First, sorry this is so late. July passed without me cleaning my bedroom closets. Don't know how that happened but if you know me, you know that's a thing with me -- and Jess has written of how, the first time he visited me, it was July and I was cleaning the bedroom closets. It's an embarrassment both because, yes, I have huge closets -- the walk-in could house a small bed -- and because it really goes to how messy I can be. I tend to just put stuff in there, especially if I don't want to deal with it at the moment. That includes gifts -- I never want gifts (I don't think I'm worth them -- that's my self-esteem which is why I've always laughed when offline me was said to think too highly of myself -- oh, journalists, you've never really known me) and why I tend to laugh at e-mails that make the same charge about online me). So there's a lot of opening things and then tossing things -- not gifts, but the boxes they were in -- and weeding down the wardrobe with cast-offs going to charity. And there are tons of things I didn't ask for that get shoved in the back like scripts that I'm never going to read. (Clarifying for my friends who are screenwriters -- I read yours and I give you honest feedback -- I'm talking about scripts sent to me by studios or directors and I have no interest in doing them.) There's just a lot junk -- in tidy piles -- and for whatever reason, I always go through it in July.
Blame it COVID times or on my poor health of late but I put it off and put it off and just remembered tonight. I have five bags of clothes to donate and two bags of trash and I'm sadly not done yet but looked at the clock and realized I needed to post.
Talking post is all we're getting.
In Friday's snapshot, I defended Joe Biden re: Afghanistan.
Some are having a fit: He's not really doing it!!!!
Read what I wrote. I don't believe I said he was.
I was defending Joe but I know that while I was dictating that snapshot I stopped and asked the person who was transcribing, "It doesn't sound like I'm presenting this as an exit, does it?"
I'm not an expert on Afghanistan. We don't do an Afghanistan snapshot. Based on what's taking place with Iraq and what took place at the end of 2011, I don't believe or expect a true withdrawal.
I never wrote that this was an 'end' or a 'withdrawal.' I doubt it would be.
But POLITICO ran one of those attack articles the press is so fond of on Joe Biden's efforts to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan and to try to shame us all into demanding that the US efforts continue.
The US efforts accomplished nothing.
When I read former service members from that war lamenting the departure of some US troops (more are apparently headed there), I feel sorry for them that they can't see reality. Nothing has been accomplished.
It's not going to change and I don't think America married war so I really don't think this is 'til death do we part issue. But even if you believe it is, we've evolved enough to recognize divorce as a reasonable outcome when a marriage just isn't working.
The war on Afghanistan just isn't working.
If, after all this time, you can't see that, I'm sorry for you. You either have blinders on or you have cognitive issues. Regardless, reality is very clear to the rest of us.
Thursday's snapshot resulted in many complaints to the public e-mail account (common_ills@yahoo.com). Some were actually valid.
The most valid was that the link to Margaret Kimberley's article did not work. The correct link was put in by Dona two hours after the snapshot went up (thank you, Dona).
While that link complaint was valid, e-mailing the public account to complain that, in a 2005 entry, I linked to your report for THE NEW YORK TIMES and now the paper has changed the link?
No.
I'm not going back into old posts and redoing links because the outlet ditched the original link.
This post right here? I had to check, it's the 26,509 post or entry here.
Do you really think I have time -- or would ask others to help with this -- to correct things like that?
If someone wants to read something and the link no longer works most people do know how to GOOGLE. You copy and paste a sentence that's excerpted, you put in quotes in a GOOGLE search bar and you search. It should turn the article up at a working link -- if a working link exists.
If a working link exists?
A lot of titles have ceased since this site started. I especially wish that CLAMOR and OFF OUR BACKS were still around. But a lot have shuttered their doors.
Despite what an e-mailer thinks, no, I do not see it as my responsibility to go into posts and state "Link no longer works. Outlet shut down five years ago."
No, that's not my task, that's not my job.
We're in 2021 and that's what we're focusing on, what's needed in 2021.
The link was accurate when the post was originally published?
I think that's fine and I'm not my wasting my time to fix something that was correct when published.
