New Jersey Turnpike from Cody through to Old Faithful, then out the other side to West Yellowstone.
After a night under canvas in sub-freezing temperatures in Yellowstone, never my favorite park, I turned southward into the Tetons, finally entering the town of Jackson Hole, a horrible spot now favored by President Bill who told Vernon Jordan not so long ago that he much preferred it to Martha’s Vineyard, since it was impossible to get “pussy” in the stuffy Massachusetts resort. Jackson Hole probably reminds Clinton of Hot Springs.
October 9
Back in 1991, when outing was a hot topic, I wrote about the matter and got the opinions of my friend John Scagliotti, maker of the famous historical documentary Before Stonewall . The test for outing, John said, should be:
Has the person benefited from being in the closet in careerist terms, in the sense of actively pretending to be something he or she is not? There’s a difference between a passive closet, in which you simply survive and hope for the best, and the active closet, which involves putting on a heterosexual mask and promoting yourself as such, which is in ethical contradiction to your actual life. You’ve made the choice. You’re living an actual lie, bringing girls to the company ball and so on.
So, think about a gay actor who has made the decision to advance his career by pretending to be heterosexual. But by doing that he is insulting and oppressing all those who are already out. Take Barry Diller, who is in a position of enormous power at Fox. Why doesn’t he push for a gay and lesbian TV show, which I could produce, which would be a gay version of In Living Color ? Now, no one wants to out little people, gay teachers and so on—unless gay teachers are publicly anti-gay—but I would out people who are gay and yet are promoting heterosexuality.
I believe as a general proposition that people should come out. It would be better for them. But at the same time I understand that such a public coming out might hurt or confuse children, parents, etc. But just as there’s a difference between being passively and actively in the closet, you can be actively or passively out. In the former, you are publicly espousing a case, and in the latter, passive case, you are attempting to live a gay or lesbian life within the limits of what’s possible for you and not too hurtful to parents, children, etc. One of the reasons straight people don’t understand outing is that they don’t understand what it’s like to be gay. It’s all more complicated than they think.
J. Edgar Hoover used the gossip columnist Walter Winchell to out Commies. Gossip usually has a repressive function in the mainstream press, which is why outing has to remain a subterranean, countercultural activity. Yet even in the counterculture, or at the level of the off-beat and unofficial, gossip always has the twin function of being liberating—letting the sunlight in—and repressive, in the sense of exposing the personal and the private, naming names and hurting people. Gossip represents visible fault lines at the social surface, reflecting subterranean, gradual shifts in our social attitudes. Although the liberating and repressive functions are both at work, given the structure of media ownership and control, the repressive function is usually dominant.
November 6
It’s all over, thank God. The American People took one last lingering look at the options, breathed the deepest of sighs, and mostly decided to stay at home. The stay-at-homes always win.
One big factor militating in Clinton’s favor was something virtually unmentioned: the end of the cold war. For almost half a century this was all-important. A president had to demonstrate he could defend the Republic by all means necessary, including nuclear obliteration of the planet. If the Soviet Union had existed in 1992 George Bush would have been reelected.
By 1991 it was all over and America was ready for a draft-dodger in the White House.
After a night under canvas in sub-freezing temperatures in Yellowstone, never my favorite park, I turned southward into the Tetons, finally entering the town of Jackson Hole, a horrible spot now favored by President Bill who told Vernon Jordan not so long ago that he much preferred it to Martha’s Vineyard, since it was impossible to get “pussy” in the stuffy Massachusetts resort. Jackson Hole probably reminds Clinton of Hot Springs.
October 9
Back in 1991, when outing was a hot topic, I wrote about the matter and got the opinions of my friend John Scagliotti, maker of the famous historical documentary Before Stonewall . The test for outing, John said, should be:
Has the person benefited from being in the closet in careerist terms, in the sense of actively pretending to be something he or she is not? There’s a difference between a passive closet, in which you simply survive and hope for the best, and the active closet, which involves putting on a heterosexual mask and promoting yourself as such, which is in ethical contradiction to your actual life. You’ve made the choice. You’re living an actual lie, bringing girls to the company ball and so on.
So, think about a gay actor who has made the decision to advance his career by pretending to be heterosexual. But by doing that he is insulting and oppressing all those who are already out. Take Barry Diller, who is in a position of enormous power at Fox. Why doesn’t he push for a gay and lesbian TV show, which I could produce, which would be a gay version of In Living Color ? Now, no one wants to out little people, gay teachers and so on—unless gay teachers are publicly anti-gay—but I would out people who are gay and yet are promoting heterosexuality.
I believe as a general proposition that people should come out. It would be better for them. But at the same time I understand that such a public coming out might hurt or confuse children, parents, etc. But just as there’s a difference between being passively and actively in the closet, you can be actively or passively out. In the former, you are publicly espousing a case, and in the latter, passive case, you are attempting to live a gay or lesbian life within the limits of what’s possible for you and not too hurtful to parents, children, etc. One of the reasons straight people don’t understand outing is that they don’t understand what it’s like to be gay. It’s all more complicated than they think.
J. Edgar Hoover used the gossip columnist Walter Winchell to out Commies. Gossip usually has a repressive function in the mainstream press, which is why outing has to remain a subterranean, countercultural activity. Yet even in the counterculture, or at the level of the off-beat and unofficial, gossip always has the twin function of being liberating—letting the sunlight in—and repressive, in the sense of exposing the personal and the private, naming names and hurting people. Gossip represents visible fault lines at the social surface, reflecting subterranean, gradual shifts in our social attitudes. Although the liberating and repressive functions are both at work, given the structure of media ownership and control, the repressive function is usually dominant.
November 6
It’s all over, thank God. The American People took one last lingering look at the options, breathed the deepest of sighs, and mostly decided to stay at home. The stay-at-homes always win.
One big factor militating in Clinton’s favor was something virtually unmentioned: the end of the cold war. For almost half a century this was all-important. A president had to demonstrate he could defend the Republic by all means necessary, including nuclear obliteration of the planet. If the Soviet Union had existed in 1992 George Bush would have been reelected.
By 1991 it was all over and America was ready for a draft-dodger in the White House.
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