Nope, nothing overtly political here. Hey, since I was last in Riverdale, they’ve got teen lesbians, one of whom is a "fierce Latina"...
Seems like everybody is gay in pop culture today...
Seriously, it is a fascinating question how two percent of the population can have had such a tectonic effect on a culture, and in such a short time....and now I think it's terrific.
P.S. On Twitter, Tristan R. Salazar notes: "That CDC study [Dreher] mentions does peg the number of LGBT in the US at about 2% -- the same percentage as that of Jews in the US, and yet (almost) no one says, 'What's with all the Jewish people in popular culture?'"
UPDATE. "Harumph!" says Jay B in comments. "Gays are one thing, but when did Jews start writing comics?"
Also, how did I forget to include this:
My cousin Paul is the head writer for Archie Comics and wrote this storyline. I sent him a link to Dreher, maybe he'll comment over there!
ReplyDeleteThe gay mafia checks off another box on their agenda.
ReplyDeleteYay for Paul.
ReplyDeleteIt might be kind of hard to pull Dreher out from under his bed if he were contacted by a General in the War against Dreher's Irrational Fears. He looks like a kicker.
But the footy pajamas he's wearing make it feel like a kiss.
ReplyDeleteMwhahahhahaha.
ReplyDelete". . . yet (almost) no one says, 'What's with all the Jewish people in popular culture?'"
ReplyDeleteIt's been quite a while since we outlawed the "No Kikes Allowed" signs, did away with restricted country clubs, a got rid of red-lining in real estate. The same can't be said for institutionalized discrimination against gay people.
On the other hand, we do read occasional screeds on the right complaining about all those Hollywood Jews defiling the culture by defining popular culture. So there's that.
'What's with all the Jewish people in popular culture?'"
ReplyDelete"Take my wife. Please"
Wait so is Salazar saying the Jews are gay?
ReplyDeleteBut remember: Rod's not fixated on homosexuality. Not at all. He just writes about it constantly. And thinks about it. Hard. He thinks hard about homosexuals.
ReplyDeleteAll joking aside, and knowing that I am about to bring a certain amount of scorn and contumely to my otherwise respectable nym, my daughters and I watch Teen Wolf (now in its fourth season). There are many out gay male couples--a much bigger deal, socially speaking, than out gay females like Willow and Tara or that chick with the tongue stud in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the plot lines involving gay male characters and their relationships with straight boys their own age have been totally adorable, accepting, and just plain normal. Sexuality itself is represented as fluid but gayness has not been represented as something a good or normal character "gets over" but rather as a totally normal choice along a continuum. Issues like honesty and fidelity to a current relationship are definitely represented as more important, morally speaking.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that all this skreeing about normalizing gayness through hollywood stealth was absurd but now I'm coming around to being a believer.
It would be hilarious if he wrote a Dreher expy into the story, although it's hard to know if Crunchy would be insulted or flattered; probably both.
ReplyDeleteHis response when I gave him the link: "Heehee! I LOVE to watch their tiny little pinheads start smoking and then explode!! Makes MY day!"
ReplyDelete(Not for nothing, Paul is also Jewish.)
They're a pretty chipper bunch, by and large, yes.
ReplyDeleteLong and hard.
ReplyDeleteMmmm....ensuing Epicness senses tingling...
ReplyDeleteI'm an Archie fan now, just as I recently learned to love soccer, thanks to Ann Coulter and "Dr." Keith Ablow!
ReplyDeleteShorter Rod: Archie died for someone's sins, but not mine.
ReplyDeleteAnd wondering why all these homosexuals keep sucking his cock.
ReplyDeleteHarumph! Gays are one thing, but when did Jews start writing comics?
ReplyDeleteScorn? Not from me. I was about to cite "Rejoined", the Star Trek (DS9) episode from '95, as an example of stealth normalization.
ReplyDelete"(Not for nothing, Paul is also Jewish.)"
ReplyDeleteOy Gevalt, you can't win in this country! The Goldenah Medina, my tuchas! I've been using Archie comics as my guide to assimilating, and now I find this out? Is this some sort of a joke on me?
