On the way back to Malibu I stopped in at one of those coffee-house chains. I sat nursing a cup of hot black brew.
I sat quietly. I am wearing my black pantaloons (Miu Miu), a Stetson, raspberry colored hand knitted socks with sky blue trim.
I sat listening to a bunch of affluent white men in their 50’s and 60’s dressed in motor cycling leathers, complaining about President Obama.
They were rudely spouting one ill-informed cliché after another, rudely condemning: green solutions, ‘cripple’ access around Santa Monica, the ‘fiscal cliff’ etc.
These same men defend Israel. Even though this week Israel and the USA find themselves horribly isolated on the world stage.
The old white men are stuck in another age, another time… baffled by a changing world… still unable to comprehend how Mitt Romney lost the election they were convinced he’d win.
I wanted to ask them questions but I knew nothing they had to say would tell me anything I didn’t already know.
Their fears laid bare: Black leaders, electric cars, marriage equality.
“They’ll all cry that they voted for him.” they convinced each other.
I felt like I was on the winning side. Their Schadenfreude didn’t feel dangerous… it felt old-fashioned.
On the way home I listened to something on NPR about a group called LA Jews for Peace.
A group of Jewish Americans committed to peace in the Middle East through a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and opposition to American militarism, imperialism, and exceptionalism.
Their spokesman bemoaned America’s UN vote against Palestine.
America, like the old white men at the coffee shop, seems unable to comprehend or adapt to the changing world.
What the white men at the coffee shop don’t seem to acknowledge: they have more in common with their President than they seem to realize. I mean… Obama is only half black, raised by white folks… cup half full lads? Surely?
Obama owns his whiteness in the Whitehouse and flays his blackness on the stump.
Barry Goodman (old white jew), unfriended me on FB the day the UN recognized the Palestinians right to statehood.
Just nine nations voted against the Palestinian Authority’s upgrade to nonvoting observer state status, which passed the General Assembly 138-9, with 41 abstentions.
Voting “No” on Thursday were Israel, the United States and Canada, joined by the Czech Republic, Panama and several Pacific island nations: Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau. The Pacific nations typically support the U.S. and Israel at the U.N. on key General Assembly resolutions.
In the face of this terrific news self hating jews like Barry Goodman reacted like spoiled, entitled children.
In a unanimous resolution passed Sunday, Israel’s Cabinet said it would not negotiate on the basis of the General Assembly’s recognition of a state of Palestine in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.
“The unilateral step taken by the Palestinians at the United Nations violates peace agreements,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained, justifying Israel’s rejection of the U.N. vote.
Astoundingly, he bleated:
“The only way to Palestinian statehood and peace is through direct negotiations with Israel.”
Then he told the rest of the non compliant world he was going to hold onto money that was owed to the Palestinians and build all over their shit.
2.
I don’t trust any of the gay men I meet in LA. Industry men.
Bryan. WTF?
I had lunch with one of Bryan’s boy toys yesterday, the second in one week. I met a technician Bryan works with, Bryan says, “I don’t want to direct movies, I want someone else to direct them and I critique their results.”
After I started defending the Palestinians during the Israeli bombardment Guy S (second rate Bryan sycophant) tells me that they all hate me. That’s like music to my ears.
I call Tom. Tom denies what I already know to be the truth.
They know, they all know that sooner or later I’m going to write everything down.
Hollywood Babylon style.
It’s just a matter of time.
3.
December 2nd 2013. Just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait.
As my gay friends, blindly devoted to President Obama, danced with joy at the news that gay marriage was being approved by popular vote in three states… the first of its kind, that an ‘out’ lesbian had been elected to the US senate and that ‘their guy’ was going back to the White House… I shifted uncomfortably in my bed.
In May, after years of unconvincingly claiming that his (Obama’s) view on gay marriage was “evolving”, it miraculously matured five months before an election as support from gay and lesbian voters and young people – who are far more likely to support marriage equality – appeared to be softening. A month later he halted the deportation of thousands of young undocumented immigrants with an executive order.
He could have done either one at any time.
The Guardian
As the results came in I watched my Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr feeds explode.
