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Encouragement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 21, 2010| 3 Comments »

We’re in a national crisis, and I think I know why.
When I was on tour promoting my novel Say Uncle a funny thing happened. Many people who came to get me to sign their book also came to ask me child rearing questions. To be fair, the book is about a single gay man raising a child. It’s my meditation on what it might have been like for me to raise a child at that point in my life. But it’s fiction. That means I made the whole thing up. Apparently though, readers with young children tried some of the solutions that I made up and they actually worked. They wanted more.
I’m no child expert, but I am an expert on Say Uncle. So, I told them what I thought the character in the book would do – literary child rearing advice, perhaps?
In preparing to write the book I did ask parents I knew about their experience. I got a lot of answers. Very few were the same, save one. Whatever you react to, you reinforce. If your baby cries when you put him to bed and you go pick him up, he won’t sleep through the night. Not because he can’t but because you taught him if he cried you’d come pick him up. If you react to the bad behavior you’ll get more. The trick, and it’s a hard one, is to react to the good behavior and ignore the bad.
From what I’ve observed, this applies long after childhood is over. We are in a period of bad parenting on an epic scale. Through TV, the news, the internet and in a thousand ways we pay attention almost exclusively to the bad behavior. Good behavior? Well, no one pays much attention and there seems to be less and less of it.
We ignore the good and affirm the bad by focusing on it.
The most famous person in Hollywood is not Meryl Streep, though she’s arguably the best we’ve got, it’s Lindsay Lohan. I guess Mean Girls was pretty good, but really, what else is there? Yet, she is receiving a lethal amount of airtime and press attention. If we want to help Lindsay, we should ignore her – we should probably ignore her anyway, but I’m just saying. There is no incentive for Lindsay to get better. It did kill Anna Nicole. I was afraid we were going to lose Robert Downey, jr. the same way. He kept crashing and burning and he kept getting another chance, thanks to the headlines for the bad behavior that kept him famous. Any idea what he’s up to lately? Sandra Bullock, the Oscar winning best actress and currently the most bankable star in Hollywood only got coverage when her husband’s tattooed, pole dancing girlfriend went public with their affair. The Divorce is final and she’s slipping into obscurity.
This doesn’t just apply in the frivolous world of entertainment. Our whole country is currently being run by the bad kids.
That woman who used be governor in Alaska for instance. Her career has been built, not by the people who like her, but by those who think she’s terrible. They just can’t stop reporting on how terrible she is. And now she’s so terrible that she’s rich, famous, powerful and a political force to be reckoned.
The crazy people yelling at town hall meetings, the 100 member church and their book burning, that crackpot Iranian President Almondine, the two remaining black panthers and the Birthers are getting more coverage than economic policy and legislation despite double digit unemployment.
Recently, a woman the republicans apparently aren’t particularly fond of got nominated to be their senate candidate in Delaware. I don’t care, I don’t support her, she is opposed almost everything I’m in favor of. No surprise. That’s kinda of how it goes in politics. Yet, I would not recognize the man she will run against if he knocked on my door. He has received NO coverage by his opponents or his SUPPORTERS! Meanwhile, the bigoted, part time Wiccan, assault-Christian, anti-nature, embezzler he’s running against is being made into a viable national candidate by her OPPONENTS.
For all the good people in politics – as in most every other field — doing a good job, working hard, helping the people they were elected to support, it’s the one’s with anti-masturbation platforms who get all the coverage. The good guys languish for lack of attention while the bad apples flourish in the warm nurturing glare of our obsession.
The good guys are still out there. I personally think they’re still the majority. Let’s encourage them and stop paying attention to the lunatics and the assholes. I don’t know that they’ll go away, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could just stop hearing about them?