I sure wish I could elect your comment leader of the pack!
ReplyDeleteI was too old for DS9 so I never watched it. But that link and summation makes it sound interesting. I especially liked this part about the two female characters kissing:
ReplyDeleteThere is a story regarding the man complaining about his kids seeing the kiss: It was a production assistant who took the call. After hearing the man's complaint, the PA asked if the man would've been okay with his kids seeing one woman shoot the other. When the man said he would be okay with that, the PA said "You should reconsider who's messing up your kids". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
The fantasy personal ad Rod's primed to answer:
ReplyDeleteSingle charismatic, 2 hand-breadths hung and cut, all powerful Master, seeks closeted self-flagellant to join my buff "Dirty Dozen". I'll punish you in the flesh, you bad, bad boy. Come, follow me (not necessarily in that order).
Hmm, I'm beginning to think that ol' Crunchy's life will not be complete until a gay Southern Jew takes offense and knocks his dick in the dirt. Then, and only then, will Mr. Dreher have proof positive of the discrimination he's perceived all his life.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for Dreher, he hasn't figured out yet that he's just not worth the effort.
I really don't care about the storyline, except that I thought Jughead was Archie's best friend. What's he up to in the strip?
ReplyDelete" All the plot lines involving gay male characters and their
ReplyDeleterelationships with straight boys their own age have been totally
adorable, accepting, and just plain normal."
HAH! The Gay Agenda is proceeding as planned thanks to comments like this one! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!11!!
Off topic, but DS9 was the best of the franchise.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it is a fascinating question how two percent of the population can have had such a tectonic effect on a culture, and in such a short time.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this is the dumbest fucking thing I have seen this week and it's Wednesday. I can't even begin to figure out how to snark this, it's that dumb.
When are we gonna get to the bit where he gets resurrected by the Footlong Force? ...And I do mean footlong, Kevin.
ReplyDeleteTHE SHEEPLE LOOK UP!!11!!
ReplyDelete~
P.S. On Twitter, Tristan R. Salazar notes: "That CDC study [Dreher] mentions does peg the number of LGBT in the US at about 2% -- the same percentage as that of Jews in the US, and yet (almost) no one says, 'What's with all the Jewish people in popular culture?'"
ReplyDeleteThey might not say that per se, but they do talk about "bi-coastal elites" or "Upper West Side liberals" or "Hollyweird". We know they really mean "Jewy Jew Jew".
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his heterosexual friends. Not the queers. Never the queers.
ReplyDeleteRod will get back to you as soon as he finishes watching his DVD collection of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
ReplyDeleteThe gay mafia agenda will be complete when The Supreme Court's black robes are replaced with Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats on an episode of Queer Eye For the Supreme Court Guy , and in season 2 of QEFTSCG, Clarence Thomas finally gets Toni Scalia's pubic hair dislodged from his throat.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the parents of people like Dreher thought Milton Berle in a dress was just the most hysterical thing ever. Now, Dreher probably looks at that and figures it was the first wave of the Feigele Faction's cultural invasion.
ReplyDelete1934.
ReplyDeleteYes but its also interesting that they have to go all the way to an incredibly kooky life form/symbiont culture to force the issue of two women kissing. And the writers then ruthlessly separate them, anyway. Kirk broke the "color barrier" at least one other time with his romance with the Indian woman but they handled that little bit of miscegenation the old fashioned way--by killing her off so she couldn't pose a problem to his "girl of the week" habit.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was. Also: Flip Wilson.
ReplyDeleteThe devil made me type that comment.
ReplyDeleteIf Dreher thinks this comic is bad, just wait until he finds out that the Archie conglomerate is bringing back the old pop group:
ReplyDeleteButtsex
Ah, rimming rimming
This is our velvet plot
To lure kids to sodomy.
I seem to recall some Jewish hippie or reform rabbi said something about "greater love hath no man than he give up his life for his friends"... But Pope Rod feels it don't apply to the unclean, like the poor or teh gay.