Lance Black told us that he was crying so hard with gratitude for the people of Maine, so blinded by tears he could scarcely post his thanks on Facebook.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” he wept.
I kept thinking: Republicans want your money, Democrats want your hope. What’s worse? All night I knew that I was witnessing something sickeningly dishonest, as ersatz as the twin towers crumbling seem to conspiracy theorists.
I wondered again and again about the relative values of my gay brethren. You see, I couldn’t stop thinking about just one gay man. I was plagued with the young face of Bradley Manning who presently sits in jail, a victim of Obama’s rarely mentioned dark side. Since July 2010 he has been kept naked and in solitary confinement. According to his family he is going slowly insane.
Manning, you may remember, had blown the whistle on American war crimes in Iraq. He posted videos, unleashed a torrent of classified information to Wikileaks… his fury knew no bounds. He had every reason to be angry. He related to the wholesale cruelty and injustice being perpetrated on the Iraqi people. Manning’s had a crippling history of emotional abuse, neglect, bullying and abandonment .
As a teenager he was taken to the UK by his British mother. At school in Wales he became the target of bullying because he was the only American. The students would imitate his accent, and they apparently abandoned him once during a camping trip. His aunt told The Washington Post: “He woke up, and all the tents around him were gone. They left while he was sleeping.” He was also targeted for being effeminate.
As an adult he had one of two choices, he could take it out on himself like so many gay men and kill himself… or he could take it out on those who gave him the most pain. He was rightly furious at how he was being personally treated by the military… facing his own demons as well as the worlds. Every day he bore witness to atrocities against the Iraqi people, (the very people he was apparently trying to protect) and the atrocity of institutionalized homophobia.
Some soldiers, driven mad by war, punish Iraqis. A soldier walks into a village on his own and kills innocent men, women and children. Some take it out on each other, a soldier rapes or damages or kills a colleague. We know these stories. They are legion.
Bradley Manning knew the truth had to be revealed.
It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.
The Wikipedia page for Manning has a great deal of unsubstantiated detail describing his ‘true nature’, over turning tables, punching women in the face, carving words into a chair.
Meanwhile, the heteronormative lesbian (Tammy Baldwin), looking like Laura Bush in her puce, slubbed silk jacket was on her way to the Senate. Hailed by the gays (even the ones who have no lesbian or even women friends) as the great Sappho answer to the LGBT political conundrum, applauding as she goes down on the neo-liberal pussy… rainbow bunting festoons her office. Is Tammy Baldwin our LGBT hero? Will the people of Maine win a GLAAD award like the people of Europe won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Bradley Manning is a true hero, a gay hero, a young man of conscience… yet he has been all but abandoned by the gay community. Where are his GLAAD awards? His rainbow bunting? His gay applause?
Don’t weep for the people of Maine for voting on something that shouldn’t even have been on the ballot. Weep for Bradley Manning who sits in a cell today for showing all of you the crimes being committed in your name.
2.
According to the New York Times, preparing President Obama for his first Presidential debate against Mitt Romney proved an impossible task for even his most trusted advisors.
David Axelrod, a senior strategist, told a surly Mr. Obama that he seemed distracted, but the President shrugged him off. “I’ll be there on game day,” he said. “I’m a game day player.”
As it turned out the President was not a ‘game day player’, famously caught off guard by Romney’s meticulous debate preparation he crashed and burned leaving many of his most ardent supporters wondering why they were supporting him at all.
There’s something horribly revealing about this story. It betrays exactly who Barack Obama is. Aloof, dismissive and far more confident in his own ability than he should be.
For those who have performed on stage can confirm, no amount of rehearsal is long enough for any performance. The dress rehearsal is imperative, it is at the dress rehearsal where all catastrophic mistakes will be made, never to be made again. To have no rehearsal, no dress rehearsal, to stand on stage without any preparation whatsoever is arrogant at best, monumentally dumb at worst. Arrogance may be Obama’s defining character defect. More details reveal the President to be an even less sympathetic character.
Two startling facts:
Obama has never entertained either President Carter nor Clinton at the White House and complains frequently about being under valued.
