I'm An MFH, I'm Here, Get Used To It

I can no longer deny the truth about myself. I am a male fag hag, or perhaps the proper term per the December issue of Details is fag stag. (But that would imply single status and I’m married.) Whatever, I’ll stick with male fag hag or MFH, since that sounds like I’ve got a degree. My condition is not uncommon in the artsy-fartsy trades of theater, film and TV, but it’s nowhere near as widespread as some folks seem to think. And no one has approached me yet to join the vast media conspiracy to foist disgusting gay perversions upon an unsuspecting right-thinking public.

Right wingers love to cite Ayn Rand channeling pundit Camille Paglia to reinforce their deeply held prejudices, and it is true the self-obsessed lesbian anti-feminist has said that, "Entertainment, media, and the arts are nonstop advertisements for homosexuality these days." But I’m going to have to side with Molly Ivins, in her view that the ultra-chic Ms. Paglia is “a crassly egocentric, raving twit.”

But I digress; I was rattling on in my lily-livered white liberal way about some of my friends being gay. It’s true. I’m white, open minded, and since I’ve never shot a man in cold blood I may not be sufficiently macho for the Cal Thomas crowd. (Mr. Thomas has some amusing notions about gays, that can be summed up succinctly as horseshit.) It’s also true that I hang with gays, both male and female.

And why not? Like me, they tend to be into art and theater, and since I’ve met quite a few gays through Wiccan circles, we all tend to be on more or less the same page about faith. I made my first trip to a gay bar at the urging of my hair and makeup guy from “Biohazard: The Alien Force," and I must say the place was jaw-dropping. I was expecting a dance club. Instead, there were three bars, including a cabaret for drag shows, and a country-and-western watering hole. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a bunch of guys in Garth Brooks style black hats and pointy boots line dancing.)

It was called the Parliament House and it was immense. The complex included a hotel, complete with several gift shops, and a trailer park for gay couples. I’ve noticed from their web site that they’ve expanded since I was there. It is fitting that a gay bar in Orlando, home of mega-theme parks, should also be the site of Gay World.

Of course the music at this gay theme park was much better than the stuff at straight clubs – it always is. With a few strange lapses – Cher, Shakira and the whole Britney clone crowd – the stereotype holds remarkably true. Gays do have impeccable taste. (And the good grace not to point out that my sartorial style is atrocious) I’ve done a bit of theater, so of course I’ve done quite a few shows with some tasteful, talented, witty and screamingly funny gays.

In fact my best audience at a comedy show were members of a gay nudist club. You’ve heard the old adage that you can get over performance jitters by imagining the crowd sans clothing? Well these were buck-naked butts on seats for real! They were a great crowd, appreciative and enthusiastic, particularly when we did our naked cowboy sketch. (Hey, ya gotta work the crowd!)

In fact, the only area where I’ve strongly disagreed with some gay folks is in the political arena. Since I live in the south, an area that was third world well into my childhood, there are a few gay men of my acquaintance who are staunchly conservative. This baffles me.
It’s curious that gay republicans will vote for candidates who support the religious right, who in turn despise gays. Some of this might be explained by the self-loathing that some gay men can't seem to shake, but there has to be more to it.

I certainly wouldn't vote for someone whose economic policies I like, if at the same time he thought I was a disgusting pervert who should be wiped off the face of the earth. Similarly, I an also surprised that at this late date, there are straight folks who view me (and presumably my sexuality) with suspicion since I fraternize with known homosexuals. What can I say? Except that busybodies who disapprove of other people’s sexual preferences can go fuck themselves.
 
¶ 11/30/2002 :: E-mail Pat

 

Do-It-Yourself Media Elitism

I didn’t know it at the time, but a piano-playing savant changed the way I look at my profession. I was a production coordinator at a public access cable TV station in suburban Chicago back in the mid 80’s. My job included teaching people how to shoot and edit video, and how to mount a studio production.

A group came through from SHORE School and Adult Center. They were developmentally disabled adults, interested in producing their own TV show, and my savant friend was among their numbers. He was legally blind and his speech was halting, but if you told him the date and year of your birth, he could play Billboard’s top ten tunes for that day, note perfect. (I no longer remember what the songs were, nor do I recall this amazing guy’s name, but then I’m no savant.)