ReplyDeleteI guess I shouldn't be surprised that a cartoon character is more compassionate than this selfpromoted arbiter of moral.
Damn, "Sugar Sugar" is such an earworm, I'm going to end up singing my "cover" of it in the supermarket and some concerned parent is going to call the cops.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Obama!!!
You forgot Mudhead!
ReplyDeleteTehanu (from not my regular computer)
He's right, you know. Everyone in pop culture is gay. James Bond? Gay. Captain Kirk? Gay. Edward Cullen? Super gay. The Avengers? Might as well call 'em "The Gay-Vengers."
ReplyDeleteSeriously, Rod's got a point, all these gay folk walking around all gay and gaying things up. When, oh when, will there be a movie or TV show that focuses on the joys of heterosexuality?
Maybe Archie Comics could keep the brethren happy by farming the characters out for proselytizing Christian comics again, like they did in the '70s. (Look them up - they're bananas.) They could have their own niche market title where Kevin gets reparative therapy, aided greatly by Betty and Veronica modeling bikinis. Everybody wins!
ReplyDeleteHa. When I was maybe 5 in the 1970s, my parents gave me a Flip Wilson doll. When I pulled the string it said "The devil made me do it!" or "The ugly people know who they are." Then my parents would laugh and laugh. I was set on a strange path early on, perhaps.
ReplyDelete"Just hold still, Justice Thomas, while I put this long, hard thing down your throat."
ReplyDelete"Ngarrg! Ngarrg!"
"There! Got it!"
Thanks, zc. Makes me laugh.
I was so young that I didn't know that Flip Wilson was imitating/parodying or embodying a gay man. I just had no idea. Like...for years.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I was not fully in on that joke for years. It became funnier when I got older, as I was still hearing the voice in my head and then one day went "Wait a minute…"
ReplyDeleteMixes himself a stiff cock-tail while thinking long and hard on homosexuals. (sorry...it was just ...there)
ReplyDeleteCount your blessings.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it is a fascinating question how two percent of the
ReplyDeletepopulation can have had such a tectonic effect on a culture, and in such
a short time.
Because gay people didn't exist until Frankie Goes to Hollywood released Gay Martian Queerspores into the atmosphere back in the 80s so it is indeed a puzzle that they now rule the world!!!
I mean, are represented in some forms of entertainment as something other than broken and/or dangerous creatures that ooze misery and perversion all over the place.
Same difference!
Anyway, I mean it about the Queerspores. Anyone who wants to be absolutely certain to avoid exposure - which can lead to not hating gay people - should wrap themselves in heavy duty plastic bags.
Wait, was it Flip as Geraldine?
ReplyDeleteWow. I always thought their first kiss was when they'd been kidnapped by curly mustache guy and she headfaked him into thinking she was selling out the rest of the crew.
ReplyDeleteThey've been at it a lot longer than you think, Rod.
ReplyDeleteBut for some reason the color barrier was not broken when the GotW was green or blue or summat.
ReplyDeleteHeh, indeed.
ReplyDeletehttp://data2.whicdn.com/images/69150729/original.jpg
I watched the "Enterprise" series last year (Netflix I think) and I thought it was excellent, tho the Time Wars plot was a bit of a drag.
ReplyDeleteWell, sure, what are you--racist against green or blue Summats? The allegories on Star Trek had to be basically Sneetches level before the public noticed them. Remember the guys who were split down the middle one black on the left side and one black on the right side? I'm surprised they didn't run the entire episode with subtitles for the thematically impaired. LOOK HERE PEOPLE. AN ALLEGORY ABOUT RACE.
ReplyDeleteJohn Goldwater, the guy who created Archie and his Riverdale posse, was a right-wing bowel squeezing who helped to usher in the Comics Code and kill of EC Comics. I hope he is attaining high RPMs in his tomb.
ReplyDeleteSee also: simultaneous popularity of Anita Bryant and the Village People (not to mention Paul Lynde).
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the New York "metrosexuals".
