Wednesday, February 11, 2015

CULTURE WAR FOR DUMMIES: AN ONGOING SERIES.

Haven't looked in for a while on Acculturated, the culture-war jump school for would-be Douthats that has given me much pleasure in the past. There's currently a post-Grammys piece there by Mark Judge, the artist formerly known as Mark Gauvreau Judge, beginning thus:
Don’t make Sam Smith gay. 
That is to say, don’t make Sam Smith a representative of the gay community and a symbol for all things gay.
See, Judge hates it when people see sexual orientation -- that is, when gay people recognize gay people -- and also when people see color -- like when black people tell Iggy Azalea to fuck off. It all goes back to a youthful trauma:
When I was in college, the British duo the Pet Shop Boys were key contributors to the soundtrack of my young life. The Pet Shop Boys are gay.
[Blink. Blink.]
When I heard their first album Please in 1986, I felt that delirious swoon of falling in love with a piece of musical art...
I followed the Boys for years, but something started bothering me: they increasingly became known as a gay band and not just a band. Great songs like “King’s Cross,” “Liberation,” and “It Always Comes as a Surprise” were subordinated to the larger theme of homosexuality. The Pet Shop Boys were not brilliant songwriters who could touch the hearts or people all over the world—they were “queering pop.” It was like only selling Van Morrison’s music in Irish pubs...
I was a suburban kid at a Catholic university who occasionally snuck a look at Playboy. If I was to listen to the journalists, and the political club goers, and the subculture police, I would have turned myself away. Because I wasn’t the target audience.
The Gay Gay Gay took my babies away! The subculture police with their phallic nightsticks tried to drive Judge out of the disco, just as the black radicals tried to spoil his appreciation of Motown, I suppose. I'm surprised he survived with his perfectly-unexceptional tastes intact.

This is a high point of the issue, though you might also enjoy Acculturated's "Celebrities Behaving Well Award" nominations, including "Taylor Swift for reaching out to one of her adoring fans to give her real, thoughtful, honest advice about an unrequited love," "Kate Middleton for maintaining a certain level of class and decorum in the pop-culture sartorial scene," and "Justin Timberlake for his unprecedented awe and humility during his recent visit to Israel" (by which I assume they mean he didn't come onstage wearing a BDS shirt and a keffiyeh). "The winner of our contest will be announced on Monday, February 23," Acculturated says, "and we will award their charity with a $2,500 donation." $2,500! Dunno who's giving this ad-free site its wingnut welfare, but if they can come up with that kind of scratch  for a contest, I'd be happy to explain to their readers (for a reasonable fee) how my heart was broken the day Camryn Manheim became a fat activist.

UPDATE. In comments, tigrismus encapsulates Judge's problem: "He gets to decide what's universal, and quelle surprise, it's him."

109 comments:

  1. coozledad10:40 AM

    I followed the Boys for years, but something started bothering me: they increasingly became known as a gay band and not just a band.

    I felt the same way about Klaus Nomi when I discovered he wasn't secretly butch.

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  2. Ellis_Weiner10:44 AM

    What a tragedy--for Judge, for the Boys, and for all of us, really. Didn't he know that, for demonstrating so fine a sensitivity and such acutely-tuned fee-fee's, he could have qualified to be named an Honorary Gay? And all of this heartache could have been avoided? Oh well. As they say in Wingnutville, "Live, and learn, and still be a fucking moron."

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  3. Next week in Acculturated: Don't make Toni Morrison black, as her message is universal and touches us all. You can keep that Malcolm X, though.

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  4. Funny you should say that, he actually does complain about black rappers who don't accept white rappers.

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  5. mortimer200011:11 AM

    I sympathize. They did the same gay thing to the Village People. And I'd still be listening to Tchaikovsky if it weren't for Ken Russell and Richard Chamberlain.

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  6. dstatton11:15 AM

    Well, Sam Smith does not seem to mind being a "gay" artist, and that's all right with me. BTW, does anyone at acculturated actually enjoy anything? It appears that everything is easily "ruined" for them.

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  7. glennisw11:15 AM

    Shorter Mike Judge: "Why don't they just shut up and sing my favorite songs?"

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  8. mortimer200011:20 AM

    Seems like all a celebrity has to do to qualify for their award is act somewhat like a normal person. On the other hand, for right-wingers like the Ole Perfessor, a list of "Celebrities Behaving Well" would include Ted Nugent for shooting somebody and Jerry Seinfeld for stiffing a hatcheck person.

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  9. Bitter Scribe11:21 AM

    This is just another riff on that tired old trope: "Why do they have to talk about it?"