The piano guy served as musical director for a variety show the SHORE group taped once every month or so. It was a dynamite combination of public affairs and entertainment, easily the equal to any show produced at the station, including shows created by the professional staff. It was kind of cool and kind of humbling. Cool, because the SHORE folks found a forum they otherwise would not have had. Humbling, because with just a little help they could do what I was doing for a living.

It’s hardly a revelation that TV work isn’t rocket science, but it’s something we in the industry should consistently bear in mind. I’ve noticed a tendency in TV production and promotion, to view ourselves as a special club, an in-the-loop elite with arcane knowledge. This is only partly true. We do know how to work the smoke machines and which way to tilt the mirrors, but it’s all a bit like the Great and Imperial Oz: “Pay no attention to those men behind the TV screen!” Since we know the jargon and have the technical know how, we sometimes delude ourselves that we’re savvier about content than the general public. But from what I’ve seen, TV players are just as likely to fall prey to mainstream media propaganda as anyone else. Case in point: the imminent war with Iraq, which is supported by most of my co-workers.

The common reason given for rattling sabers at Iraq is that Saddam is linked to 9/11 and Al Qaeda. I point out there’s accusations a’ plenty, but no proof of said link. My co-workers fall back on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, primed to strike the USA as we speak. I counter that Hussein is guaranteed to use such weapons only if we attack first. We get to the last defense of a wobbly argument: Saddam is in defiance of the UN. I say that puts him in the company of rogue nations like Israel and the US.
Now I believe that the real reason for war with Iraq only makes sense in the context of the imperialist Bush Doctrine. And the Bush White House’s Pax Americana relies on a secure oil supply, which relies on US military bases in a post Saddam Iraq. Feel free to think my humble opinion is horseshit, but when have you ever heard this viewpoint aired on any mainstream media outlet?

Just like people outside the loop, we TV types follow our already ingrained beliefs, inclinations and prejudices. Because most TV messages are encoded in bites, buzz and flashy graphics, these messages can only hope to shore up a viewer’s current stance. The content is rarely in-depth enough to force a 180 in anyone’s views – and that includes we who work the magic. In short, TV preaches to a choir with a short attention span.

Eventually broadcast networks may go the way of big old Ozymandias:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Though a better fit for Fox News might be the ridiculous flying head in “Zardoz”, fixed in stone, spitting out guns. Even the stone head’s message is surprisingly Republican: “The gun is good! The penis is evil!)

Seriously, the kicker about making TV happen, is that we’re approaching the point where anyone can do it. With the advent of digital cameras, desktop editing, and streaming video, people can make their own shows and put them online without breaking the bank. Which brings me back to another lesson I learned from the SHORE folks long ago:

If you don’t like what you see on TV, if you feel your views aren’t represented, quit bitching and do it yourself.
 
¶ 11/22/2002 :: E-mail Pat

 

A Made Man

I spent a festive, heart warming Thanksgiving dinner with a member of a prominent crime family. Okay, I’ve no way of knowing if said scion of the Cosa Nostra was actually telling the truth about his family background, but I’ll change all names anyway -- to protect the innocent, the guilty and anyone in between.

Let’s call this wiseguy “Frankie Soprano”, Frankie for the patron saint of all things tinged with testosterone, and Soprano... well, that’s pretty obvious. I crossed paths with my pal Frankie by accident. I dropped by a darkened theater Thanksgiving Day to pick up Robert, an actor friend who was in between homes, and consequently crashing for a few days on a comfy couch/set piece. I needed to run Robert down to Orlando, Florida, where we were due to start shooting the film short “Aunt Judith.” ( And since I’m indulging in gratuitous plugola, you can check out the film’s trailer.)

Frankie was also at the theater. He’d been hanging out the last few weeks with my lead actor, partying around town and generally livin’ it up. So Frankie tagged along to the sunshine state, to see the sights, keep a paternal eye on Robert, and look into his two uncles’ “business interests” in South Florida. We blew into town in time for Thanksgiving dinner at the house the Director, Dave, and his wife Colleen, who designed the film’s sets, and was also handling meals and craft services for cast and crew.