ReplyDeleteY'know that glib laugh line about 'it's not homophobia if I'm not scared of gay people?'
ReplyDeleteRod can't use that line.
Allegorical representation is definitely representation but by 1995 I guess I think people were entitled to want to see actual black people being major characters in canon, or actual gay people being gay in canon. Not the nod nod wink wink shit any longer. Look at what happened to the Klinger character in MASH--although come to think of it that is a very complicated situation. I actually preferred the Klinger who was definitively faking gayness but who apparently learned to love dressing and living as a femme. I thought that was, in its way, much more transgressive. Klinger's interest in his feminine side and in the attributes of femininity played off interestingly against the sexism of the more macho characters (at the start w/r/t houlihan).
ReplyDeleteAll of you, OUT of my internet.
ReplyDeletetwo percent of the population can have had such a tectonic effect on a culture
ReplyDeleteIf his metaphor is taken from plate tectonics, he presumably means that they changed things at the rate of a centimetre per year.
I don't get the logic here. It's ok to discriminate against gays 'cuz there aren't very many of them? Well, there aren't that many men who are as pants-shittingly terrified of gay men as Rod Dreher is. In fact, there's only one man that pant-shittingly scared. Can I punch that one man (Rod Dreher) in the face? There's only one of him!
ReplyDeleteI think it means crack-friction makes him quake.
ReplyDeleteYou are killing me with the sausage in this picture.
ReplyDeleteUplift... subduction zones... IBIMB.
ReplyDelete...and are not fed.
ReplyDeletehttp://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/media/cache/b0/c6/b0c658f464cdd85ff19373d01cee0b16.jpg
But how much IS a centimeter in cultural terms?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's a great distance, depending on how the parameters are set.
Orogeny recapitulates ontogeny.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought Klinger was (for lack of a better word) inspired by Lenny Bruce's
ReplyDeleteThe no-money-or-nothin', help-yourself-to-whatever lefty paradise was hand-waved once or twice by reference to the replicator/transporter technology.
ReplyDeleteA/K/A: Rearden Metal.
He looks like a kicker.
ReplyDeleteI had to enjoy this again, & it caused audible humor noise the second & third times.
And to whom among them doesn't it apply?
I always thought Garak had some sort of queer subtext. He seemed far more infatuated with Dr. Bashir than he was with Dukat's daughter.
ReplyDeleteDepends on how you view the Old Testament, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI'll just leave this (a bit of ARCHIE artist Al Hartley's evangelical work) here -
ReplyDeleteSome history:
ReplyDeleteFirst, someone said John Goldwater created Archie. That is incorrect -- Archie was created by Bob Montana. Second, with the exception of EC, every comics company in the 1950s was wholly on board with pulling down their pants and fucking themselves in the ass with the Comics Code rather than be put out of business by a government that wouldn't have thought twice about killing the entire medium. So to lay all that on Goldwater, who I grant you was by many accounts not one of God's best works, is a bit much.
Second, here's what happened: the two literally ancient moguls who co-owned Archie Comics (Goldwater's son and some other dude) were bound and determined to keep Archie and the gang firmly in the fifties. But not long ago they died within a year of each other, and their heirs told the employees to do whatever it took to keep the company afloat. This is because over recent decades Archie Comics has more than once taken a serious nosedive towards bankruptcy. Enter my pal Dan Parent, who started at Archie in the late 80s when the company's idea of saving its financial ass meant creating a comic wherein Archie and the gang raced remote control vehicles (you can look it up). Dan created the first Archie "event" comic, LOVE SHOWDOWN (which introduced the world to slutty Cheryl Blossom) and once the shackles were loosed he brought us Archie dating (and prominently kissing) Valerie from JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS. He then proposed the idea of a gay character in Riverdale and created Kevin Keller. Most recently, when confronted by an interracial fan who is confined to a wheelchair about the absence of her demographic, he promptly created an interracial character who is confined to a wheelchair. He has won a GLAAD award and has collaborated with George Takei on a memorable Kevin Keller comic.