    Which really means, "Why do they have to exist?"

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  10. DN Nation11:28 AM

    "Great songs like...'Liberation'... were subordinated to the larger theme of homosexuality."


    Haha. Dumbass.

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  11. carolannie11:29 AM

    On your last statement, that $2500 is mere pennies, when you consider wingnut heaven is awash in dough. But then they always point out how miserly the well-to-do are

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  12. "Justin Timberlake for his unprecedented awe and humility during his recent visit to Israel"Yeah, it's a tossup between that and Chelsea Handler on a camel.

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  13. tigrismus11:32 AM

    I'm surprised he links to the Angel Haze piece, because if folks actually read it they'll see Judge is comprehension challenged. Or maybe not, some of the commenters to the piece reacted the same way he did.

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  14. Professor Fate11:33 AM

    "why isn't everything specifically aimed at my emotions and needs."
    Because you're a boring little snit.

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  15. Dean Golden11:36 AM

    Taylor Swift's advice is shockingly asinine:

    As if your pain can be determined by how long you were with someone. Or if you were with them at all. I don’t think that’s how it works. I think unrequited love is just as valid as any other kind. It’s just as crushing and just as thrilling.

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  16. EndOfTheWorld11:38 AM

    No one tell him about Freddie Mercury, I don't think the poor boy could take it.

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  17. Right? Angel Haze never says it's wrong for white people to appreciate or even perform hip-hop, just that it's shitty to play black when it's trendy and then step back when the bad stuff comes up.

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  18. Ted the slacker11:46 AM

    "“It Always Comes as a Surprise” [was] subordinated to the larger theme of homosexuality."
    No surprise quite like realizing the song-title had a double or triple meaning.

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  19. If I was to listen to the journalists, and the political club goers, and the subculture police, I would have turned myself away.



    which do you choose, a hard or soft option (how much do you need?)

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  20. M. Krebs11:51 AM

    That's Mark, not Mike. I hoping they're not even related.

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  21. Brian Schlosser11:59 AM

    3 boobs, total

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  22. At least they're being somewhat creative with it. It never ceases to amaze me that these guys can have lagoons of capital at their disposal, and they can't think of anything to do with it besides starting Wingnut Website #3876.

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  23. Alternate post titles:

    Heterosexual Dude Privilege Illustrated

    Because nothing can or shall exist without the approval of the Hetero-Male.

    Does it occur to him that in a climate of universally accepted homophobia, having a couple of famous gay faces out there might have made life a little less shitty for gay music fans? Of course not. The PSBs were HIS band.

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  24. DocAmazing12:01 PM

    Hearing about George Michael might just about do him in.

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  25. DocAmazing12:03 PM

    Don't make Ted Nugent white.

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  26. Yes, I'm getting strong whiffs of Desitin from Mr. Judge's sore bottom.

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  27. tigrismus12:12 PM

    This, all over. He gets to decide what's universal, and quelle surprise, it's him.

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  28. susanoftexas12:15 PM

    "Why do you have to make picking up guys in bathrooms all about gay sex?"

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  29. gocart mozart12:29 PM

    Nugent's pro-idiocy activism has sort of ruined "Cat Scratch Fever" for me or at least it would have if I ever liked that song.

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  30. Paul MacDonald12:29 PM

    I seem to remember that our old friend Jim Lileks had a soft spot (*snork*) for the Pet Shop Boys, too. Maybe he and Mark can start a support group.

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  31. Marion in Savannah12:31 PM

    You just HAD to bring him up, didn't you... There are certain sins that just cannot be forgiven.

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  32. JennOfArk12:56 PM

    There's an interesting point here, though (not in Judge's piece of course, just suggested by it): back in the 70s, wide swathes of the populace of flyover country were huge fans of people they had no idea were gay - despite all of the artists' attempts to beat them over the head with the clue club. Freddie Mercury led a band called "Queen". Elton John. Liberace. Even the Village People went right over a lot of these folks' heads. These artists had public personas that said "Hey, I'm gay," and something like half or more of the people in the country just simply chose to believe that they weren't.


    Kind of the corollary to that "why won't they stop talking about it?" If they don't talk about it, we can go on pretending they aren't gay and everything will be great.

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  33. BigHank5312:57 PM

    Oh, you should definitely check out last year's winner, then. It's Mark Wahlberg, for going back to school and getting a high school diploma and staying married to the mother of his four kids. Oh, and being Catholic. No, really. I'm not kidding. If the bar was any lower it'd be a stripe painted on the floor.

