“General Powell,” I said, “you insist that sharing the barracks with a gay soldier would make the other men uncomfortable, but didn’t they used to say the same thing about blacks in the military?”
“Well, yes,” he replied, “ but we never told anybody we were black.”
This was the forerunner of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
WHAT DOES BILL O’REILLY REALLY WANT?
An associate producer of Fox TV’s The O’Reilly Factor, hosted by professional curmudgeon Bill O’Reilly, has accused him of sexual harassment, claiming that he pressured her to have phone sex and tried to engage her in conversations about masturbation, vibrators, oral sex, threesomes and foreplay involving a loofah, which O’Reilly also called “the falafel thing [that] I’d put on your pussy . . .” But there’s one flaming desire he didn’t bring up with her, which he did proclaim when Dan Savage was a guest on his program.
Savage writes an outrageously rational sex advice column, “Savage Love,” online and in alternative papers, from the Village Voice in New York to the Orange County Weekly in California. We met when he was a member of a panel discussion about “Sex and Humor.” I was the moderator. He referred to heteros like me as “breeders.” I have a biological daughter, but since Savage and his male partner have adopted a child, I appreciate where he was coming from.
A reader once wrote to Savage, “I am a mature teenage girl with a question for you. My brother was watching a porno site with one of his friends and claims he saw a video clip of a man sticking his entire head up a woman’s pussy! I say it’s impossible! The woman would die! My brother says that if a woman can give birth, she can get a man’s head up there. Set us straight, Dan.” It was signed, “Can U Now Talk?”
Savage replied: “If your brother wants to win this argument, CUNT”—readers know that Savage uses the initials of their pseudonyms—“all he has to do is take you to the porn site where he saw this video clip. If he can’t, well, then he’s clearly lying. As for your brother’s argument, anyone who’s taken a high school health class should be able to see through it. Baby’s skulls are small and soft, while full-grown men’s skulls are big and hard. Still, I’m reluctant to tell you that it’s impossible for a man to stuff his entire head into a woman’s pussy. There may actually be a video clip out there somewhere of a tiny man sticking his teensy head into a big woman’s huge vagina. If someone out there has a video clip of this, please do not send it to me. So let’s just file this sex act under unlikely-bordering-on-impossible.”
Promoting his book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, Savage did a guest stint on The O’Reilly Factor. He defended pot smokers and sex educators. But then Bill O’Reilly asked what he thought about gay bathhouses. O’Reilly must have already known how he would answer, since Savage has been bashing bathhouses for a decade in his column.
“And, guys,” he had written, “are gay bathhouses even necessary these days? Web sites such as gay.com have basically turned every gay man’s apartment into a virtual/potential gay bathhouse, so do we really need to go to the real thing anymore? Why eat out when you can order in?” So now, Savage answered O’Reilly, “I hate gay bathhouses, and I think they should be closed.”
O’Reilly shouted, “I want to go to a gay bathhouse!” He kept repeating it: “I want to go to a gay bathhouse! I want to go to a gay bathhouse!”
Savage recalls, “I was stunned. There I was, sitting across the table from the darling of the American right, and he was shouting at me about wanting to go to a gay bathouse. I didn’t know what to say. If Bill O’Reilly wanted to go to a gay bathhouse, well, who was I to tell him he shouldn’t?”
As if reflecting Savage’s future recollection, O’Reilly continued: “If I want to pursue happiness in a gay bathhouse, shouldn’t I be free to do that, Mr. Savage?”
Savage told O’Reilly that he was right and admitted that his urge to close gay bathhouses was inconsistent with his do-whatever-feels-good positions on drugs and sexual acts. “You win,” he said then, “but really,” he says now, “I was thinking, ‘Get me the hell away from this guy before he shouts I want to go to a gay bathhouse again!’ Picturing gay men in a gay bathhouse is revolting enough, but picturing Bill O’Reilly in a gay bathhouse? That could put a gay guy off gay sex for the rest of his unnatural life.”
If the Make-a-Wish foundation were to grant O’Reilly’s request, he would learn that in March 2004, a federally-funded study indicated that newly diagnosed HIV infections among bathhouse and sex club customers were twice as high as in the gay population and seven times higher among bathhouse patrons than in the general population. In September, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a law that would require bathhouses to obtain a health certificate, which could be revoked if patrons are permitted to indulge in unprotected sex. Now, unannounced inspections during peak hours would be allowed.
No bathhouse owners testified against the rule, although Steve Afriat, a lobbyist hired to fight tougher regulation, said, “When you start regulating whether or not people can have safe sex, maybe one day you’ll regulate whether people of the same sex can have sex with each other at all.” The Supreme Court’s recent decision on sodomy has rendered that fear moot.
