Allen Gregory, the Most Homophobic Show on TV

Let me begin by saying: I like South Park, Family Guy, and the Simpsons.  All of which have had their fair share of homophobic jokes.  Men's relationship to our own sexuality is anything but healthy.  From the time we're children we're teasing each other or beating up on each other about being strong, being masculine--the worst thing you can be as a young boy, is skinny, fat, or effeminate.  I was more a victim of this than I'd like to admit.  I don't think I was ever called a F**, but my masculinity was consistently challenged by other boys.  In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, I still enjoy some crude humor--I survived it--I feel like I've earned it.  The fact is: there are a lot of unfortunate stereotypes about gays, and humor is often based on such stereotyping.  But Jonah Hill, whom I know nothing about, has created a story that actually portrays horrible, truly horrible gay stereotypes.  The type that the Religious Right has been forcing down our throats for years.

Look.  Gays themselves promote certain stereotypes.  Look at Project Runway.  But even those stereotypes are just as incorrect as stereotypes about rape.  But they're tolerated, and even in a "fabulous" city like New York, it's rare to see an openly homosexual man who doesn't adhere to some stereotypes.  Maybe its about fitting in--I don't know.
Let's get to the facts.  Allen Gregory is a seven year old child who has been homeschooled by a rich gay couple.  The rich couple is falling on hard times because of the recession, and because of that, this incredibly precocious child is forced to go to public school.  That's fine, and actually funny.  Who doesn't love to see the rich snob snubbed by the cold hard reality of normal life?  That's fine, though implausible, AG's tutor is one of his fathers, not some high-priced private tutor.  Not to mention, given the level of wealth exhibited by the TV show, I'd say its also implausible because Allen Gregory is one of the 1%--so they're fine.  Only middle class kids are dropping out of expensive private tutoring.
That's where all semblance of okayness ends. 

1)  Allen Gregory's flaming father shamelessly abuses his other "daddy" in public.  The first words out of his mouth are a public humilation of the man.  In the three episodes I've seen, this practice continues unabated.  He only ever says two nice things about the man, one of them treating him like a piece of meat, and the other...actually nice.  And the other daddy, Jeremy, is clearly shocked by this nice treatment.

So gay relationships must be abusive?  Well, ok, abuse is possible in all relationships, and certainly the film Party Monster (and the horrifying real life story) indicates that no sexualities are immune.

2) It is indicated in those first two episodes that AG's father may well have forced Jeremy to become a homosexual.  Jeremy confesses to AG that his father was unrelenting in his pursuit of Jeremy, even when he was straight, happily married and at the top of his career.  Jeremy admits that Rich ignored restraining orders and publicly stalked him

Ok, maybe he was gay, right?  That's plausible, maybe the wife was a beard.  That happens right?
Except no, its not ok.  A predominant homphobic meme is the fear that gays can "turn" straight men.  You used to see it on TV all the time when gays were first openly portrayed on television.  The conversation might go like this:  Straight man sitting on couch, finds out that his best friend next to him is gay.  "You're not going to hit on me are you?" "No, you're not my type." Ha. Ha.  It's still homophobic.  It indicates that a straight man has something to fear from a gay person. 

3)  By the end of the second episode it has become more and more clear that Jeremy's "life partner" Rich, has been raping him every time they have sex.  When Allen Gregory wants to make a sex tape of him and the principal, and he describes his vision to his manservant.  "I think it should just be regular sex, you know with one person running away and saying, 'No, I don't feel like it' and the other person should completely ignore that and say something like 'Come on Jeremy, just go with it.' Somebody should give him a slap, and than somone should put up their hands to god and say, 'oh god, what has my life become?' And then we should just wrap it up with a little crying in the bathroom."  Later on, a comment by Rich "Well you lost that argument about fitting something in" to Jeremy's rectum, leads Jeremy, in a defeated tone, to hang his head and say "yes, yes I lost that argument."

Not cool.