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  34. FlipYrWhig1:01 PM

    Wait a minute. Is "A Little Respect" about wanting some respect as one of THOSE, and is "Small Town Boy" about a small town boy who's all like THAT?

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  35. Why do I suspect Judge would say it is completely unacceptable to abandon forms of entertainment when it becomes clear the creators are - for example - whiny authoritarian fuckheads who live in fear they'll get gay germs in their ears from listening to gay men sing?

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  36. Jerry Garcia1:09 PM

    I'm picturing Judge driving from show to show in a VW camper, selling grilled cheese sandwiches and bootleg Pet Shop Boys tapes in the parking lots, all the while wondering "Why do all these Pet Shop Boys fans keep sucking my cock?"

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  37. LookWhosInTheFreezer1:10 PM

    I hope he's not big on Judas Priest.

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  38. Jay B.1:10 PM

    When I heard their first album Please in 1986, I felt that delirious swoon of falling in love with a piece of musical art...


    Fag.

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  39. coozledad1:15 PM

    There's one more reason you never saw Pantera on the same ticket.

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  40. You've decided to take the well-worn path of being boring on the subject, Mark. You could have decided that it's alright to enjoy their flamboyant music, regardless of how integral a particular sexual identity is to its interpretation. Would that have been so hard? Given what cultural warriors you all are, though, I guess I shouldn't expect miracles.

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  41. The Pet Shop Boys are gay? Aw, come off it!

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  42. There are creative types who express their own thoughts and feelings thru their art, and there are the creative types who carefully fashion their art to appeal to this-or-that group or personality type. The latter mostly work in advertising.

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  43. But- what about Cosby?

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  44. satch1:28 PM

    Well, I realized Richard Chamberlain was gay when he wouldn't renounce the priesthood and run off with Rachel Ward in "The Thornbirds"... oh, wait, am I confusing artistic creations with real life again?

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  45. I love, love, love this comment!

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  46. coozledad1:29 PM

    Cosby only touches the womens.

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  47. I suspect it was more like with Paul Lynde - everyone knew they were gay, but no one said it out loud, so there was enough plausible deniability for the "respectable" types to pretend that they didn't know. Think of it as a social conservative kayfabe.

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  48. satch1:32 PM

    "Learn?"

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  49. Cheap Jim1:35 PM

    Well, if you said Liberace was gay, he might sue you.

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  50. satch1:37 PM

    "I was a suburban kid at a Catholic university who occasionally snuck a look at Playboy..."


    !n 1986!!??! Jesus, Judge, you should have gotten out more...

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  51. IKR. If they are gay then so's Elton John!

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  52. Desitin? That's kickin' it old school.

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  53. merl11:43 PM

    When I was a teenager I was an Elton John fan, some of my friend's would say "he's gay" I always said "Who gives a fuck? I like his music". I guess they decided that was OK because it was never mentioned again.

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  54. When you're strange...
    people seem wicked
    when you are lonely...

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  55. merl11:45 PM

    Is there anything sadder than a white rapper?

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  56. I think its more like (some) of these guys were understood to be "gay" but in a closeted, funny, swishy way--Paul Lynde is a good example but there are lots more. Ann Landers used to call them "funny uncles" (or was that pedophiles?) but they were a well known and understood part of popular culture and small town life. Its when being gay became more combative, more out there, more demanding of equality that suburban and rural america began really going nuts.

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  57. Gromet1:48 PM

    Ha. I do remember listening to a lot of Queen in high school in New Jersey in the 1980s (they were still together, is how old I am) and my mom asking, to gauge my awareness of things I suspect, "So are they actually queens?" And I patiently explained like only a 15-year-old can, "Mom, that's just the name of the band."

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  58. merl11:49 PM

    No kidding. Catholic girls will do oral and anal happily because they'll still be virgins.

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  59. Not if they're good at it. There's this group - Lowercase Kansas - that hosts a freestyle show every few months, and I've seen eighteen year-old white kids spit fire. But there is definitely a difference between white and black at those shows - the white kids don't emulate the black kids, they do their own thing.

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  60. coozledad1:51 PM

    I always wonder if Paul wasn't a TV stalwart because he didn't need writers. You just stuck him in front of the camera and let him go.
    Fred Willard is supposed to have that talent, too.

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  61. FMguru1:53 PM

    One of PSB's biggest fans is none other than Axl Rose (the band added "Being Boring" to their live set list after an in-person request from him - Axl was right, it's their best song), and he doesn't have a problem with their gayness. That's right, this guy manages to be an even smaller-minded asshole homophobe than 1990s Axl Rose.