"You are full of" s**t. I'll accept that as a valid e-mail because, honestly, I probably am. I don't poop that often, seriously. I'm not constipated, I just don't eat that much, never have. I usually have a soup for breakfast -- I'm not good with solid foods in the morning. If I eat a typical breakfast -- eggs and toast, for example -- I've been up for three hours or more. Usually, I wake up, do 50 minutes of cardio plus some stretching before and after, shower and then grab a cup of soup and drink it while I'm looking over my list for the day. I always poop the day after I've slept eight hours but you can count on one hand the number of times I sleep eight or more hours a year. I generally have only one bowel movement a week -- unless I have diarrhea. So, yes, I probably am full of s**t.
Though I'm sure that's not how the e-mailer meant it, I will accept the point as valid.
He was among the people complaining about the focus on Glen Ford.
Who?
Those are just some of the articles about Glen Ford at BLACK AGENDA REPORT currently.
Glen Ford, several wanted me to know, was just not important.
Well, that is your opinion.
I don't believe it is an informed opinion, but it is an opinion.
Glen Ford was an important voice who raised real issues. I came across his writing at THE BLACK COMMENTATOR and that's where we first started highlighting him, Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley. If we highlight THE BLACK COMMENATOR these days, it's because they've sent us something. It's not a site I visit anymore. I'm glad to highlight it if they send something but it didn't pass the truth factor for me.
Walk with me through this, there's a chance to cure cancer but we have to let one million people die first. Do you let the one million die?
Do individuals matter?
It's a valid question. And it goes to the whole 'greater good.'
Too often, people suffer for 'the greater good.'
I feel that's the attitude THE BLACK COMMENTATOR has taken too many times. Some people and outlets are just whores and, to be clear, I'm not calling the outlet a whore. I am saying that they factor in what they will tell and share based on what they feel is the greater good.
That's not me. I say tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
And that's always my stance. Ava and I even ripped apart HOT IN CLEVELAND over an episode where they concealed the truth. Melanie came across a genuine letter revealing an affair that Abraham Lincoln had and she decides to hide it away because she doesn't want to destroy his image.
Excuse me? That's historical (no such letter existed outside the episode of the TV show to be clear). You don't destroy history. And it gives you a better understanding into Lincoln.
It was a fictional letter on a TV episode and we like the people who made that show but we tore that episode apart. (And heard about it from various people with the show afterwards.)
There are enough lies and liars out there.
"Greater good" people support lying, support covering up. The argument leads us to Tuskegee Study, eventually, it does. That's where it has to arrive. It leads you to calculate which lives matter and which don't.
So that's why I don't go to THE BLACK COMMENTOR anymore. I don't hate it. I don't attack it for whoring -- because it's not whoring. And they're trying to do right by what they believe in. I just don't believe in "greater good." Too many people on the margins are repeatedly harmed by "greater good."
It applies to all areas of my life, this belief in the truth. At one point, this evening, I was on a long phone call with a studio suit and she was just so jazzed that one of the Davids came out. I knew who she meant only because "American Oh-Dull" -- Ava and my 2008 piece on AMERICAN IDOL.
Which I just got lost in, I wasn't aware that we had contacted FAIR VOTE and included their response in the article. I'd forgotten that. We were right and they were wrong by the way. Michigan did count and you saw that summer that the DNC couldn't just ignore Michigan. At one point, around the time of that article, even Diane Rehm was making that point on her show but she was advised to stop making it. People sometimes complain about Diane's new program in e-mails. I have no interest in covering that program. We link to Diane's show on our side links. It is not the daily, two-hour program that she used to do from Monday through Friday. When that show aired, it was an important show and we did note it here and at THIRD and Ava and I regularly took it on.
I know Diane and like her. But we took on the show and we noted that huge gender imbalance, call it out for that, we noted many other problems including ethical ones.
I like Diane but we made those calls. I'm not in the mood to do that with her current show which is more of make-work project. It's not a vanity project, it's not for her ego. She just realized that she had stepped away too soon. She wasn't done with radio, she was done with the grind of doing ten hours of radio a week. So she's come back in a smaller way and I think she does a strong job whenever I listen -- which isn't often enough for someone who's always been very kind to me. But I'm not interested in critiquing her at this point. It's been done when it was an important show she was hosting. This is solid radio, I'm sure, but it doesn't have the prominence that the previous one did.
Back to the Davids. I had to pull up the article because I couldn't remember the last names.
I suppose I could have pulled a Mia Farrow and just GOOGLED "David American Idol gay" the way, she wanted to post a photo of one her children she GOOGLED "Mia Farrow and her black children."
