Bad Jokes, We Don't Love 'Em
Each Memorial Day weekend my partner and I go with another ADA staffer and his wife to see Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Wolf Trap.
It's becoming an annual tradition we all look forward to, throwing a blanket out in the grass, opening a bottle of wine and celebrating the start of summer. We talk politics, update each other on our busy lives and when the show starts we listen to Keillor's funny stories and look at the stars. My partner and I are comfortable with our friends and no one around us seems to care when he puts his arms around me when the night air turns chilly. It's hard for anyone to be uncomfortable listening to Garrison's show, the ultimate in hokey wholesomeness.
I've read Keillor's statements on gay rights before and they are, like him, slightly out of date but never offensive. They are the words of an old school progressive.
Yet, this week I read a column by Keillor at Salon.com and stopped cold with this paragraph:
"The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control."
What?! Even if that silly list of stereotypes were true, since when has parenthood been limited to those who follow the mainstream? My mother put food on the table by working in a man's job at a factory. Does failing to live up to a feminine ideal mean she was a bad mother? Or worse, should have her right to have children taken away?
Think I'm overreacting? Just last week legislators in Arkansas introduced a ban on gay parent adoptions and foster care. Men with fussy hair, in their eyes, can't be good parents either.
There has been so much uproar over the recent grossly homophobic remarks by Ann Coulter and General Peter Pace. So far I've only seen a response to Keillor's embarrassing comments from Dan Savage, editor of The Stanger, and on a few blogs.
While Garrison Keillor is certainly not in the same league as that hateful monster Ann Coulter, we on the left shouldn't give him a pass either. Statements like his are harmful and hurt real people and real families. Sissies or not, gay men and women are becoming parents and we need our friends to support us.
Although I'll cringe a bit when I buy the tickets, we'll still go see "A Prairie Home Companion" this summer. I like being with our friends and I like the sense of community I get from the people around us. When we're lying there on our blanket listening to the adventures of Guy Noir, I'll look around me and be thankful that at some point the audience became more accepting than the star.
UPDATE: Read Keillor's apology here. And what Dan Savage had to say about it here.
It's becoming an annual tradition we all look forward to, throwing a blanket out in the grass, opening a bottle of wine and celebrating the start of summer. We talk politics, update each other on our busy lives and when the show starts we listen to Keillor's funny stories and look at the stars. My partner and I are comfortable with our friends and no one around us seems to care when he puts his arms around me when the night air turns chilly. It's hard for anyone to be uncomfortable listening to Garrison's show, the ultimate in hokey wholesomeness.
I've read Keillor's statements on gay rights before and they are, like him, slightly out of date but never offensive. They are the words of an old school progressive.
Yet, this week I read a column by Keillor at Salon.com and stopped cold with this paragraph:
"The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control."
What?! Even if that silly list of stereotypes were true, since when has parenthood been limited to those who follow the mainstream? My mother put food on the table by working in a man's job at a factory. Does failing to live up to a feminine ideal mean she was a bad mother? Or worse, should have her right to have children taken away?
Think I'm overreacting? Just last week legislators in Arkansas introduced a ban on gay parent adoptions and foster care. Men with fussy hair, in their eyes, can't be good parents either.
There has been so much uproar over the recent grossly homophobic remarks by Ann Coulter and General Peter Pace. So far I've only seen a response to Keillor's embarrassing comments from Dan Savage, editor of The Stanger, and on a few blogs.
While Garrison Keillor is certainly not in the same league as that hateful monster Ann Coulter, we on the left shouldn't give him a pass either. Statements like his are harmful and hurt real people and real families. Sissies or not, gay men and women are becoming parents and we need our friends to support us.
Although I'll cringe a bit when I buy the tickets, we'll still go see "A Prairie Home Companion" this summer. I like being with our friends and I like the sense of community I get from the people around us. When we're lying there on our blanket listening to the adventures of Guy Noir, I'll look around me and be thankful that at some point the audience became more accepting than the star.
UPDATE: Read Keillor's apology here. And what Dan Savage had to say about it here.
1 Comments:
I think just in general, conservatives view comedy very differently from other people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARY9ka2o2J4
LOL, from Salon.
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