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Rights and Wrong

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 7, 2010| 2 Comments »

The good folks at Craig’s List are shuttering their Adult Services section. They have apparently come under a great deal of pressure over the potential issue of prostitution in their pages suborning the hideous human trafficking prostitution fosters.
So, that’s the solution? The way to end human trafficking is to cut a $36 million revenue stream from a website? Really? And if we don’t teach sex education in schools there’ll be no more teen pregnancy ’cause the kids just won’t know what to do.
Is anyone else sick of letting the world be run by morons?
Prostitution is only illegal because it’s against the law. That’s it. All of the ills of prostitution stem from the fact that it is illegal. If you want to end human trafficking, make prostitution legal, license it and tax it. We could use the income to pay for the schools we’re closing and perhaps teach a few future prostitutes some other career options.
The problem with legislating morality is that it creates crime.
The hideous drug cartels, the destruction of Colombia, the growing fissures in Mexico’s stability, the gang violence on our own streets, are all bought and paid for with our tax dollars. No one has stopped doing drugs. Prostitution is booming. And we’re spending zillions fighting a war to enforce unenforceable laws.
Sure murder is out. Stealing, still not okay. There’s plenty of stuff that needs to be against the law. But when people are making a choice about their own lives, what business is it of mine?
With all this talk of smaller government and getting Washington out of our lives, this seems like the perfect place to start. Not only does it eliminate a whole class of criminals, it takes away their funding. Plus, regulating and licensing the trade like any other business could create much needed tax revenue and might just limit the access of younger people.
Would drugs be the same kind of problem in our culture if we couldn’t get them until we were 21? There’d still be addicts, but maybe a few would be spared by making a somewhat more informed choice. As it stands now, no one is spared and only our prisons are thriving.
I think the reason we have these silly antiquated laws is that they create the illusion of control in a world spinning into chaos.
Unemployment: 20%. Banks robbing the country blind with usurious interest and fees while refusing to loan money to restart the economy they destroyed. Oil wells in the gulf popping like firecrackers on the fourth while corrupt politicians cry out against a moratorium on drilling until we can do it safely. Two endless and pointless wars that have bankrupted the country and damaged the lives of the thousands of young men and women we’ve sent to fight them. A national spirit of selfishness so intense that we’d let the poor go without medical care and destroy public education rather than pay our taxes.
Yeah, end human trafficking by closing the adult page on Craig’s List, that should fix it.

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Response Ability

Posted in Uncategorized on August 27, 2010| 1 Comment »