4)  The last awful thing in my three episodes of viewing was the episode "Gay School Dance."  This show had some promise, the chance to right some wrongs.  Instead, Rich forces the entire elementary school to bring same sex partners to the dance, and the plot of the episode turns around the adopted daughter of Rich, attempting to get the principal to fight back against him, and put the dance back to "normal."  Nevermind that Rich himself, isn't changing the dance for the benefit of a human kind or equal rights --no he threw a jealous hissy fit that his partner was more popular with the kids at school, and retaliated.

There are many other disgusting and shameful things to this TV show, but I won't bother with them.  I think this show could really have been funny, and still respectful, but someone really messed this up.  And as Jonah Hill has appended his name to this flop--I think it must be his fault.

Look, I admit that I like sassy, flaming gay characters; its a cheap stereotype, and I'm ashamed to enjoy it.  But they're fun, and almost universally liked.  However, I cannot countenance this open disregard, scornful, reprehensible and meanspirited as it is.  We, as a society, must demand better of each other.

UC Davis Pepper Spray, Joke Photo Collection

This is a truly horrifying event. And a brazenly open manifestation of the police state we now live in. However, a good joke going viral is worth a thousand protests. No one will forget this %$#hole again.

China: No More Cheap Labor-CONSEQUENCES

I've been talking about this for the past two years, but I'm glad to see it gaining some traction.  Given the typical demand and supply curves, the most obvious way for companies to make profits is to lower the costs of production.  Right?  Simple economics.  There are two ways to do that: Technology and Cheap Labor.  Western democracies have done both, no need to explain that.

Politicians and pundits have used this fact on both sides of the aisle, often for conflicting purposes.  If its not the mexicans stealing jobs, it's the factory jobs getting outsourced to Asia, Bangladesh, India, etc. And everywhere the ray gun of capitalism is fired, populations are roughly enslaved--forced to work in deplorable conditions for a pittance.

At first, this doesn't seem so bad.  Factories often provide certain amenities (even the terrible ones) to its tenant-workers, room and board (taken from their already meager salaries,) minimal healthcare (cuts and scrapes).  In some countries where the local economies have been demolished through autocratic rule and farm-based economies are reduced to corporate serfdoms, this can often even lift up the population. Wage slavery, after all, requires enough sustenance to keep those brown and yellow hands a flutter with activity.

However, global capitalism (globalism) has for the past twenty years made a practice of finding the absolute perfect site for production of each part in the line.  A Dell computer, for example has its genesis in a spider web of nations, back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean several times.  How is this efficient production? I apologize for the shoddy map, my business textbooks had a much better one.  Every time the price of labor goes up in one country those lines change.  Of course, there are reasons NOT to change as well.  Overall stability is a big one.  No one will be building any factories in Afghanistan anytime soon (unless they're refining Opium).  Security in monetary systems are imperative as well.  If a dictator can seize your profits on a whim, then building a factory in North Korea may well be out too. (I was going to say Libyia, oh well).

Regardless, there comes a point, when the sheer amount of dollars (even when it disproportionately favors "the Haves" begins to lift up the local economy regardless of everyone's efforts.  Kennedy coined this phrase, though its been used repeatedly by the right recently: call it, "a rising tide lifts all ships."  It's not that things get better-because they get worse (see Apple factories), but reforms must be made. I've been wondering why that works out, and I think its because even when you funnel that supreme wealth into a tiny 1%, enough humane, reform minded people are able to be educated, and see how things work outside of the system, that they campaign for change. Usually the children of scientists, doctors, and lawyers, who are all trained in the humanistic doctrines of liberalism, because there would be no knowledge without equality and fraternity.

But I digress again, keep it together Ravingleftatic.

The point is--rising costs of production will change the game of globalism entirely.  Those changes will be endemic, and could be dangerous, causing market instability, currency fluctiatons and trade inequities.  Still, this is the time to do it.  No one will notice in a market that drops and raises 300 points a day.

But more on this later.

Great Op-Ed by John Paul Rollert

I just wanted to share this one.  Very eloquently worded.

