's time to trot out that hoary tradition known as the old "end-of-the-year review."
Maybe at some future point I'll post my list of homo highs and lows for the year, but perhaps reflecting my general pissy mood that my usual 10-minute commute home from work took an hour-and-a-half tonight, I think I'll start with a list of celebrity and/or otherwise well known gay folks I sincerely hope don't make the news in 2007. Or, to put it more succinctly: a bunch of big ol' 'mo's who should shut the fuck up.
First up, Sir Elton John. Hey, this guy was my idol in high school. I felt like I was the only one who saw through the coyness to really understand that his "Daniel" was a gay song. Unfortunately, Dame Elton hasn't produced anything worth a crap since Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy hit the charts (and I still want to bitch-slap him and demand my money back for his "Rock of the Westies" album that marked his ignoble decline into irrelevancy). Too bad Elton can't retire and rest on his dusty laurels. Instead he scratches and claws his way back into the spotlight like a demented drag queen on meth. From his public catfigths with Madonna to his recent pronouncement that organized religion should be outlawed, Elton makes clear he'll say anything that will insure he'll get quoted in the media. It's just too bad that all his recent quotes make him sound more bitter than a fourth-rate Bette Davis impersonator at a Joan Crawford film festival. The Bitch is Back? Oh puh-leeeeze, she never left ... but we wish he would.
And speaking of washed up queens, that brings us to George Michael. After all the publicity had died down from his 1998 Los Angeles arrest for "engaging in a lewd act" in an L.A. tearoom with an undercover cop, you'd think 2006 would be the year of sweetness and light for Georgie. After all, he and his boyfriend Kenny Goss planned to register this partnership officially in the U.K. Then in July a British tabloid caught George jumping into the bushes at a notorius gay cruising spot with an unemployed truck driver who was definitely not Mr. Goss. Hey, to each his own, I figure. But then Georgie opened his mouth and claimed cruising parks for anonymous sex at 2 in the morning was part of his "culture" as a gay man. Ummmmm, Georgie, our culture includes such varied things as brunch, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, overly dramatic characters like Blanche DuBois, witty reparte and devastating bon mots ... but I don't think being a park slut qualifies as "culture" in anyone's dictionary. In the coming year may you find all the noteriety as the other half of your duo, Wham ... ummmm, you know? Whats-his-name!
Slutty? Well, that brings to mind the next winner, a guy who puts the 'ho' in homo: Jeff Gannon. Or whatever name he's going by these days. Jeff's the former White House correspondent for the now defunct Talon News Agency who raised eyebrows by always pitching softball questions to Dubya during press conferences. Turns out Talon was a cover for a right-wing web site that took just about any old drivel the White House handed out as a press release and posted it verbatim. Jeff, it seems, wasn't much of a journalist, but he was a former $200-an-hour male prostitute who went by the name of "Bulldog" on the male escort web site liberal bloggers dug up. So just what was Jeff doing on all those visits to the White House on days when there was no press conference? The world may never know. It looked like Jeffie was headed toward obscurity when Chris Crain, the thankfully now former big-wig at Windows Media, hired him to write columns for the company's chain of LGBT publications such as The Washington Blade, The New York Blade, The Southern Voice and others. It's bad enough that Gannon's 15 minutes of fame was extended, but his virulently conservative views - seasoned with more than a dash of Republican self-loathing - saw the light of day in a gay publication, no less, long after he should have followed in the footsteps of other old whores and just (ahem) blow away.
Next up along 2006's walk of shame: former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. Two years ago he stepped down as governor when his was revealed he tried to land his then-boyfriend a cushy job in state government. (For the record, the "boyfriend" claims he never had sex with the gov, but was sexually harassed by him.) Greevey, who was married to his second wife at the time, announced in a press conference that he was resigning and admitted to being a "gay American." Then he disappeared into the sunset, never to be heard of again. At least until he penned his autobiography, The Confession. Oh, if he had only stayed somewhere off in the sunset. His "confession" (along with his publicity kick-off on Oprah) were things only George Michael could love with his stories of cruising roadside rest areas and fits of woe-is-me self-loathing.
Rounding out the top five: Joe Solmonese, who was selected to lead the allegedly LGBT Human Rights Campaign. My apologies in advance if you're hoping I dug up something sleazy about Joe. I have no idea if he ever went down on George Michael in the bushes or played hide the salami with James McGreevey at a rest area along the New Jersey turnpike. Joe's more of a political whore than a sexual one. As the newly annointed leader of HRC Joe embarked on a cross-country trek to find out what real live gays and lesbians (translation: those who live outside the Washington Beltway) believe are the important issues facing them. Every place he went - and Missouri was among his stops - people told him how important they believe employment issues were. Wow! That was a revelation for Joe! He went back to Washington fresh with the perspective of those real-live homos and dykes his organization is suppose to represent and promptly started talking about the marriage issue. Thanks, Joe. Glad to see our issues and ideas were so important to you that you hightail it back to headquarters and announce your top priority was getting all us homo folks married off so we'd be just like the breeders. We might get fired for being queer, but it's nice to know you want us to come home and share the misery with the same-sex partner of our choosing.
Failing to make the Top 5 list were these two who are at least deserving of a Dishonorable Mention:
Former Congressman Mark ("I did it because I'm an alcoholic ... I mean because I'm gay ... I mean because I was molested by a priest ... I mean because I'm a gay alcoholic who was molested by a priest") Foley; and
The Rev. Ted ("I just got a massage and I threw the meth away") Haggard.
(No doubt we'll see "confessional" autobiographies by them in the bargain bins at Barnes and Noble in the next few years.)