It was over dinner that Frankie revealed his family connections. It seems Frankie’s father was found in the East River with a bullet hole in his head by the time Frankie turned two. Although only in his early 20s, Frankie was climbing the company ladder, running errands for his uncles and looking into some choice Florida properties. At first, there was no reason to disbelieve Frankie. He certainly looked the part – a goomba straight out of central casting.

He dressed the part too – tan leather jacket, ugly floral print shirt, gold chains, expensive looking watch – all in the sweltering Florida sun. It was almost too perfect. And as Colleen cannily pointed out, Frankie was a little too loose-lipped to be a made man. Our suspicions were confirmed – maybe.

Months later back in North Carolina, I heard that a black cloud had appeared over Charlotte, and Frankie had disappeared under it. Something to do with a credit card scam I heard from one source; he had displeased the family according to someone else; he was a con man with no crime family connections from yet another source. Frankie was a one-man Rashomon; a different guy to different observers.

In Florida, Frankie was a ladies' man. While we shot our horror film, he was out playing the field. He hit the theme parks, and scored a date with Disney World’s Snow White his first night in town. The next day, he stumbled onto the soundstage, hung over with skin the same shade as our green room. He was disappointed that Snow White wasn’t a real brunette. Apparently, the cuffs didn’t match the collar.

My wife Cathy messed with Frankie’s head, reminding him that it was Sunday and he was missing church. Frankie was penitent of course, because he was a good Italian-American Catholic. A guy who loved God and loved women even more; but not just any women. He loved Colleen because she was beautiful and she cooked. (If he knew her day job encompassed art direction and design for theme parks, hotels and major motion pictures, his opinion of her might not have been so high.) Frankie loved Cathy because she was beautiful, talented, and a married lady. But Snow White…well to Frankie she was a sexually active single woman — a slut.

This sexist, yet charming, boy goomba loved the Madonna, but restricted his fucking to the whore. Cathy and Colleen knew Frankie had a bad case of the Madonna/whore complex, and had the grandest time screwing with his tiny mind. They were very sweet about it, and I doubt that he ever caught on that two savvy women thought of him as a figure of fun.

I suspect there’s a bit of Frankie in a lot of guys, a perception shared by many of my fellow travelers in the media biz. We’re well into November sweeps as I write, and we’re all trying to capitalize on the need of Frankies nationwide for a little action in the pants. A one-hour lingerie extravaganza on CBS is just the proverbial tip, so to speak. Factor in the sophmoric softcore of Maxim Magazine and the frat boy hijinks of “The Man Show” and there can be no doubt that sex still sells.

As someone with a checkered porn-business past, I hardly have a problem with sex. But this is safe sex of the most stifling sort - no messy relationships or human interaction. A Madonna on the TV with Regis, whores in the glossy magazines. Everything is slightly unreal and kept at arm’s length. It’s safe non-sex which puts men in a mindset that keeps them forever boys.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that all of this – the Madonna/whore construct and all the varieties of inflatable date sexuality – are fantasies. Some are harmful fantasies, some are relatively harmless, none are terribly sophisticated. Problems occur, I think, when guys confuse the image with reality. They can’t get past sanitized sex-in-the-service-of-commerce to get in touch with people.

How else to explain our apparent comfort with prime time softcore fantasy and our revulsion over sex education in schools? I’m not surprised to know grown men whose most lasting relationships have been lap dances. I wonder how many other infantalized boys are out there, satisfied with cyber pin-ups, but complaining that big bad women in the real world want to push them around.

But I can’t lay all of this at Frankie’s door. After all, he may have been just another fella with an overstuffed fantasy life. He was a fun guy to be around, as long as you took everything he said with a chunk of rock salt, and didn’t spend too much time with him. He even offered to get the family involved in financing any of our future films, but we respectfully declined. For me, he was a wealth of tics, mannerisms and vocal inflections, which I put to good use playing a sleazy Italian American lounge singer in the all-male musical “Valley of the Dolls." So thank you, “Frankie”, whoever you are.
 