Somebody attacked a Muslim cab driver in New York this week.
The attacker’s motives are unclear. The reason it’s unclear is because of the irresponsible hate and fear mongering of the Foxpublicans and right wingnuts over a local real estate development zoning issue in lower Manhattan. It’s also unclear because the main stream and lefty pinko media cannot seem to stop expressing their outrage and moral indignation over the Foxpublican’s hate baiting.
To both groups may I offer a suggestion:
Shut up, SHUT up, shut UP!
I know many mourn the slow agonizing death of journalism. News has become an entertainment medium. It really always was. The purpose of TV news is to deliver you to their advertisers. The same is true of newspapers, magazines, radio, the lot. The reason they count the numbers in the audience is so they can charge their advertisers more. Right? My question is, how do you go about building those numbers?
It seems that rather than trying harder to do a better job or reporting the news more thoroughly and more accurately, the “Oldsmedia” has opted for a different, less nuanced strategy.
The scam was born in Hollywood, always trend setters in the world of entertainment. The “Oldcasters” who’ve taken the place of journalists and reporters adapted it to their own purposes.
The essence of the strategy is this: They do or say ANYTHING to get your attention.
That’s it.
In Hollywood, would-be-celebrities with large or noteworthy genitals make sex tapes that “accidentally” get “leaked” on the interweb and presto, they’re stars. At least until the next big one gets taped and posted.
Since no one wants to see Glenn Beck so much as take off his Christmas Sweater let alone any network or cable anchors cavorting naked in a suite at the St. Regis, they’ve refined the process. It’s called “he did it.” (Okay, maybe refined isn’t the right word here.) You remember this game from the playground in third grade. It goes like this. The Foxpublicans say something egregious and then everyone picks a side. The MSNBCemorats offer an opinion or go on the attack. The right wingnuts go bananas. Meanwhile, the CNNambulists impartially play the video of all of it every hour until somebody stabs a cab driver.
Then everyone yells: “He did it.” Remember?
It’s one things for no-talent plastic surgerites and celebutards to post photos of their big wang doodles and bodacious tatas. We have a pretty good idea where that leads. But when one claims to be reporting the news there is a point where it stops being freedom of speech and becomes yelling fire in the proverbial theatre. Doesn’t anyone remember that old caveat to the first amendment promise of free speech?
Bill O’Reily relentlessly attacks Dr. George Tiller on his program until some lunatic murders the doctor at church.
Tim McVeigh blows up a government building in Oklahoma City and the media makes him internationally famous. One year and a day later, two high school seniors from good homes in Littleton, Colorado opened fire on their fellow students at Columbine High School.
The government institutionalizes a policy of discrimination against gays in the military in 1993. Attacks against gays go up annually and by 1998 Matt Sheppard was tied to a fence, dying.
Prop H8 passed in a media feeding frenzy in 2008. In 2009 hate crime attacks against gay people went up dramatically but so did attacks on people for their religious beliefs.
I think reporting the news is very important. I think people getting to express their opinion on national television, not so much.
I’m not saying that we should stop. I’m just saying that I think rights come with responsibilities. I have the right to free speech. I also have the responsibility of free speech. I don’t get to yell fire in a crowded theatre. I don’t get to show heavily edited video tapes that produce a false impression and call it news. And I don’t get to use my pulpit to advocate against the right of others to have the same rights as me.
I have the rights of free speech and a responsibility to tell the truth. Not just as I see it, but the actual truth. There is only one set of facts though there are numberless opinions.
I suppose we all have the implicit right to be scoundrels. Right? It’s your network, your church, your cause so you’ve the right to make your own version of patent medicine and sell it to the unsuspecting. But does that imply for others the right to tar and feathers? I don’t think so. That just seems like more of the same game of “he did it.”
I have what I think is a novel idea here.
What if we actually try to be fair and balanced?

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Olds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 25, 2010| 2 Comments »

