March
27, 2002
MEDIA WATCH 
by Jim Edminster
In the Men's Fashions of the Times (Spring/02) a special section of the NY Times, an item appeared for the "Do-We-Really-Need-This Department." For a workshop entitled "Lying for a Living," actor Marlon Brando ran the whole shebang in drag. "Save for the shoes, which appeared to be gardening clogs, someone had put Brando together quite nicely in a black frock and a 'falsie fortified chest.'" The seminar veered jarringly back and forth between embarrassing/alarming and boring/tedious. Sean Penn, Jon Voight and Leonardo Di Caprio were in attendance ... for a short while.
The first posthumous grand marshall of Chicago's St. Pat's Day parade was the Rev. Mychal Judge, the Catholic priest and NY fire brigade chaplain killed by falling debris in the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center. The Chicago Tribune (3/17) neglected to mention that Judge was gay or that were he alive he would not have been allowed as such to have taken part in New York City's own St. Patrick's Day parade.
John Tierney, in the NY Times (3/22) dissects the current problem with definitions in the pedophilia scandals in the Roman Catholic church. While not excusing the priest's abuse of authority, he points out that most of the reported sexual abuse involves teenagers, not prepubescent children. The age of consent is 16 or 17 in many places. Most of the offending priests are in fact pederasts, men attracted to boys beyond puberty. Quoting a study, the author says most of this linguistic mess is an attempt by the Catholic church to avoid the awkward issue of homosexual priests. The study indicates about the same proportion of priests are pedophiles as in the general population, but that there are inordinately large numbers of gay priests.
The NY Times Book Review (3/17) recommends At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill which " ... fuse[s] with a complete lack of apology or embarrassment ... " the cause of Ireland and of gay people. Example: when one of the characters is asked if he is "an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort," he answers "If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes!"
In an article in The Nation (4/8) re Andrew Sullivan: "A Catholic gay man who is also HIV positive, his political views have led him to attach himself to a party, a movement, and a church that believes him to be practicing an abomination ... . And his church offers a warmer embrace for pedophile priests than for honest homosexuals."
The Atlantic (4/20) offers a story for the "Not-Quite-Sure-About-The-Department" Department: "Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses, which details the lives and times of heterosexual cross dressers. The article is more or less sympathetic to this group of mostly Christian Republican men, but does point out that they all know if their supportive (but unenthusiastic) wives decided to do male (hairy legs and 3-piece suits) drag, their marriages would be over.
The Nation (4/8) in a review of formerly (he says) right-wing David Brock's book Blinded by the Right that Brock, while growing up, was " ... coming to terms with the fact that the sight of his fellow boys disrobing after gym class did more to quicken his pulse than say a stolen glance in the direction of the décolletage of the Cowboys' cheerleaders." Brock, known for his hatchet job on Anita Hill, was drummed out of the right wing when he attempted to be objective in a biography of Hillary Clinton.
The NY Times (3/22) in an item for the "DoWe-Have-To-Keep-Him-In-The-Club" Department reports that openly gay politician Pim Fortuyn is making a big splash in conservative circles by referring to Muslim immigrants as backward. He and his followers have won 36% of the vote in elections in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Pim calls for cutting immigration and scrapping the Dutch constitutional clause banning discrimination. So far no one has pointed out the incongruity of a 54-year-old referring to himself as an "enfant terrible."