All of which is to say, as old and stale and mockable as Archie Comics can be -- mostly, I've found, by people who haven't picked up an Archie Comic (or any comic) in years -- I am deeply proud of my pal Dan for not only coming up with these ideas but because he did so deliberately to make even the tiniest social change using characters he has loved all his life. (He's not getting rich from it, that's for sure.) His ideas are smarter and hipper and more fun than anything Marvel or DC has attempted, locked as they are in a puerile adolescent state and seemingly unable to get beyond huge tits and stunt deaths. Which brings me back to the current Archie "stunt death" -- they're doing it to create publicity and hopefully boost sales, which as I understand it are as always in desperate need of boosting, and because the comic depicting Archie and the gang as adults has petered out in sales and it was a good way to just kill off the whole concept.
Extra added bonus: shackle-loosening aside, you never saw anything as fucked up as what happened when one of the Archie founders' heirs got her hands on the wheel. This is great reading.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=48257
I like this rapture page of his even better:
ReplyDeletehttp://bp0.blogger.com/_qFgmPelbHLU/SFDBpu84sQI/AAAAAAAABGI/hTQqLvCusjk/s1600-h/Christian+Archie+Crazy+PAGE.jpg
But that's due to the unintentional punchline, because I still have a mental age of about eleven.
I got that page from this overview of Al Hartley's work:
http://generationexploitation.blogspot.ca/2006/06/history-of-christian-archi_114951302719460209.html
...where I learned that Al Hartley was the son of right-wing congressman Fred Hartley, infamous for the union-crushing Taft-Hartley law. It's a funny old world.
Upvoted for "contumely", which is not used often enough (due to its two sisters "odium" and "opprobrium" hogging all the attention).
ReplyDeleteIt would also make a good puritan name. "Contumely Mather" will defs be a character in my Salem Witchtrial RPG.
Also
ReplyDeletehttp://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/The-Carrier-1988-movie-4.jpg
ReplyDeleteI stuck with Enterprise for a couple of years and thought it was under-appreciated. But also a bit miscast. Only the alien doc really seemed to get it; the vulcan actress was definitely vulcan, but I'd have liked to see her sneak in a little more humor.
ReplyDeletewhere is coozledad when we need him?
ReplyDeleteNo love for Julian & Sandy, from nearly 50 years ago?
ReplyDeleteMore implements.
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/images/4265458917_c7ffe14df2.jpg
Right around the corner, too.around the corner, too.
May that earworm be the least of your punishment.
ReplyDeleteI remember several incidents, though, where Klinger was asked if he was/accused of being "homosexual", and he vehemently denied it. Because of his reluctance to take it all the way and really go for a discharge on the basis of homosexuality, I never quite got what he was trying to accomplish, besides goofing on military authority figures and pointing out the absurdity of military life and its missions in general.
ReplyDeleteYup. Gay. Very. Very. Gay. [Sigh]. We watched The Philadelphia Story tonight. My daughters had never seen it. The sexual politics are awful, just horrendous. But the other thing that is interesting is that Cary Grant is so completely not really into Katharine Hepburn. He's a fantastic actor and the lines are brilliant (when they aren't about blaming women for getting beaten by their drunken husbands) but my god is he cold when he acts with her. They have a much sweeter relationship in Holiday.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder I always want a glass of milk when I see that episode! I guess the classics are the classics because you can always see something new in them.
ReplyDeleteIts always High Cockalorum, isn't it? I have never seen or read of just plain old Cockalorum. I just bought my youngest daughter a gorgeous new edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable--its remaindered right now at a bookstore near you. When you feel the need to revisit those bygone words, from the land of Cockaigne, you can find them there.
ReplyDeleteI think he meant teutonic but was afraid to say it.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that awesome? I think it was from a shoot for one of those Teen Heart Throb mags, which makes the limp wiener even funnier.
ReplyDeleteIf it was another attempt to hide the fact they were an item, it fails even harder than those publicized date nights with actresses.
If it was another of the Gay Mafia's attempts to stir unholy longings in the loins of any male able to grow a beard, I am sure it was a brilliant success.