When I watch or read what purports to be “the news” I believe I’m justified in the expectation that the information I’m receiving is in fact new or, at the very least, accurate.
Recently, a friend of mine had a change of heart about her religious affiliation (guess who.) She spoke earnestly of the growing conflict she felt between her faith and the church. It was a part of a discussion she was having on her Facebook fan page. Because she is who she is, her Facebook conversation became international news.
She was very generous about it. She gave interviews to network and cable television, NPR, newspapers, magazines, who knows what all.
Every interviewer asked her if she had parted company with the church because her son is gay. She said no. She said that she had been a supporter of gay rights, long before her son was born or out. She said she thought the church’s persecution of gay people was evil. Further, she talked about a whole host of reasons for her decision of which the church’s medieval persecution of gay people was only one a part.
Still, in story after story it was reported that Anne Rice left the church because her son Christopher is gay. They also often added that Christopher was a gay rights activist. He’s my best friend. I can tell you that while he does advocate equal rights for gay people, he is in fact a novelist.
She told everyone who asked that Christopher’s sexuality was not the reason for her decision. It made no difference. The “olds” media — for I no longer think it qualifies as “news” media – told the story they wanted to tell. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t accurate and, hence, it was not news. It was just the story they wanted to tell. It was Olds.
It’s midterms this year and the “olds” media has decided that they are going to tell the story of how the angry American voter is throwing incumbents out of office. It’s not true. So far, only 7 of over 300 incumbents up for re-election have been voted out. But they just keep saying we’re angry and voting the bastards out.
I am angry. But I’m angry because obstructionist Congress people and Senators are playing politics in a time of dire national crisis. It has nothing to do with incumbency. It has to do with inaction.
The “olds” media doesn’t care what I think. They don’t care what our votes indicate. There is no real effort being made to report on what isn’t happening and how upset we are about obstructionist politics. The “olds” media wants to show the right wingnut fringe with teabags hanging from their hats and report on the left wing drowning in disarray and ennui.
But to the people getting stuff done or the stuff they’re doing, why bother?
There’s some actual real problems that we need help with but why report on that when there’s some nuts freaking out about a religious community center being built in a depressed neighborhood in south Manhattan? And I mean the nuts on both sides.
The Fox olds network is so caught up in this not-a-story that they are now calling one of their own principal stockholders a terrorist for helping fund the project.
There are places and groups in the country with 20% unemployment. People are dying for want of healthcare. We STILL have not repaired New Orleans five years after Katrina. The Gulf of Mexico is flamable. This community center is simply not news.
But the lack of news doesn’t stop the “olds” media.
When they find a story they like, they just keep telling it until we believe it’s true. That just doesn’t sound like news to me. But it does sound familiar.
First, you create a problem that may or may not exist. Then you begin telling people about the problem until they believe it is a problem. Finally, you come up with a story that explains the problem and you tell it over and over again, until people believe that story.
It’s called advertising.
We have become conditioned to learn in a very specific way. It’s actually quite sophisticated. It requires years of media saturation and a whole belief structure built on this problem solution model.
It works like this. Bad breath prevents people from hooking up. Use this potion, tablet, strip, gum, whatever to fix your breath and get laid. Sales of said potion/tablet/strip go through the roof. Ergo, everyone’s getting laid right?
No.
Why? Because the story “Bad breath prevents you from getting any” isn’t true. Do a random breath check of those leaving the bars in pairs and see for yourself. Or better yet imagine, this: There he is. He’s dreamy. She’s just your type. He’s smiling. She tosses her hair flirtatiously. He’s coming this way. It’s late and it’s been a while. He offers you a drink. But oh no, he had garlic for dinner, so never mind. Yeah, right. Like that happened.
And I say this as a man who is physically addicted to Altoids and who hasn’t been asked out in years.
What we used to call the news has become advertising.
We must cut taxes for rich people so that the poor and unemployed will have a chance. There will be a stable Afghan government by next summer. Immigrants are causing unemployment. I am your fierce advocate.
If the “old” casters say it to us often enough, it won’t be true, but we’ll believe it.

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Moddness

Posted in Uncategorized on August 16, 2010| 3 Comments »

Okay, I’ll say it.  Mad Men is the dullest television show in the history of the medium and I have NEVER MISSED an episode.

Really.  The dullest.  Never missed it.

Here’s what happened this week:  (Spoiler 8/15/10)

Peter accidentally found out his wife was expecting from his father-in-law.  Don’s secretary quit.  Peggy went to a wild party that was raided (though neither we nor she saw the wild or the raid).  Peter asked his father-in-law about a larger share of the family’s advertising business.  Peggy was sad that things didn’t work out with Peter.  The focus of the episode’s big excitement was a focus group about cold cream.

People had feelings and lunch and lots of drinks all while smoking, but really, that’s it.

Just for contrast on my other Sunday show, True Blood:  (Spoiler 8/15/10)

