Mississippi School Axes Prom to Avoid Lesbian Dancing, while Stars on Ice Drops Johnny Weir

My friend Bea, all the way in Groeningen, Netherlands, contacted me to alert me to this story by sex columnist and Seattle Stranger editor extraordinaire Dan Savage: High School in Mississippi Cancels Prom to Prevent Lesbian Student From Bringing Female Date—and Potentially Invites Violence Against Lesbian Student.  

That may seem like a long title, but it gives activist Googlers and savvy Stranger.com readers (the only kind of readers The Stranger has, as far as I can tell) the info they need in a nice compact package. "Click to learn more," the headline beckons.

It's the 21st-century version of phone trees—a calling system activists like Harvey Milk (beautifully photographed, here and elsewhere, by legendary San Francisco photographer and activist Daniel Nicoletta) used pre-Internet to get their messages about rallies and protests out as quicky as possible: one person calls ten, each of those call ten, who each call ten, until a united front shows up to scare the bejezus out of the pigs. Already, the article has gone viral in the Twittersphere, and amassed over 172 comments on the original site (the average article in The Stranger or on similar news sites gets about 20 comments in a good month).

Now that a lot of "mainstream" folks—LGBT and otherwise—are out of work too, many middle-of-the-road Americans suddenly feel the way some people from disenfranchized groups, and many students, have always felt—that our politics and our ideals are the only things we reliably own.

That's my theory for why more people are getting angry about injustice of all kinds, from the persecution of LGBT children to music censorship and racism to advertisers of the upcoming Stars On Ice tour deeming gay artist and credit-to-skating Johnny Weir "Not Family Friendly Enough" to include in the extravanza tour, a major source of income for many athletes. (What, too gay for Ice Skating? Too many breathtaking, showstopping Lady Gaga tribute numbers?)

For shame, Smuckers, sponsor of Stars on Ice, for your Bible-Belt-pandering. I guess that's what we get, LGBTers and gay-savvy straight folks, for having switched to Polaner All Fruit, a corn-syrup-free preserves we found more salutory and palatable, decades ago. Now Smuckers is punishing all us urban sophisticates for our glucose-eschewing habits by choosing to disavow what should be their pride in one of the greatest athletes and charismatic artists to grace Ice Skating in a long, long time.

Evidently, Smuckers likes their Ice Shows to be as cloying and flavorless as their jams and jellies. And c'mon guys, Smuckers? You call yourselves "Smuckers" and you think Johnny Weir isn't family friendly? You sure provided my brothers and I with our share of naughty jokes in the breakfast nook growing up.

Anyone who thinks this is "just an ice skating issue" is just plain wrong. This is about gender roles and assimilation versus all of us embracing our unique gifts and contributions to the world as "queer" or somehow "deviant" or "different" people.

Get angry, people. Get very angry. Then contact GLAAD, and find out more about possible solutions. In the meantime, I suggest throwing out any stray jars of Smuckers you've been serving to undiscerning guests or using to hold up the wonky shelf in the bathroom cabinet.

So, other than raising my hackles, what's the connection between these two stories? Gender. Two girls dancing together freaks the heck out of some parents and principles in Mississippi, and the Smucker's guys' real fear is that Weir is too effeminate. Being a gay man is OK as long as you're masculine—even Eminem says so—but people can't stand a man who's feminine. Masculine's the thing to be in the U.S.—it's even OK for women and girls, as long as they know their roles at home and on the dancefloor.

But more on all that tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Lady Gaga! Is Lady Gaga the New Laura Nyro?

When it comes to pop culture, I'm always just a few days behind the curve. I know, I know—I shouldn't tell you that. After all, this is a blog about culture, and blogs are supposed to be au courant.

But hey, who'm I fooling? My first blog entry (at least here; I do have other blogs y'know) was about Judy Holliday and Blossom Dearie, after all. I freely admit it—though I'm only in my mid-thirties, I have the aesthetic tastes of a 60-year-old gay man living in 1955. Luckily, my politics place me somewhere around 2012, the year we'll get Universal Health Care in the U.S.—or, to be more historically accurate, my politcs place me in Amsterdam circa 1985 (remember, that year's a good thing in some places; the Dutch didn't have Reagan and Bush Sr. to gum up their windmill gears).

