An Autumn's Outing

tbone mikester said...
Dear Blobele-I had the misfortune to play for "The Velvet Fag" (pardon my French, but he was as queer as a three dollar bill, in spite of your memories-just ask his then oh-so-beautiful jolly-roger of a drummer) at the Montreal Jazz Festival. He was the most loathsome human being I have ever played for. A beautiful voice and musical talent do not give anyone the right to behave like an unbridled arrogant asshole. Even a minimal amount of artistic ability should make a person a better human being-to be able to create beauty (a very rare gift) should (hopefully) make anyone a more thoughtful, more perceptive person. The preening, egotistical, sneering, snarling shit-head masquerading as a sensitive artist on that day was an embarassment to musicians everywhere. To end on a happier note; he is dead!!!

I recieved this post from Mikexxxster on the last glorious, warm day of what they now call Indigenous peoples of North America summer and boy was I thrown for a loop.

Wow...Mel Tormé gay and a complete asshole to boot (and he's dead you say!!??!!), I guess I've had my head in the sand. What next? Are you going to tell me that J.K. Rowling outed one of her main characters? (lol)....She did WHAT ????? One sec, I'll be right back............. (cue sounds of frenzied google fact search)

OK, sorry about that. It's unbelievable but true, JK Rowling admitted this week that Albus Dumbledore is gay and I suppose all the signs were there. He was after all "head"master (helllooo) and at a school seemingly named after an anal sex related STD ("hawg warts"?....heLLLOOOOOO) but most importantly he was the top wizard and like most literary and screen wizards before him had many of the trappings of a stereotypical gay man. From the Wizard of Oz to Uncle Arthur of Bewitched we've seen it all before; the confirmed bachelor, always impeccably groomed, the all powerful wand as a rather obvious phallic symbol, and a personal life that is all but absent from the narrative. Santa Claus has his Mrs. Claus, Fred Flintstone his Wilma but do we ever get to see the better half of Merlin or Gandalf?? Kind of makes you think.

This all smacks of one of the most cynical cash grabs in literary history.

With the Potter series over Rowling knows that the largely childless gay population never really turned up in droves to buy what were essentially her children's books. By rebranding one of her main characters as gay after the fact she avoids the sales losses that could have come from a Christian right backlash (they tried with the anti-witchcraft campaign but that never really caught fire) and she gets to tap into a new niche. What can we look forward to now? Sirius Black was actually Black? Hagrid an orthodox Jew?? Throngs of interested new readers will buy the books looking for the hidden clues that validate these assertions. She's a clever woman that JK and her campaign to be "richer than Oprah by 2010!!" looks to be well under way.