¶ 11/15/2002 :: E-mail Pat

 

Life Among The Savages

I’ve had my big fat Baptist wedding. It was eye opening experience, in a “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” sort of way (complete with a cartoonish glimpse of hell) but it was still one damn Baptist wedding too many. I should clarify that this wasn’t my wedding. My wife and I were attending the nuptials of the nice woman who cut our hair. She was far too nice a lady for this ceremony, a bizarre cross between a tent show revival, a frat boy hazing and a mean-spirited celebrity roast.

For starters, the preacher took great pains to remind the happy couple that they were poor sinners in the eyes of the Lord – nothing but shit on God’s shoes. But some peons are better than others: namely male sinners are far better than their female counterparts. So I heard for the first time the Southern Baptist line that women were created to be subservient to men. According to the publication “Baptist Faith and Message”:

“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband... She… has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”

How convenient for the church fathers than God wants women kept in the traditional roles of “wifery and motherhood”. I guess it’s generous of the Southern Baptists to allow women inside a church at all, since generations of religious conservatives have considered women inherently sinful, in addition to being ritually unclean.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the profoundly misogynist notion that all sin derives from women stems from misinterpretations of scripture along with rationalizations from bigoted writers. But who really cares about scriptural accuracy? Certainly not religious conservatives like the Southern Baptists, who cherry pick bits and pieces of the bible to support their real agenda. As A.N. Wilson, writing in the International Herald Tribune put it:

“Cross-question conservative evangelicals closely and you will virtually always find that their religion consists in deifying a mid-20th century, middle class, Western way of life. A few stray texts chosen at random from the confusing and multifarious pages of the Bible serve as useful bats with which to hammer the heads of homosexuals, divorced women, Jews and more or less anyone who is not a conservative evangelical.”

But back to the show: To my surprise, the Baptist wedding included a station break. “We now interrupt the holy union of two fine people to bring you this special prayer call.” The preacher halted the service for a salvation break. All of us attendees who were not of the true faith were invited to come down to the font in front of the alter…To repent! To convert! (This is where I had my cartoonish glimpse of hell. I imagined a hideous creature from a medieval bestiary emerging from the font and swallowing the minister whole. Such a scene occurs in the Michelle Soavi’s “The Church” and it makes the whole movie worth seeing.)

But the preacher was not devoured, and he assured us that this was our golden opportunity to get to know God, that he was bestowing a great and treasured gift upon us all. I was astounded that the soon-to-be-newlyweds put up with this. I don’t care if the minister is giving away free Ferraris; I wouldn’t have any Holy Roller upstage my marriage. It was a sorry spectacle. The happy couple seemed an afterthought to their own wedding.

My wife had had enough, and wanted to leave. I counseled patience and restraint, so we stayed. (For the record, she was right and I was wrong. We should have stormed out of there in a heartbeat.) I pointed out that this ceremony belonged to the betrothed, and presumably it was what they wanted. I also came up with the Amazon Expedition analogy, which is this:

“The explorers go up the Amazon and meet the natives. Sometimes the natives have weird customs, which the explorers must learn to accept. Sometimes the natives eat bugs. But that’s okay.”

So we put up with the Big Baptist Circus of Contempt, surrounded by bug eaters. This was a mistake, an error that continues to be perpetrated by the mainstream media of which I’m a part. In a quest to seem objective, we note in passing that that Billy Graham is a Jew-baiter or that Jerry Falwell is an intolerant bigot, but we don’t make too big a deal out of it. The apologies are accepted and we move on.

Hell, it’s gotten to the point where news anchors can say “Bob Jones University” with a straight face. (A university named after a guy named Bob? Put this in another context. What would happen to David Bowie’s street credibility if Iman suddenly changed her name to Betty Jo Bowie?) Back in the early 80’s I thought of the Baptists as weird and colorful natives. But this backward culture has flourished outside the Bible belt. In our current hothouse atmosphere of ignorance and intolerance it has spread like a cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, religious conservatives can believe what they want and say what they want. But it’s about time we called a spade a spade. If a gang of lunatics think that 51% of the human race is sinful, inferior and unclean, let’s acknowledge that these “right thinking” people are psychotic. Let’s call them flat out fucking crazy (in a diplomatic way, of course) Sheer numbers and the fact that they’re highly vocal does not bestow sanity upon them. I’ve been surrounded by religious conservatives for some time now, and you know what? The hell with restraint and pretenses of objectivity. These bug eaters are disgusting.
 