Anyway, I finally watched the new Lady Gaga-Beyonce collaboration video, and I can hardly tell you how impressed I am—the ironic-chameleonic fashions (glasses made of cigarettes, hats made of nursery-room telephone dials, lavender funeral veils), the countless pop culture references (Kill Bill, Thelma and Louise, Britney Spears' snatch shot, and more), the winking product placement (a telephone of course, but flashed only while Gaga swaps spit with a soft-butch cellmate), and yes, I even loved the song (well, at least Gaga's half). Nevertheless, this blog is a publication of sorts, not a mind-reading game (that's what relationships are for, right? Or so I hear from my married friends), so I will tell you out loud how impressed I am. Very. I am very impressed.

Someone I know campared Lady Gaga to Elton John and Andy Warhol. When he first made that analogy before I'd seen her on Youtube and before she'd become the "It-Girl,"* I thought he was being ridiculous and hyberbolic (I admit it, I thought this, in these polysyllables no less, but I don't say things like this out loud), but now I have to agree with his comparison.

Lady Gaga has not only brought "sexyback" from farther away than Justin Timberlake did, she's helped make "sexy" and "smart" synonyms that even ad-addled and Twitter-pated post gen-Xers find refreshing and cool. And she's brought performance art into the mainstream, in a way it hasn't been since the Factory days of Warhol and the Sex Pistols. To extend Adam's analogy, I would also compare Lady Gaga to the very quirky Roches and the brilliantly eccentric Laura Nyro, with a dash of Blossom Dearie thrown in for sweetness.

Laura Nyro, whom Gaga most resembles physically and maybe musically (if you don't believe me, compare these two videos filmed over 30 years apart) is such a cult figure among artists "in the know" that even the notoriously (and justifiably) vain Joni Mitchell doesn't mind being compared to her.

All are very New York, so witty and worldly that all have been mistakenly assumed to be 100 percent Jewish, even by critics, even though some weren't Jewish at all. And among NY artists and intellectuals, such an assumption is a high compliment indeed.

If Warhol, Nyro, and the Roches are apt comparisons, then my only fear is not that Gaga's artistry won't continue to blossom with age—she'll be 24 on March 28!—but that Gaga may burn too bright too soon. A facile fatalists' fantasy, perhaps, but many of the above did peak early, falling afterwards into critical disfavor or cult obscurity.

Lady Gaga is the best new artist to shimmy onto the scene in a long time, and we need her to stick around more than she needs us—I was amazed that this year's Grammys (as you know, I think awards shows can be a real joke) actually honored her as Best New Artist. I am convinced that her award will not be a death knell (as it was for Milli Vanilli, Lisa Loeb  and others) but merely an early signpost on a long and illustrious career path. Barbara Walters even called Gaga one of the "10 Most Fascinating People of the Year" (in a year that gave us Octomom and Balloon Boy no less). During her interview, Gaga forthrightly responded to Walters' coy questions:

"I do like women. I've only been in love with men ...but ...the song [with lyrics like "fluffin the muffin"] was about why,...when I was with my boyfriend, was I still fantasizing about being with women?...I've certainly had sexual relationships with women, yes. [The biggest misconception about me is] that I am artificial and attention seeking, when the truth is that every bit of me is devoted to love and art, and I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who ...  feel just like I felt when I was younger.... What I'm trying to say is I want to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears, and make them feel that they can create their own space in the world."

Words that could even make someone without tear ducts weep, but Walters and her producers followed up Gaga's frank, honest avowal with a slick, jump-cut montage of Gaga's sexiest dance moves overdubbed with these granny-pandering words: "Kissing women, bizarre outfits, and scantily clad perfomances: Not exactly a father's dream for his little girl."(What?! C'mon Barbara, you're not really the prude you play on TV: you dated that slutty Walter Cronkite, who's fluffed umpteen muffins, for crissakes.) 

Luckily for people like me who take two or three days to find out about the latest gidgets and gadgets, Gaga has already overcome the main newbie pitfall, especially for stars so wildly adored by gay fans—cult-status balkanization. Heck, if Madonna and Beyonce are slavering to get pokerface-time with you, you've moved past cult status. Gaga is so real and so hip that by her very presence with those ladies on SNL or the new "Telephone" video made them hip and relevant by osmosis. This month, she even lends her considerable cred to Cosmo, that hoary arbiter of mainstream female fashion and sex. Look, she smirks from its cover, I'll be wan and pretty for your magazine, but only if I can stare knowingly into the lens, and only if I can wear my un-prettiest granny panties while I'm doing it.

In an age when artists moan about MP3 pirating of their work so they can justify allowing Madison Avenue to use said work to hock everything from apps to alchohol, we need more stars like Gaga—sure they'll try to sell you stuff you don't need to pay their bills and make their DIY couture, but they'll snog with girls on TV while they're doing it—and they'll have real talent to boot. 

Happy Birthday, Lady Gaga. Thank you for making our wishes come true.