October 18th 2004 - October 24th 2004
Sunday Status quo
Saturday Write - but wrong
Friday Throwing the first Steyn
Thursday Narcissistic void
Wednesday Nooked
Tuesday The L-word
Monday Back orf
Sunday 24th October 2004
I could spend a few hundred words telling you how excellent The Producers was (and how grateful I am to certain people for taking me) but frankly, there's not much point: it'll be sold out from here to hell and back for the next millenium or two, and rightly so.
The important thing is: I've seen it and you haven't - a point that certain people didn't fail to cash in on by brandishing the programme in The Retro Bar after the show (and attracting the most unsuitable attention by doing so, I might add).
The sense of being somewhat select was underlined by the reaction I got from Amanda Barrie in the interval (that kind of slightly startled "Oh..I know you..don't I?" look that's probably more a tribute to celebrity myopia than anything distinctive about my faded physog) and continued, through several handshakes on the dance-floor at the Queer Nation birthday party, on to Roberto's birthday celebrations at the RVT, where, having copped a loudly-orange VIP wristband, I made the mistake of having it put on my right wrist, such that, every time I raised my arm to squeeze gently through the throng, I brandished my status in the face of all and sundry.
It's okay, guys. You don't know me. Really.
Saturday 23rd October 2004
I don't imagine this got much TV coverage, so many of you may have missed it:
Guardian ends letter-writing campaign
Friday 22nd October 2004
Mark Steyn, the right's rabid attack-poodle, must be chuckling up his bullet-proof sleeve at Boris Johnson's apology-tour around the streets of Liverpool, thanking his lucky stars (as do we all) that, unlike Boris, he is not a member of the shadow cabinet.
Last week Steyn addressed himself to issues remarkably similar to Boris's ill-fated editorial (now widely thought to have been written by Simon Heffer):
Happily for Steyn's dwindling reputation, the Telegraph refused to publish his column.
Thursday 21st October 2004
Tom Paulin's Diary piece in the current London Review of Books is largely concerned with his reaction to Dean Godson's biography of Ulster unionist David Trimble, a man whose capacity for pious cant and pop-eyed rant is exceeded only by his co-religionist Ian Paisley.
But he drags in mainland politicians too, most noticeably our esteemed Prime Minister whose mother (I didn't know this) "came from Donegal Protestant stock; they had lived in Ballyshannon for many generations". Which suddenly explains a lot:
It could be argued that Blair's continual insistence that he is right because he knows he is trustworthy and straight-talking - the narcissistic void at the heart of his political personality - is recognisably Ulster Protestant, as anyone who has studied its distinctive cultural form, the sermon, will realise.
Wednesday 20th October 2004
No discussion of levels of sophistication in American political debate should be allowed to pass without mentioning the headline in today's Boston Herald:
Vote Kerry, get nuked, veep warns
Tuesday 19th October 2004
Complacent fool that I am, I initially found the vociferous reaction to John Kerry's citation of Cheney's 35 year old gay daughter somewhat puzzling.
Kerry, you'll recall, was asked, in the final presidential debate, "Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?"
Which struck me as a fairly clever answer (to a pretty stupid question): in addition to making his own position perfectly clear, Kerry managed to draw attention to the fact that the Vice-President of an administration that feels strongly enough about gay marriage to attempt to change the Constitution to expressly forbid it, himself has a gay daughter.
Ever since her time as a "gay and lesbian outreach coordinator" for Coors (when she traveled the country with the winner of the International Mr. Leather 1999 competition), Mary Cheney's sexual orientation has been no secret: the Vice-President himself spoke openly about it at a campaign stop in Iowa this August, and Mary sat in the audience at the Republican Convention in New York alongside her partner Heather Poe.
So Kerry was not outing Cheney's daughter, by any means.
And yet Republicans went ballistic. Lynne Cheney called it "a cheap and tawdry political trick". Dick Cheney described himself as "a pretty angry father". Commentators across the country expressed their shock and horror at hearing the L-word used in political debate. Acres of newsprint have been consumed debating the precise degree to which Mary Cheney has been involved in her father's campaign, and how much exposure she consequently warrants.
Post-Watergate, post-Lewinsky, post-Florida, I thought I was beyond being amazed at American politics, but this reaction astonished me.
Sure, it's a relatively low blow. But we're talking about electing the most powerful man in the world here. Since when did general knowledge about a candidate's immediate family become off-limits?
(Would we have reacted with similarly volcanic outrage if Michael Howard suggested the Prime Minister defer to Cherie Blair's experience of the property market? Or if Blair counter-suggested Mrs Thatcher seek her son's advice on investment in Africa?)
It was a (predictably outraged) quote from Rush Limbaugh that finally gave the game away. "This is something that you or I would not talk about at a dinner party; John Kerry will talk about before 50 million people because it might help him," he huffed.
There you have it: It's 'don't ask, don't tell', all over again. To the Republicans, Mary Cheney's lesbianism is (she should forgive the phrase) the elephant in the living room - everybody knows about it, nobody wants to talk about it.
Gay pride. Parents just don't get it, do they?
Monday 18th October 2004
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