I've always been bemused by Star Trek's progressivism side-by-side with its gross ethnic stereotyping.
ReplyDeleteIs that Roddy McDowell? Who is the other guy?
ReplyDeleteThere are some references to some sort of system, in the TOS in "The Apple": After Spock saves Kirks' life again(at peril to his own), Kirk angrily asks Spock how many credits his Starfleet training cost.
ReplyDeleteKIRK: Trying to get yourself killed. Do you know how much Starfleet has invested in you?
SPOCK: One hundred twenty two thousand two hundred
It's not canon, but if you're over ten it's pretty fucking hard to miss if you're not trying to.
ReplyDeleteHe thinks hard about homosexuals.
ReplyDeleteAnd throbbing, even.[[/Snagglepuss]]
The love that dare not speak its name. Or any name besides "sir" and "ma'am."
ReplyDeleteThe dialog almost did that at one point:
ReplyDeleteBELE: It is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed.
SPOCK: The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself.
BELE: Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me. Look at me!
KIRK: You're black on one side and white on the other.
BELE: I am black on the right side.
KIRK: I fail to see the significant difference.
BELE: Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.
That was the old Rod Serling trick, take your social problem out of the present day and place, and you can start talking honestly about it.
Which means, of course, that if you're not his friend, he didn't give up his life for you. (He also got even more specific in the next clause: "You are my friends, if you do as I command you."
ReplyDeleteBy Jove, you're right! It is high cockalorum!
ReplyDeleteThough perhaps we can bring it back if we stealthily introduce just mild and regular at first... And I shall keep for this remaindered tome one eye peeled.
Also: Bugs Bunny.
ReplyDeleteIs Neal Adams Jewish?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.freethechurch.org/Images/son-o-god.jpg
Thanks for the history, which is much appreciated. I read a lot of Archie comics as a kid in the 60s, and have read some of the recent Life with Archie stories with interest. But ... "interracial" is not, I think, the right word for what you're talking about. "Biracial" or "multiracial," maybe. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteYeah, terrible term, you're absolutely correct.
ReplyDeleteI think "biracial" is the proper term. I'm a white guy from the suburbs, as should be obvious
ReplyDeletebringing up baby or gtfo.
ReplyDeleteHigh cockalorum only grows in High Dudgeon.
ReplyDeleteMore "soft but firm and penetrating"
ReplyDelete"A rock-hard 1/3 cubit of loving."
ReplyDeleteToday Archie...
ReplyDeleteTomorrow, GASOLINE ALLEY!
Dreher fears and suspects that the justices are already wearing technicolor petticoats under their robes.
ReplyDeleteAnd he was a frog. And Loki, of course, has been all kinds of things.
ReplyDeleteBesides, can you *imagine* the cost of the wedding?
ReplyDeleteOr have one guy talk like Steppin' Fetchit, and the other like Jack Benny.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Loki's all like, "Been there, done that, looked hot, so what."
ReplyDeleteCan't enjoy the Great Snatch without a Rapture Hatch!
ReplyDeleteGet yours today!
Gaaahh! Quick... hand me that icepick!
ReplyDeleteThat's okay, Mooser, thousands of WASPy kids from the suburbs used Mad Magazine for decades as their guide to getting Yiddishkeit, so I guess it all worked out in the end, no? (This was a subversive plot on the part of the Usual Gang of Idiots, methinks.)
ReplyDeleteWay before he did The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman did a comic called Battle Pope, which takes place after Armageddon has turned out to be a bust, since only two people were pure enough to be Raptured; it's later revealed that those two people were Ned Flanders and a guy who didn't sin because he was in a coma. (The latter guy's first words on arriving in Heaven were, "You've got whores up here, right?")
ReplyDeleteSubduction leads to Orogeny.
ReplyDeleteThe Heat Miser song drives out all other songs.
ReplyDeleteHe wanted a medical discharge for being crazy, which doesn't have a stigma, rather than the dishonorable discharge you would get for being gay.
ReplyDelete"Got the horse."
ReplyDelete