“Stories abound of big donors who stopped giving as much or working as hard because Obama never reached out, either with a Clinton-esque warm bath of attention or Romney-esque weekend love fests and Israeli-style jaunts; of celebrities who gave concerts for his campaigns and never received thank-you notes or even his full attention during the performance; of public servants upset because they knocked themselves out at the president’s request and never got a pat on the back.”
There is an obvious lack of sophistication about the first couple that no amount of Jason Woo, Simon Doonan table settings or fancy interior decoration will ever mask.
Obama’s arrogance, his ego maniacal obsession with his own success would be worth something if he had some huge scheme, some Housman type plan, some Churchillian grandiosity, some Napoleonic zeal but all his arrogance boils down to… well, a miserable compromise. Many liberals were annoyed during the first Obama term that Bush-era strong-arm tactics (including the ubiquitous executive order) were not used… even as the President was bullied relentlessly by house Republicans after he lost control of Congress.
After the ‘shellacking’ he continue his obsequious placating of the far right of the Republican party. Rather than insist on defending his oft lauded centrist position he crawled ignominiously further right to placate his foes. The most annoying leitmotif of President Obama’s last four years, a recurring theme… must be his constant reference to himself as The President because if he didn’t remind you who he was… you might forget.
“I’m the president.” he tells anyone who will listen. “I’m the President!” he smiles, like JayZ might tell you he had sold more tracks on iTunes than any other artist since the Beatles. And if that sounds vaguely racist, I remind you again what Don Lemons told me about The President, “Obama is the kind of black man who looks scared of white people.”
There’s something to be said for this analysis.
Not wanting to prepare for the Presidential debate reveals Obama’s fear of the very men the rest of us want to see him stand up against: The Good ol’ Boys. The very same men who are at this moment witnessing the end of their white America, the very same white men who could not believe America would elect a black President twice. The man they had humiliated with obstructionist politics, like tripping the nigger on the side-walk… just because they could. His fear of white people coupled with the pitiful jokes, the self-deprecating bon mot.
“I was too polite.” he offered up after the first debate.
It caused radical friends to throw up their hands in fury. Barry Obama, against all the Republican odds, is President re-elect. It is up to him to start taking those who elected him seriously and not for granted. It is up to us to drag this weedy President firmly into the 21st Century.
Americans, it seems, are baying for a modern America. The cabal of white (Republican looking) social engineers who stand behind Obama (Tim Geithner et al) , using their half-black, amiable front man as a shield behind which they steal the money…. well, they need to wake up. There are too many vocal opponents to the wholesale compromise that defined Obama’s first term.
Those who supported Obama the second time around are delivering a firm rebuke. They want stuff. The white men who have been controlling Obama, offering false hope to the Latinos and the gays to motivate their base… have opened Pandora’s box… yet the evil in the box seems poisonous only to the Republicans… for the rest of us it is the liberal air we breath.
3.
A Gay Poem
by Duncan Roy 2012
Don’t let climate change ruin your gay wedding.
Don’t let staff shortages due to deportation destroy your special day.
Try not to think about drone attacks on foreign shores.
Concentrate on the $160k baby you can’t really afford, grown in the woman whose name will never be known to the unborn child.
You’re spending your bonus money on Botox and patching your 25 years old lined forehead with restylane.
Thank God you’re marrying a fellow american or ICE officers might be your groomsman.
Thank God you can get married, you’ll never be turned away from the hospital as your husband lies dying of a meth overdose.
They found him in the sauna, multiply penetrated, cream pied, still dripping, swaying gently in a sling still wearing his military boots…
Not only are you despicable for decrying gay marriage but now you have forced a black man in the highest office in the land to show his birth certificate like an undocumented worker. What now?
Now you have the evidence that Obama with his weird name is really American you have decided to challenge the authenticity of his education.
Working in tandem with Fox News, in the back pocket of Rupert Murdoch…you are as credible as anyone can possibly be who works on a fakereality TV show.
A bi-product of your unrestrained Obama hatred? The US press is finally talking about the vile racism that motivates you as well as these terrible Tea Party Republicans, these ghastly birther people. They are finally acknowledging what I have been writing for months: that these hateful people simply cannot come to terms with the fact that Obama is a black man in the White House.