John Paul Rollert

Goncharov's Oblamov - A Ravingleftatic If Ever There Was One

This is a great quote, from Ivan Goncharov's Oblamov, which I read in college under a fantastic Russian Lit professor:

What about humanity, pray? Writers like yourself try to write only with the head. What? Do you suppose the intellect can work separately from the heart? Why, the intellect needs love to fertilize it. Rather, stretch out your hand to the fallen and raise him, weep over him if he is lost beyond recall, but in no case make sport of him, for he is one to whom there should be extended only compassion. See in him yourself, and act accordingly. That done, I will read you, and bow my head before you.

Alex Pareene on the State of Journalism

I usually enjoy Alex Pareene's columns, he seems to be a true Ravingleftatic.  Today he commented on an article in Politico that was written terribly.  It reminded me of two articles I reviewed here based on their terrible writing/and or journalism.  It's fun and easy to pick out terribly written articles on all the major news aggregators, but I'd like to comment on a thought I had after reading Pareene's diatribe.

I'm an amateur writer, clearly.  And I've noticed it in my own writing.  If I know I have to write a piece for submission somewhere, I unintentionally beef up the "sound byte" text. You know the stuff that you expect to see in articles, and hear on TV?  Pareene quoted a good example:

"Rival Democratic and Republican jobs bills failed in the Senate on Thursday, the latest sign of the partisan gridlock gripping Washington as Americans look for relief from high unemployment and a sagging economy."

Let's parse this: 

Fact: Rival Democratic and Republican jobs bills failed in the Senate on Thursday

Filler: the latest sign of the partisan gridlock gripping Washington as Americans look for relief from high unemployment and a sagging economy

Now it turns out, says Pareene that even the Fact portion of that statement is incorrect.  But look at that vomitous, regurgitated, claptrap in the second half of the sentence. If I didn't have much to say, and I had to submit an article, I'd use terms like "partisan gridlock," "plagueing America," "the Washington Elite," feeling up a "sagging economy," supported by "the tax payers."  This is careless, terrible writing.  And that is the subject of this post: there is an urge in all of us to regurgitate that which we think our audience expects to hear. Even if we don't believe it, or agree with it.

Next time you watch a comedy, and that comedy shows a news broadcast, listen to the words the writers have chosen, (not the content, the words, the phrases) they're all chosen because we've been trained to know "newspeak."  All we need to hear are certain key phrases and we go on point like a dog guarding the house.  Our brain's instantly say, "this must be news," "this must be true," "Who can I tell?"

But our audiences aren't dumb, even when we treat them that way.  And reading such terms in an article that purports to report and not opine, are misleading.  It assumes facts!  Already in that article, we are told without getting a chance to argue that partisan gridlock is real, it's bad, and that it's equally spread across the entirety of the political scene.  Reinforcement of these Fauxnorms is dangerous in a highly contested political climate such as ours.  It's a bit like the old joke:  "Do you still beat your wife?"

Occupy WALL STREET Plank

Ok, so here is the follow up to my earlier post on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I propose the following:

1.  Raise the Corporate Tax.  Taxes do not have an effect on growth.  Demand has an effect on growth.  Period, end of sentence.  Stop whining.

2.  Close tax loopholes, including taxes on inheritances and capital gains.  The government needs revenue.  It doesn't cost anymore than it did in 2008 to feed a family of four, welfare checks still do more for the economy than tax cuts for the wealthy.

3.  Create an index of companies with high CEO to Entry-Level salary ratios and tax those with the highest ratios.  Funnel the proceeds directly into social services for the middle and lower classes.

4.  Quit watering down the latent Consumer Protection Agency, beef it up

5.  Beef up the SEC, this has, to some extent been done.  But even now, the SEC doesn't go after the big fish.  Only the medium and small fish.

6.  Break up the giant banks

7.  Criminal prosecutions (that the DOJ actually takes seriously) for the participants in the 2007-8 Crisis. No matter how high up they go, even if it means Obama Administration higher-ups. But particularly the previous administration's "King's Men."