Eric was raided, imprisoned, tortured and interrogated by the Vampire Police.  Sookie and Bill discussed their relationship while they cleaned up the dead bodies of the werewolves in her house they killed during their attack the night before.  Later, Bill was transported through his dream to another world where he discovered Sookie’s true nature.  The King of Mississippi discovered the remains of his dead lover, staked last week by Eric in answer to a thousand year blood feud.  Sam encourages Tara to seek help.  Jason was attacked by Crystal’s fiancé when he found her at Jason’s.  Crystal lied and told the fiancé that Jason had kidnapped and raped her, but then clubbed the man unconscious while he was strangling Jason.  Jason and Crystal left her fiancé tied to a tree with drugs in his pocket and reported him to the police.  Eric Betrayed the King of Mississippi and the Queen of Louisiana to the Vampire authorities revealing that the king had killed a vampire government official and was planning to take over the world.  Sam has a moment with his younger brother about partying too loud.  Tara joined a raped survivors group and met the new waitress from Merlotte’s there.  After some deliberation the Vampire Authorities  authorized Eric to finish the job and take out the King and, one presumes, the Queen.  Sam nearly beat a redneck drug lord – Crystal’s father — to death who refused to leave his bar and who had repeatedly threatened and disrespected him.  Sam’s brother steals Arlene’s tips.  Distraught, Arlene confesses to the new waitress that the baby she’s carrying is not her fiancé’s but her dead, serial killer, former husband and that she doesn’t want it.  Crystal broke it off with Jason, again, when he tried to prevent her from going to the hospital with her father.  Tara is attacked by the Vampire who kidnapped and raped her.  Jason, saves Tara and kills the Vampire.  Bill’s Vampire ward met the new girlfriend of the mortal who she broke up with.  The King of Mississippi killed a hot TV anchorman live on the air and declared his intentions.  And don’t get me started on the new romance with Lafayette and the nurse who cares for his mother at the mental hospital.  His long awaited mother and son reconciliation happened when she realized that the two had spent the night together during her escape from the mental ward, really sort of touching.

And I probably forgot stuff.

These two shows are the same length give or take a minute.  One is commercial and the other is not.  One has a supernatural element to it, but honestly, little of what happened this week was all that supernatural.  The body count on True Blood is higher, but Advertising while deadly dull, is rarely lethal.

So what is it that keeps me watching this show?

It is stylishly done, well acted and beautiful to look at.  Still, in its four year history, the most exciting thing that’s happened is that someone’s foot got run over by a lawn mower.  Off the hook, right?

I’ve worked in advertising and, while it was not like being a double-naught spy, it was more interesting than this.

Is this an addiction to the past? Or just a rejection of the present.  My other Sunday show is a fantasy.

America has invented a version of the past they we like and we are devoted to it.  Never mind that the gay liberation of the 70’s killed most of us, the majority of what people think happened in the 60’s was kind of seedy, violent and actually happened in the 70’s and the 50’s were mostly about repression, bigotry, social inequity and paranoia.  But that’s not how we remember it.  Movie makers and politicians constantly evoke the halcyon days of our none existent past.

When that doesn’t work, bring in the Vampires, Wizards and Giant 3D cartoons.

I know times are tough, but they were not when Mad Men first came on the air.  Has this always been the case? In the 50’s did they want it to be the 20’s? I don’t really see any evidence of that.  The past, as depicted in that period seems to have been brutish, short and dark.  We seem no longer able to stand our reality.  I don’t even think it’s just post 9/11.

We are fueled by a loss of national self-esteem.  We have fashioned a culture of covetous and envy and find ourselves constantly wanting.  We strive relentlessly for the perfect figure, job, mate, kitchen, gizmo, only to discover that someone else’s is bigger, better, newer, hotter.

We live in the land of never good enough, manufactured by the Mad Men depicted in that show I can’t stop watching.

Maybe it’s like a car wreck, I just can’t look away.

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Compromise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 9, 2010| 3 Comments »

A while back there was some movie where football players or some other high school age athletes, lay down on the yellow line in the middle of the road to show their bravery or something.

(It was a movie.  Don’t try that at home.)

Anyways, after seeing the film, a number of young people got run over, lying on the yellow line in the middle of the road.  One can imagine the lead up.  Some kid, desperate for approval or street credibility is goaded into the act.  I don’t think the kids were stupid.  I think the need for acceptance is that strong.

We all do it.  We laugh along at the joke that demeans some group or other.  We let people think we liked a book or a film we thought was a pretentious bore or juvenile crap.  We applaud with the crowd but secretly wonder why we can’t see the Emperor’s new clothes.  We know that what is being suggested is wrong, yet we compromise.

In the end we end up looking stupid, or worse.  Still, what else might we expect for willingly compromising with people we know are wrong?

