Posted on 01/14/2005 7:57:27 AM PST by madprof98
Woo hoo! I've made the big time. Last month, the website Free Republic featured a thread about my Nov. 18 column, "Queers Who Don't Act Right." You probably don't know much about Free Republic unless you are a right-wing lunatic. Free Republic is so far right that wing-nut gay muckraker Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, one of the architects of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, both left the site in 1999 because it was too extreme, even for them.
In the years since, the site has become the contemporary version of a marathon meeting of the old John Birch Society and the KKK. Most recently, Free Republic was in the news when John Corsi, one of the Swift Boat Veterans who authored a book attacking John Kerry, turned out to post embarrassingly racist messages there. (Of course, he argued his racist insults were all "a joke." Talk about your Clintonian rhetoric.) The site also was in the news recently because someone correctly posted that Dan Rather had relied on phony documents to impute President Bush's National Guard service.
Free Republic is so extreme that it's a blast to read. Don't bother to explore the site with the idea of posting an alternative perspective or to correct facts. Your post will simply be deleted, despite its owner's celebration of freedom of speech. The site has no hesitation in reprinting copyrighted material, like my column, even though the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both successfully sued to stop such theft. In other words, as is generally true of the lunatic far right, the truth, free speech and the law only matter when they support their point of view.
Of course, Freepers, as the creepy wing-nuts on the site are called, were not alone in being outraged by my column. I received quite a lot of mail, mainly from other gay people, questioning my argument that LA Fitness at Ansley Mall overreacted when it closed its sauna because of some occasional sex and reopened it with a new picture window overlooking the locker room. As an update, I might add that the window has effectively eliminated unseen sexual interactions inside the sauna and made room for another, more open form of sex between people on either side of the window: exhibitionism and voyeurism.
Most of my correspondents argued that the occasional discovery of sex in the sauna merited involvement by the police and the health department, reconstruction of the sauna and a report by one of the local TV stations. And, as usual, they concluded that because I called that overreacting, I must favor sex in public spaces. No matter that I said I find the behavior annoying. To be righteous, I must find it -- what? -- criminally actionable.
I wasn't surprised by the reaction. Sex troubles people more than anything. That's why Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, while Bush was re-elected despite lying about a war that has killed thousands. Gay people's oppression is the result of their sex lives, so it's not surprising that they are hypersensitive to anything that might add to the picture of deviance. But it has become obvious that the very effort to make all deviance disappear and to assimilate -- to marry, for example -- increases prejudice.
The Freepers, of course, took outrage over my column to dizzy heights, fabricating arguments I did not make. This began with the man who posted it, "madpro98." He said that I dismissed "all sexual conventions, including common decency, as so much homophobia." Actually, I wrote no such thing. Then, of course, the Freepers concluded that the case of LA Fitness means every gay man is a sauna whore. For example, "Sender" writes: "Does anyone else think it's strange that gay men often have sex in a public toilet stall? ... Even if we had unisex public restrooms, somehow I can't imagine a man and a woman eyeing one another while washing their hands, then just jumping in the stall for a go."
The writer obviously has never been to Buckhead on a Saturday night. But what cracks me up is that the Freepers are so anxious to bash someone like me that they don't even realize when they are supporting a contrary argument. For example, "buffyt" quoted my statement that I don't like "stumbling upon any sex scene to which I have not been invited." Then she riffed obsessively about heterosexual couples at Mardi Gras "coupling all over the place" while the police ignore them. Exactly. Heterosexuals spoil the view with public sexual interactions every bit as much as homosexuals, arguably more, when they can find a place to do it. Nobody followed up on that post, of course.
I'm not going to quote the mind-boggling illogics and endless sophomoric fag-bashing (despite arguing they aren't homophobic). But I will thank "Jack Black," who wrote: "I think this was very well written. He is writing for the audience of radical homosexuals as one, so I have trouble twisting my thoughts enough to get to his point of view, but I still think the writing is good." Kiss me, dude!
Cliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology. Write him at cliff.bostock@ creativeloafing.com.
I think it's an obscure branch of proctology.
Depth psychology looks like a good field of study for creative loafing.
Knock yourself out.
Being queer is really a brain disease.
"look who made the news"
Use the term "news" lightly. Creative Loafing is weekly liberal rag freebie bird cage liner.
"Free Republic is so far right that wing-nut gay muckraker Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, one of the architects of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, both left the site in 1999 because it was too extreme, even for them."
YEAH! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
You pauses and makes up a corrective fact.
These are sometimes also known as Ratherisms.
Mr. Bostock has a typically (for a PhD. in a branch of study no one's ever heard of) inflated sense of his own importance and impact. If and when people of his ilk ever realize how grossly incorrect their assessment of the general intelligence level of conservatives actually is, well, let's not all hold our breath at once.
No doubt. Having read his column (he is, ostensibly, a food writer) occasionally over the years, I've been struck by his overweening self-loathing.
He's a bitter old queen.
Its one of those degrees that the education industry denizens dream up and award each other to avoid having to actually do real work or research.
The guy's a blast. Speak up a bit louder Cliffy you should get us a few more votes in '06.
Between guys like Cliffy, Crash Kennedy, and Howard the Deany maybe that 60 vote super majority in the Senate is really do-able.
More legendary tolerance" from the oh so enlightened left,he has a Ph.D. in depth?? psychology, don't ya' know.
So that's where some of the trolls are coming from.
;-)
Zing Bostock again, we'll see how wroth he gets.
See more here.
Read through it. It's pretty funny. I know someone that is really in to the "Freudian, Jungian, phenomenological, and archetypal theory" stuff. And has a degree in psychology. One of the funnier things they have done is get together with like minded people where they all sit under a glass pyramid in someones back yard and things "come to them".
This person also goes to psychics and Tarot card readers. It's pretty amazing that someone with several college degrees does this kind of stuff and really believes in it. But has never wondered why after listening to someone predict their future for the past 20 years why none of the stuff predicted ever came true.
What's really amusing is how many obviously mentally unbalanced people get themselves educated in psychology or something like "depth psychology" then set out to tell everyone else what's wrong with them.
I wasn't mentioned in his column so I don't give a darn what he says.
Does that mean he has DEEP THOUGHTS like Jack Handy
Well, "Living With Your Parents And Watching Reruns" wasn't offered at his school. So he changed over to Depth Psychology to meet football players.
I can live with that...
I'd rather have a better label. Maybe something like "super, incredible, uber, ultra right-wing lunatic."
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