So, I'm in the closet on the phone with a friend and she's praising David Archuleta for coming out.
I'm not impressed.
For the record, the woman I'm on the phone with is bisexual and in the closet.
And that's fine, I'm not judging her. It's hard enough to rise in the entertainment system if you're a woman, try adding in lesbian or bisexual and it's even harder.
It used to be very hard for openly gay men but times have changed on that. While it was still very hard for openly gay men, lipstick lesbians were popular in the entertainment industry as a fantasy for some straight men. That's the closest it probably ever was to truly welcoming women.
I put a period there. I was originally going to end that sentence with "welcoming women who were not straight." But the reality is that the industry has never been welcoming to women. In fact, if they could just put men in dresses all the time and cast them opposite men, there are periods of time when they probably would have. Certainly in the 70s, they would have gladly attempted that.
So if a woman's in the closet because she's in a sexist business, I'm not judging you.
And we've written, Ava and I, about Queen Latifah coming out and how we more than understand the barriers that prevented her from coming out sooner. Real barriers. Queen Latifah coming out was a big deal and I wish her nothing but the best.
But I don't get why we're applauding David.
He didn't grow up where there was the stigma that Lily Tomlin grew up with (you could be institutionalized when Lily was a child for being gay, it was thought to be a mental illness). Sodomy is no longer a crime, thanks to the Supreme Court, before David's ever having sex. He's still a young adult when marriage equality is in force. We live in a world where people can identify their own gender. We live in a country with homophobia still, no question.
But it's not the world that it was. The country has changed so much. We were talking about the hideous Simon Rosenberg in our latest piece (Ava and my "Media: The problem with Jimmy Dore?") and grasp that was 2004. Simon was supported by Sam Seder and many others to be DNC head while preaching homophobia and being anti-choice and arguing that abortion rights needed to be ignored by the Democratic Party. In 2004, he was a viable candidate for DNC chair with those positions. That was 16 years ago. The country has moved so far since then. [And to give Rachel Maddow credit, she didn't whore for Simon Rosenberg. When she was on mike with him -- he visited every AIR AMERICA RADIO program -- weekday -- she called it out. I have many problems with Rachel Maddow but I will always praise her for that.]
The world has changed so much. I remember when Bryan Singer first became famous. If I encountered someone wanting an autograph and they were gay and young (under 30), they'd generally bring him up and would I work with him because isn't it so exciting that a gay man can be out and directing a film and the film's a hit and . . .
I met a lot of excited young men back then. Excited to have some form of representation after years and years of none at all.
Even Joel Schumacher wasn't out.
Bryan's had many problems since then -- and as the scandals mounted, he became 'bisexual' (he's not), his effort to change the narrative.
But when Bryan was originally out, there weren't a lot of public figures who were.
It meant something when Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang came out. And then when Ellen DeGeneres came out. Remember, WILL & GRACE started after ELLEN was cancelled. Yes, Sean Hayes wasn't sure about coming out but it's also true that NBC suits did not want him coming out. They wanted him for Jack, he was a great actor for the part, but they were really afraid of the myth of what happened to ELLEN. (The myth is that the show bombed after Ellen came out. Check the ratings, it did not. Nor did the replacement show -- 2 COCKS AND A USELESS RECEPTICLE -- do better in the ratings. ABC cancelled the show while it was still a ratings hit, that's reality. Even with that awful warning at the start of the show -- on warnings, I guess I better take something to THIRD because this has already meandered enough -- viewers still tuned in to ELLEN up until the cancellation and when ABC was burning off the last episodes.)
So all these years later for 'young David' to come out? After no one cares? Kind of like Richard Chamberlain did -- but at least when Chamberlain did, there were still so few coming out that it mattered somewhat.
David turns 31 this year.. He told his family in 2014. But he can't tell the American people -- who he courts for a career -- until seven years later.
Does he have a career? I honestly never knew of him until we had to review that episode of AMERICAN IDOL. And until he came out, I'd never heard of him since.
Okay, looking at his stats, he had one hit single and that was when he was on AMERICAN IDOL. While he was on that show, he had a gold album. Not platinum, but gold. After that, he had an album that sold pretty well (not even gold, though) and that was it.
He has some need for attention which is why he keeps plugging away.
His voice is not distinct enough to be a recording artist which is why he has no career.