It would be great if this was just some youthful phase.  Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  It’s unfortunate when this kind of yearning for acceptance and approval ends in the strained back of some needy middle-aged, touch-football player.  We wince at the regrettable photos when someone, old enough to know better, winds up at a social event in spandex they outgrew a few years back.

But it is tragic when the government of the most powerful nation in the world runs this way, as ours does.  Over and over again, I see people compromising with folks who are clearly wrong.  It’s not like, well maybe they have a good point.  Like maybe if we force poor people to pay for their own insurance that’ll fix it.  Or maybe this time trickledown economics will in fact trickle down.

Even when there is actual empirical data that the opposition is wrong or worse lying, our leaders will compromise their beliefs and principles in exchange for popularity.  In a republic, I’m not even sure how you get around it since the group most likely to be ill-informed and wrong is in fact the electorate.  What I can say for sure is that compromising with someone I know is wrong doesn’t give me a 50% chance of being right.  It just means I’m wrong, too.  And worse still, by compromising, I signed up to be wrong.

I don’t think President Clinton actually wanted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and I can’t think of a better example of compromising with folks who are wrong.  But President Clinton was re-elected.  Separate but Equal? No such thing, just another example of two wrongs making a mess.  Still, one can hardly imagine running for office without supporting it much prior to 1964, and even then.  Invading Iraq, on balance, not such a good idea, but we’re still there, thanks to the support of many who now regret it.

So, it is understandable that as our current President, the first black man elected to that office, the child of an only relatively recently legal interracial marriage and perhaps the person who has most benefited from civil rights progress in the history of our country says he is “morally opposed to gay marriage.”

Recently, President Obama was in Los Angeles.  Through a friend, I got tickets to the town hall event he was holding here.  I went to meet him, to shake his hand, to congratulate him and to ask him about it.  I got to shake his hand but I didn’t get called on to ask my question so here it is — and don’t think I didn’t rehearse this!

“Mr. President, I am so glad you were elected and I am thankful that we have you to lead us in this difficult time.  I am also thankful that your parents, despite the moral opposition of many at the time, were able to marry so that you might be here and be our president today.  I wonder then, what is your moral opposition to my having the same right that your parents had?”

Honestly, Mr. President, if you’re listening, I’d still like to know.

In my heart, I don’t really think the man does feel that way.  Hell, I think if Present Bush, the younger, had thought that gay marriage would make old white guys richer, he’d have performed the ceremonies on the White House steps himself.  I think that both men thought they had to compromise with people they knew were wrong in order to get elected.  Maybe their motives were different.  One seems to have been creating a wedge, the other a bridge, but in the end both men were trying to get out the bigot vote.

Given recent events, this is shaping up to be an awkward stance.

I’m sure the lights of many careers were dampened by the tacit or overt support of segregation by those who were probably only compromising their principles for a few precious votes.  More recently, it’s worth nothing that President Obama got his party’s nomination in no small part because he didn’t support the war in Iraq.  In truth, that’s probably because no one asked him at the time, but who knows?  He did bravely speak out against it in the Illinois Senate, though they were not asked, either.

Viewed in the light of history or the ER waiting room, how brave is it to lie down in the middle of the road? It might make you more popular for a minute.  But in the end, you just get run over by what’s coming.

It might seem scarier to choose a side and stand up for what you know is right, but true courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being afraid and doing it anyway.

Next time, that’s who I’m voting for.

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Truth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 16, 2010| 1 Comment »

The ideals of truth and beauty are really only operational definitions.  Icon of beauty Marilyn Monroe would probably be considered fat today.

And, so long as we all agree to it, the truth is whatever we say it is, even if it’s not the least bit true.  We all agreed for a time that the world was flat.  So, even though it was wrong, it was still the truth, until it wasn’t anymore.

But starting with President Reagan and his set around 1980, our relationship to the truth has gone from operational to full flight from reality.  Now, the truth seems to be whatever we want to hear.  “We can cut our taxes and still afford the same quality of life,” and “I did not have sex with that woman” have led us not just down a slippery slope but over the precipice.