Maybe at some future point I'll post my list of homo highs and lows for the year, but perhaps reflecting my general pissy mood that my usual 10-minute commute home from work took an hour-and-a-half tonight, I think I'll start with a list of celebrity and/or otherwise well known gay folks I sincerely hope don't make the news in 2007. Or, to put it more succinctly: a bunch of big ol' 'mo's who should shut the fuck up.
First up, Sir Elton John. Hey, this guy was my idol in high school. I felt like I was the only one who saw through the coyness to really understand that his "Daniel" was a gay song. Unfortunately, Dame Elton hasn't produced anything worth a crap since Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy hit the charts (and I still want to bitch-slap him and demand my money back for his "Rock of the Westies" album that marked his ignoble decline into irrelevancy). Too bad Elton can't retire and rest on his dusty laurels. Instead he scratches and claws his way back into the spotlight like a demented drag queen on meth. From his public catfigths with Madonna to his recent pronouncement that organized religion should be outlawed, Elton makes clear he'll say anything that will insure he'll get quoted in the media. It's just too bad that all his recent quotes make him sound more bitter than a fourth-rate Bette Davis impersonator at a Joan Crawford film festival. The Bitch is Back? Oh puh-leeeeze, she never left ... but we wish he would.
And speaking of washed up queens, that brings us to George Michael. After all the publicity had died down from his 1998 Los Angeles arrest for "engaging in a lewd act" in an L.A. tearoom with an undercover cop, you'd think 2006 would be the year of sweetness and light for Georgie. After all, he and his boyfriend Kenny Goss planned to register this partnership officially in the U.K. Then in July a British tabloid caught George jumping into the bushes at a notorius gay cruising spot with an unemployed truck driver who was definitely not Mr. Goss. Hey, to each his own, I figure. But then Georgie opened his mouth and claimed cruising parks for anonymous sex at 2 in the morning was part of his "culture" as a gay man. Ummmmm, Georgie, our culture includes such varied things as brunch, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, overly dramatic characters like Blanche DuBois, witty reparte and devastating bon mots ... but I don't think being a park slut qualifies as "culture" in anyone's dictionary. In the coming year may you find all the noteriety as the other half of your duo, Wham ... ummmm, you know? Whats-his-name!
Slutty? Well, that brings to mind the next winner, a guy who puts the 'ho' in homo: Jeff Gannon. Or whatever name he's going by these days. Jeff's the former White House correspondent for the now defunct Talon News Agency who raised eyebrows by always pitching softball questions to Dubya during press conferences. Turns out Talon was a cover for a right-wing web site that took just about any old drivel the White House handed out as a press release and posted it verbatim. Jeff, it seems, wasn't much of a journalist, but he was a former $200-an-hour male prostitute who went by the name of "Bulldog" on the male escort web site liberal bloggers dug up. So just what was Jeff doing on all those visits to the White House on days when there was no press conference? The world may never know. It looked like Jeffie was headed toward obscurity when Chris Crain, the thankfully now former big-wig at Windows Media, hired him to write columns for the company's chain of LGBT publications such as The Washington Blade, The New York Blade, The Southern Voice and others. It's bad enough that Gannon's 15 minutes of fame was extended, but his virulently conservative views - seasoned with more than a dash of Republican self-loathing - saw the light of day in a gay publication, no less, long after he should have followed in the footsteps of other old whores and just (ahem) blow away.
Next up along 2006's walk of shame: former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. Two years ago he stepped down as governor when his was revealed he tried to land his then-boyfriend a cushy job in state government. (For the record, the "boyfriend" claims he never had sex with the gov, but was sexually harassed by him.) Greevey, who was married to his second wife at the time, announced in a press conference that he was resigning and admitted to being a "gay American." Then he disappeared into the sunset, never to be heard of again. At least until he penned his autobiography, The Confession. Oh, if he had only stayed somewhere off in the sunset. His "confession" (along with his publicity kick-off on Oprah) were things only George Michael could love with his stories of cruising roadside rest areas and fits of woe-is-me self-loathing.
Rounding out the top five: Joe Solmonese, who was selected to lead the allegedly LGBT Human Rights Campaign. My apologies in advance if you're hoping I dug up something sleazy about Joe. I have no idea if he ever went down on George Michael in the bushes or played hide the salami with James McGreevey at a rest area along the New Jersey turnpike. Joe's more of a political whore than a sexual one. As the newly annointed leader of HRC Joe embarked on a cross-country trek to find out what real live gays and lesbians (translation: those who live outside the Washington Beltway) believe are the important issues facing them. Every place he went - and Missouri was among his stops - people told him how important they believe employment issues were. Wow! That was a revelation for Joe! He went back to Washington fresh with the perspective of those real-live homos and dykes his organization is suppose to represent and promptly started talking about the marriage issue. Thanks, Joe. Glad to see our issues and ideas were so important to you that you hightail it back to headquarters and announce your top priority was getting all us homo folks married off so we'd be just like the breeders. We might get fired for being queer, but it's nice to know you want us to come home and share the misery with the same-sex partner of our choosing.
Failing to make the Top 5 list were these two who are at least deserving of a Dishonorable Mention:
Former Congressman Mark ("I did it because I'm an alcoholic ... I mean because I'm gay ... I mean because I was molested by a priest ... I mean because I'm a gay alcoholic who was molested by a priest") Foley; and
The Rev. Ted ("I just got a massage and I threw the meth away") Haggard.
(No doubt we'll see "confessional" autobiographies by them in the bargain bins at Barnes and Noble in the next few years.)
posted by Van | 7:43 PM
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