That's one of the many failures of AMERICAN IDOL, by the way. It turned singers into stars . . . for a moment. Failing to grasp that the industry had long ago changed and that singer-songwriters had been the force for decades. It also didn't grasp what a recording artist was.
I love Liza, she's a dear friend. But I'm not surprised that she doesn't have a string of chart hits. She's a live performer and a great one. And a live album from her will always be powerful. She does have a distinctive voice. But it's not a radio voice.
David doesn't have a radio voice and he's not even distintive.
He was a cute little boy who could carry a tune and, the way AMERICAN IDOL works, that's what matters.
At times, David and others on that program can even stylize a song but that's what Liza does and stylize doesn't sell. If it ever should have, it would have been with Liza's performance -- recorded performance -- of "New York, New York." That song charted . . . in Italy. Only in Italy.
It's just too much for radio. Radio or streaming, you're not wanting an 'experience.'
And so David's not going to have a career as a recording artist.
If he has any real talent -- I haven't seen any -- he should go the live route. Do a musical onstage, put together a cabaret act.
But he's not going to be a recording star. And he should have realized that many albums ago.
I cringe when I see the ugly 'Nsync-ers on their commercial for Progressive Insurance and pray that they're doing it for the money only and that they grasp that the hits are over and there's no comeback in their futures. So many can't take a hint.
Anyway, so he had nothing to lose and he's got no career and he's constantly trying to get attention so he finally comes out -- at the age of 30 -- and we're supposed to applaud his 'courage.'
Gay people need to know that they're not alone. LGBTQ needs representation. Until Laverne Cox, there wasn't a person that the corporate media was interested in when it came to transgender.
I understood when those young men came up to talk about Bryan Singer because it was a big deal.
You're excluded, you're isolated, you're bullied, you're attacked and you're supposed to believe that you're not 'normal' and that no one else is like you.
That's why coming out has mattered, because it stripped away all that. It exposed it as lies.
And Bryan Singer having success when he did and being out was a big deal.
A singer who's had so-so success in 2008 and nothing since coming out in 2021? Seems less like helping others and more like, "Maybe this will make a label sign me!"
I don't know. On the phone we were talking about a mutual friend, an actor, who is bisexual but claims to be straight publicly while the public claims he's gay. I know he's not gay, he came onto me back when he was on TV and I know many women he's slept with. He's bi. And that's fine. But we talked about why he didn't come out. (I'm not writing about it here to avoid being Carrie Fisher -- I think I just made it clear who I'm talking about.)
And there are reasons and there can be valid reasons. Coming out would be a huge deal for many people and it's understandable that some don't want to. But the obstacles are less and less every day. That's especially true if you have money. Once David Geffen had his f**k you money, he came out. Not before even though everyone knew he was gay.
And it can be a big deal for many.
I've got to include my son here. He's very funny and makes me laugh often. Last month, he said he thought I would've been happier if he were gay (I'm perfectly happy with him and he knows it) and that "Cher got the two kids you should have had." You probably had to see his face and hear his tone of voice but it made me laugh then and it's making me laugh as I type this. Yes, I could've handled that and would have loved it.
And I am very defensive of the LGBTQ community, I know that. I don't apologize for it. I don't know why it is. They have been a marginalized group and I do feel support for marginalized groups, yes. But it's something more. I don't know when it developed. Probably in childhood early on (which would be why I don't remember it -- a trauma took away my early years memories). But if you read this site regularly, you've seen me enraged by, for example, the attacks on LGBTQs in Iraq.
At any rate, representation does matter.
And with regards to Glen Ford, when I see silence on him from so many outlets, I see that they're making a statement. Because Glen Ford did matter and his work still does and what he stood for still does. So if you're some lefty with a podcast or radio show or YOUTUBE program and you didn't devote significant time to Glen's passing, I think you're sending a message which is that you're non-inclusive and you don't really care about thinkers and theorists for their actions, just for their skin color. And apparently Glen's skin color was the wrong color for you.
Few who have been online have done as much as Glen did. He was important voice. He raised issues others didn't. He provided context and connections to demonstrate how one incident was not an isolated moment but part of a chain of events. He enlarged understanding in so many ways.
So I choose to reject any e-mailing to the public account that Glen Ford's death didn't matter. No death has shook me more this year.
The following sies updated:
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No Choice But To Fight1 day ago