When San Francisco ordered its bathhouses shut down in 1984, angry activists demonstrated at City Hall, and the city’s public health director received so many death threats that he wore a bullet-proof vest for the next few months. Unlike San Francisco, officials in Los Angeles allowed its bathhouses to remain open, but passed an ordinance requiring owners to instruct patrons in safe-sex practices, and to not only provide condoms, but also to make their use mandatory.
According to a Los Angeles County study, about 36 percent of respondents reported using drugs before going to gay bathhouses and sex clubs, which health officials say encourages unsafe behavior. Among the most widely used drugs are methamphetamine together with Viagra, a combination that loosens inhibitions and enables patrons to have sex repeatedly with different partners. One of the few gay leaders calling for more regulation is Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “The debate always seems to counterpoise civil liberties to public health,” he said. “But if you are earning money in a commercial establishment from creating a sex environment, then you should be required to make that environment as safe as possible, or you shouldn’t be allowed to operate.”
However, when an editorial in the Los Angeles Times called for the closing of sex clubs, Weinstein complained that “Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, and it won’t work for safer sex. Closing the bathhouses in San Francisco did not have a significant impact on new infections and . . . there are many places where bathhouses operate and promote safer sex.”
In July 2004, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles county health director, called for the licensing of the county’s eleven gay bathouses and sex clubs. The new rules include a requirement that require such establishments to be well-llighted so that inspectors can see what patrons are doing. Hey, isn’t that Bill O’Reilly there, the guy who’s putting on a red-white-and-blue condom?
If you search for The O’Reilly Factor on the Internet and then find the archive link to Dan Savage, you’ll notice that the second half of their interview has been erased. Instead of hearing Bill O’Reilly shout, “I want to go to a gay bathhouse,” you’ll hear three minutes of a test pattern.
When informed of this, Savage commented, “Either Bill O’Reilly doesn’t want people to think that he wants to go to a gay bathhouse, or the folks at Fox News don’t want DJs all over the world sampling O’Reilly and making ‘I Want to Go to a Gay Bathhouse!’ a dance sensation this winter in Ibiza. Well, it’s too late. I know of three or four DJs who are already hard at work on Bill O’Reilly’s breakthrough dance track. Stay tuned.”
9/11 AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ
THREATS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT
Groucho Marx said in an interview with Flash mag
azine in 1971, “I think the only hope this country has is Nixon’s assassination.” Yet he was not subsequently arrested for threatening the life of a president. In view of the indictment against David Hilliard, chief of staff of the Black Panther Party, for using similar rhetoric, I wrote to the Justice Department to find out the status of their case against Groucho. This was the response:Dear Mr. Krassner:
Responding to your inquiry of July 7th, the United States Supreme Court has held that Title 18 U.S.C., Section 871, prohibits only “true” threats. It is one thing to say that “I (or we) will kill Richard Nixon” when you are the leader of an organization which advocates killing people and overthrowing the Government; it is quite another to utter the words which are attributed to Mr. Marx, an alleged comedian. It was the opinion of both myself and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles (where Marx’s words were alleged to have been uttered) that the latter utterance did not constitute a “true” threat.
Very truly yours,
James L. Browning, Jr.
United States Attorney
At the time, I was the host of a radio talk show on ABC’s FM station in San Francisco. Naturally, I went on the air and read that letter. And then I added, “Well, I’m an alleged comedian. Kill Richard Nixon.” But I would never get away with doing something like that in these ultra-fearful times.
In July 2003, the Los Angeles Times published a Sunday editorial cartoon by conservative Michael Ramirez. Depicting a man pointing a gun at President Bush’s head, it was a takeoff on the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from 1968 that showed a Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong lieutenant at point-blank range. In the cartoon, the man with the gun was labeled “Politics” and the background was labeled “Iraq.”
“I thought it was appropriate,” said Ramirez, “because I was drawing a parallel between the politization of the Vietnam war and the current politization that’s surrounding the Iraq war related to the Niger uranium story.” He said that he was not advocating violence against Bush. “In fact, it’s the opposite.” He explained that he was trying to show that Bush was being undermined by critics who said the president overstated the threat posed by Iraq and lied in his State of the Union speech about Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to illegally obtain uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons. Bush has since admitted that the accusation was based on faulty intelligence. “President Bush is the target, metaphorically speaking,” he said, “of a political assassination because of sixteen words that he uttered in the State of the Union. The image, from the Vietnam era, is a very disturbing image. The political attack on the president, based strictly on sheer political motivations, also is very disturbing.”
Nevertheless, the cartoon was enough to prompt a visit the next day by a Secret Service agent who asked to speak with Ramirez. He was turned away by an attorney for the Times. The agent had called Ramirez and asked if he could visit. Ramirez assumed it was a hoax and jokingly said yes.
“How do I know you’re with the Secret Service?” he had asked.
“Well,” replied the agent, “I’ve got a black suit and black sunglasses and credentials.”
“Sure, come on down, and make sure you bring your credentials.”