Today, apparently one can just make up and say anything in the service of victory.  Universal healthcare means death panels.  The President was born in Kenya.  The Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba.  Weapons of Mass Destruction, Swift boats, McCain is a traitor, the oil companies are looking out for us, you’re holding your I-Phone wrong, the President caused the oil slick to get his energy bill passed.  The truth has become situational and is no longer fact based.

I think the problem is that there are no consequences.

So, let’s make some Truth laws.  How about if you buy an ad that is not just in error, but tells an unsubstantiated truth, you must purchase twice as many ads reporting the actual truth.  If your news organization reports unsubstantiated truth, you must devote twice as much time to reporting the corrected facts in your highest rated/read time/space.  And if politicians lie about their opposition or their own records during a campaign, then they must forfeit the race.  I know, I know, almost no offices would get filled that way.

Maybe we should all just start making up whatever works for us.

Paying unemployment benefits is an excellent way to stimulate the economy.  Moving gay couples into your neighborhood raises property values.  President Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in history. Openly gay people in the military have no effect on unit cohesion or morale.  Government deficit spending ended the Great Depression.

Oh wait, that’s all true.  I’ll try harder next time.


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Getting Television Write

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

Why don’t the people in TV hire novelists to create and write their shows? I’ve been watching the new summer replacement season premieres.  Some of my old favorites are back, if a bit on the dry side, and the new entries I’ve seen so far leave me cold.

Sustaining a story over a long arc is a particular talent.  The hit show True Blood is based on the Charlaine Harris novels and benefits from the extended storyline to give the work direction.  I gave up on Lost because it was clear to me that the writers/creators had no idea where they were going with the story.  (I watched the finale and millions agree, I was right.)  Heroes was great and then poof.  The first season of Desperate Housewives was delicious and then not so much.  I loved Alley McBeal and then where are we?

I will acknowledge that just getting a show in the can and on the air for twenty-something weeks is an undertaking.  Still, the greater challenge, seems to me to be to create a story that can endure that, resume again the following year and not suck.

Here’s my idea.  I keep hearing, television is dying and blah, blah, reality, blah.  So, maybe the folks in charge should stop rehiring the same people who created all the crap that failed in the first place.  Isn’t repeating the same action and expecting different results the definition of insanity?

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The Word of Law

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The word abomination is one I hear a lot as a gay man. Good Christians stand on the corner near my house and scream it at me every Pride Day (and whenever else they can get away with it.) Miss Beverly Hills — who is from Pasadena — felt so strongly about what the Bible says on the subject of abomination that she went on Fox News to share her concerns.

Apparently, according to the sacred laws in the book of Leviticus, me having a boyfriend is an abomination. Miss Beverly Hills says I should be put to death for it. Yikes. Like dating wasn’t hard enough. It all sounds really serious so I looked it up.

Here is what Leviticus says about abomination in chapter 11 verse 12: “Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.” That means eating shellfish is an abomination. Being gay is the same as dining at Red Lobster.

So my question is this: Where are the protestors? Where is the moral outrage? Where is Fred Phelps? Where is Miss Beverly Hills?

(more…)

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The First Word

Posted in Uncategorized on May 14, 2010| 1 Comment »

The First Word

In the beginning there was the word.  So says an oft quoted and much abused text.  “The word was God,” asserts the writer.  I tend to agree.

Words are that powerful.  Words call into existence everything we create and believe.  There was a description of a submarine in a novel long before there were submarines under the sea.  A Hollywood script writer invented the cell phone when he put a wireless communicator in Captain Kirk’s hand.  And July 4th celebrates not a battle but words that, once set down and signed, invented a nation.

Words have the power to create.

When  I was young, I heard over and over that “queer” was a bad thing; that being a “fag” was the worst thing you could be.  Only somewhat belatedly did I learn what a “fag” was; what “queers” got up to.  I filed this information away along with other oft repeated enjoinders.

Words create bigotry and hatred.

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