His crude attacks on Obama may very well have finally focused the minds of this dumbed down, frenzied American media. Even the so-called intelligent press jumped on the Birther conspiracy band wagon. Now, like guilty children they stand back from the story embarrassed that they had anything to do with it in the first place.
Let us not forget that rotting at the very heart of this ‘news’ story are the mutilated bodies of countless black men, women and children whose enslavement, torture and death white supremacists like Trump, Limbaugh et al still gloat over.
Hung drawn and quartered, their bodies swing in trees for all to see. This is exactly what is happening now. An intellectual lynching. I say again, these white, resentful fools are determined to undermine this President, not because he is a bad President but because he is black.
Fuck you Donald Trump. Fuck you.
Robby and I walked on the beach yesterday. The Little Dog was bitten (not badly) by a three-legged terrier. He was terrified and screamed like a baby. He is a bit traumatized today. Keeping close to me. The wound is healing.
I cooked a huge pasta dish for dinner and we sat on the terrace in the warm night air talking about the origins of Christianity. The origins of the myth of Jesus and the pagan stories that fed into that myth. After a while Robby went quietly to his room. I asked if he was ok.
He said, “It’s like finding out that Father Christmas is a lie.”
He was really perplexed, his faith in the literal teaching of the Bible has been shaken.
This morning Juan came for breakfast to discuss his food truck idea. We drank coffee and looked over the ocean. The sea is calm. Elsewhere tornadoes are raging through communities in Alabama.
I am thinking about the idea of mid-life crisis. Will expand on this when I know what I want to say.
Fuck You John McCain for telling the world that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a ‘sad day’. This is a small step toward equality for gay people in the USA. One Small Step.
The Senate vote is a vindication of Obama‘s decision to push for congressional repeal as opposed to unilateral executive action, though activists note he could have done both.
I am in Whitstable at my friend Carol’s house. She is having a huge party. It is thumping loudly in the cellar as I write. I know everyone in the house..everyone. This is small town living and I love it. Carol’s handsome son is a chef and has made delicious food.
They are downstairs drinking vodka and gin. They are listening to Senegalese music. They are eating the food and clapping and we are all wearing false moustaches.
I fell asleep.
At 5am I woke up and wandered downstairs to see what was going on and ended up with some good-looking 33-year-old. Really sexy man..blue eyes, hairy tummy.
I have been thinking a great deal about the life I left behind in LA. I wrote to a man I see around town called Dan Halstead..a manager. At his behest I wrote a little note explaining what has been going on with my health…sooner or later I will write in-depth here about the tumor..anyway, I wrote explaining everything and I received a two-word reply. I wondered why I even bother?
Before, before the show, before Jake, before returning to my home town..I would have been disappointed. Now, I just think it’s funny. His constipated reply made me laugh.
LA, NYC, LONDON…Sydney. The list goes on. I wish I could start again. Just like I did when I got sober. I started again and everything was new. Born Again.
The truth is: I am so disconbobulated that I don’t know where I should be.
Earning so much money these past months from selling art that I presently have no financial worries…but you know as well as I do…the drama, the interminable drama continues.
I could really do without what has been happening this past year.
Left a message for Phil to call me. When she returned my call I couldn’t bring myself to speak with her. It’s fucked up. Yet, I have held onto her for many years (for all the wrong reasons) so that she too becomes just part of the narrative. The unfolding drama of my life.
On a good note I have been speaking to writers informally about our project. I think the majority understand what the film is about. Most of them get it but can any of them write it?
I am really enjoying watching British TV. Good political debate, fresh ideas and very little tabloid sensationalism. The news, when not competing for ratings, does as it is meant to: inform impartially.
Thinking a great deal about AA and my other 12 Step programmes and how much time I have wasted adhering to a programme that looks to all the world like some kind of white country club. There’s more to mine there, these thoughts about my cultish AA.
Really want to get back to a time where I was free of resentment. It is a gruelling, miserable state of affairs. Every fucking day my loathing is renewed.
Have a great deal to sort out and the only way I think I can sort any of it, overcome the profound sense of loss is to create..make something useful.