The agent arrived half an hour later. However, in an interview by Brooke Gladstone on WNYC radio, Ramirez said, “The firestorm began actually with Matt Drudge’s report on Sunday evening, which was a little interesting because he had the headline on his report that said that I was being investigated by the Secret Service. And I really wasn’t contacted by the Secret Service until the next morning at 10:30.”
Gladstone: “Sounds like he has a line in to the Secret Service.”
Ramirez: “I think Matt Drudge is with the Secret Service.”
Gladstone: “Now, threatening the president is against federal law, and it’s the Secret Service’s job to protect the president against potential threats. Do you think that Bush’s security detail should have felt threatened by your cartoon?”
Ramirez: “No, I think that this is a pretty famous image, and I think the use of the metaphor [is justified] especially in light of the fact that it really is a cartoon that favors him and his administration.”
That irony aside, if Bush were actually assassinated, then Vice President Dick Cheney would be demoted to the presidency.
Other examples of the thought police in action:
A man who shall remain anonymous sent Bush a letter saying that if he required a smallpox shot for the troops, he should get a shot himself. He was visited by a Secret Service agent.
Another man, Richard Humphreys, happened to get into a harmless bar-room discussion with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized that Bush was scheduled to visit nearby Sioux Falls the next day, and he told police that Humphreys—who was actually making a joke with a Biblical reference—had talked about a “burning Bush” and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it. Humphreys was arrested for threatening the president.
“I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush,” he testified during his trial. “I had said that before and I thought it was funny.”
Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to more than 3 years in prison. He decided to appeal, on the basis that his comment was a prophecy, protected under his right to freedom of speech.
In August, Donnie Johnston, a reporter for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrote about the trickle-down effect of such official repression:
“A few days ago, a public official called me over to his car to discuss his displeasure with the war in Iraq and the way the Bush administration is handling the nation’s economy. This well-respected man would talk only from his vehicle, saying he was fearful of criticizing the president or his policies in public. Before our conversation ended, the man told me of other public officials who also are fearful of speaking out. ‘You have to be careful what you say in public these days,’ he added. . . . Almost daily, someone informs me that he is scared of openly expressing his views. Even those who do dare to speak out do so in hushed tones, fearful of what ears might overhear. In the politically charged atmosphere that exists in America today, having the wrong person hear criticism of the government can lead to trouble. That became evident recently when an entertainer [a singer] who innocently joked that President Bush had ‘chicken legs’ was banned from performing further at Borders Books and Music in Fredericksburg.”
The nation continues to gallop toward a police state in the guise of security. And, in the process, rampant paranoia has now become our Gross National Product. Some elementary schools have even gone so far as to ban parents from bringing cameras to record their children performing in the annual Christmas pageant, because authorities are afraid that those videotapes might somehow find their way into the horny hands of breathless pedophiles.
PROPAGANDA WARS
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets are human.”
—Aldous Huxley, 1937
The capture of Saddam Hussein is serving as an orgasmic propaganda victory justifying American imperialism. But propaganda is a many-splendored thing.
Image Manipulation: George Bush gave a speech in Indianapolis to promote his economic plan. White House aides asked people in the crowd standing behind him to take off their ties so that they would look more like the ordinary folks that Bush said would benefit from his tax cut.
Demonization of Enemy: Alternet reports about the police beatings of demonstrators against corporate globalization: “For months beforehand, Police Chief John Timoney had portrayed protestors as terrorists and the gathering in Miami as a siege of the city. Not only were the public and media frightened by Timoney’s depiction of the planned protests, there’s little doubt that the police themselves buy the propaganda. Having been thoroughly indoctrinated on the threat posed by protesters, and emboldened with new quasi-military equipment, the police were, to say the least, overeager to lun
ge at protesters.”
Obfuscation of Issues: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has won the 2003 “Foot in the Mouth Award” for his comment on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “Reports that say something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Ulterior Motivation: The New York Times reports that “a leaked CIA report warned that resistance to the U.S. occupation is growing among ordinary Iraqis, leading to a new U.S. plan to speed up transfer of power to Iraqis. . . . Even long-time CIA and Pentagon operative Ahmed Chalabi is accusing Bush of letting his re-election concerns determine policy in Iraq, saying, ‘The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October [2004] for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on.’”
Covering Up Reality: Referring to the president’s surprise visit on Thanksgiving day to U.S. troops in Iraq, Mike Littwin reports in the Rocky Mountain News: “Before the press was herded into the giant hangar in advance of George W. Bush’s pep rally/photo op with the Fort Carson troops, we were given the rules. No talking to the troops before the rally. No talking to the troops during the rally. No talking to the troops after the rally. . . . But even here, or maybe especially here, a soldier or two might have, in conversation, questioned the need for the war in Iraq. This is not exactly a welcome notion in the White House. The Bush campaign has put up an ad in Iowa saying that certain of his opponents are ‘attacking the president for attacking the terrorists,’ as if opposing the war in Iraq is the same as opposing the war on terror.”
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