¶ 11/8/2002 :: E-mail Pat

 

Mythologizing the Liberal Media

It’s a tad simplistic to label anyone strictly conservative or liberal (and anarchists seem to have the most fun anyway; witness Chumbawamba). Growing up in Chicago, I thought my views were mildly progressive, kind of Robert LaFollette-esque. When I moved south, I held pretty much the same positions, but all of a sudden I was Che Guevera. So I tend to get lumped in with the liberals; and since I work in the media I am now eminently qualified to write about the perceived “liberal media”.

Let me start by saying it’s horseshit. Bernard Goldberg, author of “Bias: a CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News” uses anecdotal evidence to support his contention that media players lean left and are out of touch with most of America. Let me counter with some anecdotal, far-from-scientific evidence of my own. I’ve worked in TV for over 20 years and I have yet to meet a liberal boss. A manager at one TV station aired Fox News 4 to 5 hours a day in a common work area, until I pointed out (more than a few times) that there are other news sources available. Granted, it would be extremely risky for me to build a case for conservative media bias based on my work experience alone, but that’s exactly what Goldberg does: extrapolating a national scenario based on his stint at CBS News. Norman Solomon, author of “Habits of Highly Deceptive Media”, notes that Goldberg makes scores of undocumented generalizations, including:

"(CBS) pointedly identified conservatives as conservatives, for example, but for some crazy reason didn't bother to identify liberals as liberals."

But linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, speaking on the radio show “Fresh Air”, found that the facts were not in Goldberg’s favor. After checking a database of 30 big city daily papers:

“Nunberg discovered ‘a big disparity in the way the press labels liberals and conservatives -- but not in the direction that Goldberg claims.’ Actually, the data showed, ‘the average liberal legislator has a 30 percent greater likelihood of being identified with a partisan label than the average conservative does.’”

And it doesn’t stop there. Solomon also notes:

“(Goldberg) declares flatly: "If we do a Hollywood story, it's not unusual to identify certain actors, like Tom Selleck or Bruce Willis, as conservatives. But Barbra Streisand or Rob Reiner, no matter how active they are in liberal Democratic politics, are just Barbra Streisand and Rob Reiner."

Nunberg found the facts prove Goldberg wrong: "The press gives partisan labels to Streisand and Reiner almost five times as frequently as it does to Selleck and Willis. For that matter, Warren Beatty gets a partisan label twice as often as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Norman Lear gets one more frequently than Charlton Heston does."

Goldberg’s unsubstantiated statements or Nunberg’s empirical evidence; take your pick. To be fair, Goldberg may have worked with journalists more liberal than he is. He has described himself as centrist, but that hardly jibes when he attacks the elitist leftwing media as being overly sympathetic to the poor, the homeless, the out of work. Since when do elitists champion the common people? There will always be a degree of subjectivity regarding political views; but a non-partisan study of journalists’ political leanings revealed that:

“On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public.

Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation.

The minority of journalists who do not identify with the "center" are more likely to identify with the "right" when it comes to economic issues and to identify with the "left" when it comes to social issues.”

These are not entirely shocking findings. Would a lock-step liberal media indulge in unsubstantiated speculation that the DC snipers were affiliated with Al Queda (speculation that gives leverage to Bush’s war campaign) while ignoring unsubstantiated speculation (for the time being) that Paul Wellstone met with foul play? Would the majority of Talk Show pundits be Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh clones? (And if Bernard Goldberg is untainted by bias himself, why has he cozied up to Rush?) If pundits are hired not for their bellicose conservatism, but for their feisty personality and ability to stir up controversy as media bosses claim, then why doesn’t Maureen Dowd have her own show? Why does the astonishingly ignorant Ann Coulter even have a job?

Mysteries to be pondered by minds far greater than Goldberg’s or mine, but if a certain manager at a certain TV station tries to turn on Fox News again, he’s certain to get more shit from me.
 
¶ 11/5/2002 :: E-mail Pat