    Axl/PSB story taken from: http://www.10yearsofbeingboring.com/live/trivia

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  62. satch1:55 PM

    I dunno... I always got the feeling that on Hollywood Squares, at least, the staff came up with double entendre questions for him, and at least let him have an advanced look at them.

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  63. How would you feel if someone else appropriated...

    Ammosexuality.

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  64. Gromet1:57 PM

    I'll have to go read this. In 2002-2003 I worked in an office that was majority-black, and Eminem was somewhat controversial there; some of the guys said he was the best, some of the guys couldn't listen at all. But no one, no one gave the Beastie Boys any respect. "But, but Paul's Boutique is just objectively good," I said -- and I got looks that made me decide to be very careful about ever saying that again in mixed company.

    Of course, among white kids of my collapsed and forgotten generation, Paul's Boutique was often called the Abbey Road of rap.

    And at no point does this basically racial difference of opinion seem to warrant a complaining essay, though. Eesh, you Culture Justice Warriors you.

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  65. coozledad1:58 PM

    That 's probably it. Dick van Dyke did say Paul had a cruel wit. They would have had to scrub any of his off the cuff remarks.

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  66. Gromet1:59 PM

    Hahahah.

    See also, "We GET it, Bruce. You were born in the USA. Ugh, why can't it just be about being BORN??"

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  67. FlipYrWhig1:59 PM

    He wouldn't normally do this kind of thing.

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  68. Ted the slacker2:00 PM

    "Even the Village People went right over a lot of these folks' heads"
    Well duh, it's called Flyover Country fro a reason.

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  69. "I was a suburban kid at a Catholic university who occasionally snuck a look at Playboy..."


    *Gasp* It's a sin.

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  70. BigHank532:33 PM

    Oh, I think it's even simpler than that. White men can appropriate whatever they like from blacks: culture, labor, money, or even their lives. Megan Trainor and Iggy Azalea gettin' cozy with black folks is way too close to miscegenation for today's right.

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  71. John Wesley Hardin2:39 PM

    Paul's Boutique is fucking amazing, and anyone who disagrees is a Philistine.

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  72. John Wesley Hardin2:40 PM

    IKR? "Wang, Dang, Sweet Poontang" is ruined for me now.

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  73. John Wesley Hardin2:41 PM

    "which do you choose, a hard or soft option?" Oh, Mark is very afraid of the 'hard option.'

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  74. John Wesley Hardin2:44 PM

    "I followed the Boys for years" but they steadfastly ignored me, so I decided that I was heterosexual.

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  75. John Wesley Hardin2:46 PM

    Delirious swooning over the Petshop Boys? This Judge dude is hardcore.

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  76. Does Judgey McJudgester know that "West End Girls" has V.I.Lenin in it?http://www.geowayne.com/newDesign/please/westendgirls.htm

    evident in the line "from Lake Geneva to the Finland Station," which refers to the train route taken by Lenin when he was smuggled by the Germans to Russia during the First World War, a pivotal event in the Russian Revolution.

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  77. Dear Playboy, I never thought that this would ever happen to me but I was listening to PSB and got all funny in the trousers...

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  78. Gromet2:56 PM

    Wait. The rightwing nuts are up in arms about Megan Trainor??

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  79. So basically her advice is "Get over it"

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  80. These guys (rightwing, permanently outraged) were outraged about "Avatar" so I think that reality is a non-contact sport for them.

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  81. redoubtagain3:23 PM

    Obligatory, so as to break Mark Judge's brain.

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  82. I heard Paul asked about that once in an interview. He said the way it worked is that the gag writers would come up with lines for the celebs, and for him they'd just provide him with the general subject of the questions and he'd either say he was ready with a good quip or if not (fairly rarely) he'd use one of the pre-written gags. In other words, they'd say "we're gonna do one about the royal family" and he'd say, "got it covered".

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  83. J Neo Marvin5:47 PM

    Young offender, what's your defense?

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  84. M. Krebs6:42 PM

    I think people of the generation before us developed a talent for ignoring things that might be unpleasant to them or things that they absolutely could not fathom talking about. I know my parents did, and so did the parents of most of the kids I hung out with. Teachers, too. For example, we used to show up at school stoned out of minds, and they never seemed to notice.

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  85. M. Krebs6:51 PM

    That sounds like exactly something Morrissey would say about Sandie Shaw.

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  86. Back when I worked in TV, we used to run Hollywood Squares in the middle of the day. It was on 2-inch video tape, so editing it was kind of a chop-and-drop operation.

    At any rate, I recall on episode where Paul Lind's question was: "In the Bible, who was famous for splitting a rock with his rod?"

    Paul's answer: "Oh, that was Adam before Eve showed up."

    There were at least three edit-points before they could get everyone calmed down enough to continue with the show. I figured it was about 10 to 15 minutes of people laughing, calming down, then bursting in laughter again.

    How could you not love Paul Lind?

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  87. But only two worth looking at.

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  88. M. Krebs7:11 PM

    That was a great fucking song.

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  89. And that, in a nutshell, is all I ever need to know about a musician: Do I like the music? Everything else is secondary. Especially what he or she does with his or her respective private parts (as long as it's consensual).

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  90. Eh. I read that as more along the lines of "Great emotional pain is not necessarily predicated on anything logical." And that's pretty much been my experience of being a human--some things hurt way more than you'd expect, while other things that should touch you to the core can slide right by without too much trouble.

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  91. M. Krebs7:19 PM

    There really was some good stuff on daytime TV back then. The Gong Show, Letterman's brief daytime show, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman... Dinah Shore would have great guests sometimes. Hell, even a few of the soaps were okay, and The Price is Right was the next best thing to a Playboy magazine.

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  92. That line works even better if you can do his vocal rhythm. :)

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  93. One thing I liked about Dinah was that she, like Mike Douglas on his talk show, obviously liked all musicians and loved talking with them. That left the viewer with some otherwise odd but fascinating conversations, such as Mike having John Lennon and Yoko Ono on for a week as co-hosts (Little Richard once too, when he was becoming an elder statesman icon) and Dinah with Flo and Eddie (aka The Turtles, Mothers of Invention, etc.). This was unlike a lot of talk shows where the host really didn't get music past the Sinatra era.

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  94. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:05 PM

    It's definitely one of "Bobby" Jindal's no-go zones...

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  95. I am probably reading it incorrectly. Not focusing all that well at the moment.

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  96. mgmonklewis10:46 PM

    Can You Forgive Him?

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  97. mgmonklewis10:47 PM

    It was always on his mind.

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  98. AGoodQuestion11:48 PM

    Only one of the Pet Shop Boys is gay, but I'm sure the sexual panic amuses both of them.

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  99. AGoodQuestion11:52 PM

    Oh, but that would have been an awesome tour!

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  100. AGoodQuestion11:58 PM

    "Fred Schneider is WHAT?"

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  101. Halloween_Jack9:33 AM

    That was my experience in Memphis in the 90s; there wasn't a lot of homophobia, even in the choir of the Catholic church that I attended at the time (there were, at any given time, two or three same-sex couples in it), as long as they weren't actually out.

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  102. Halloween_Jack9:35 AM

    http://youtu.be/soNcOfRvOtg

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  103. Halloween_Jack9:38 AM

    Worse than being bigoted

    I bet he wrote that with a straight face. In Judge's world, he should be free to appropriate black culture because he still insists that black people stole his bicycle.

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  104. Halloween_Jack9:40 AM

    "Why do won't all these Pet Shop Boys fans keep sucking my cock?"



    FTFY. (I get the reference, but I'd like to think that PSB fans have better taste, as it were.)

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  105. Buffalo Rude10:13 AM

    When I was growing up in the 1980s the preferred nomenclature in my family was "confirmed bachelor".

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  106. Gromet2:02 PM

    I'm 100% sure your '70s were different than my '80s. Sex was to be feared as inevitably fatal in the 1980s -- even if you were straight. That was the message. And gay people were on TV fairly often -- like the character Hollywood, in Mannequin -- but they were usually a cartoon that didn't translate to seeing them in real life, even if they were secretly my teachers and classmates. This was all different by the time I was 18 and had an actual girlfriend, and a best friend who revealed he was gay -- but when I was 15? Keep in mind, the '80s wouldn't even let George Michael sing "I want your sex" unless he made it explicitly about hetero monogamy. (Even then I think it ended up banned on MTV and radio.)

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  107. StringOnAStick2:11 PM

    The 70's and the 80's were very different on the sexual revolution front. All the cadre members here will agree, and can tell you many, many stories while smiling wistfully.

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  108. merl15:40 PM

    Exactly. I still love the movie "The Unforgiven" even though Clint Eastwood is semi looney tunes

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  109. merl13:45 PM

    If I like an author but not his politics, I still read him/her. I just check their books out at the library instead of giving them royalties for buying it. My petty little way to stick it to 'em.

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