Secretly Ironic

Tuesday night I saw the Bravo lineup of gayness: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, then Boy Meets Boy, then more Queer Eye.

Boy Meets Boy, the most frivolous of them all, is perhaps the one with the most redeeming social value. Sure, it’s a mean-twist dating show, but on the other hand, it really forced me to examine my preconceptions. I kept expecting the suitors to be having rampant casual sex, or for the ‘leading man’ to sleep with each of them to see which he preferred in bed. But he spent a lot of time talking about values and relationships and emotions. Then there was one boy who actually said, honestly, “well, you know, you’re a great guy, but I’m not feeling the kind of electric connection I had hoped for. I’d love to be friends but I don’t think we should date.” He basically kicked himself off the show– I was thinking, dude, how could you NOT LIE! There’s fame and money at stake here! But they were all quite honorable and friendly. Although two of the suitors are definitely starting a romance of their own. Still, I couldn’t help but note the serious reinforcement of heteronormative values: one guy got tossed for having a sometime-boyfriend back in NYC. And of course there’s no real talk about maybe picking two of the suitors or any of that.

Queer Eye is also real reinforcement of heteronormative values (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you). All the straight slobs are trying to learn how to shape up for their girlfriends and wives. But for the most part, it’s frivolous and doesn’t examine stereotypes: just some fairies come and make the house neat and trim your nose hair. Half of it is pimping for West Elm and DWR and the value of back-waxing.

What I’d like to see is “Butch Eye for the Straight Girl” in which five sensible-shoe-wearing lesbians arrive in a Volvo station wagon to the Bridget-Jones apartment of some ditzy fashion-victim girl, educate her about dioxins in bleached tampons and the medical establishment’s sexism, teach her how to play folk songs on the guitar, and help her dress for comfort rather than to please others, and show her how not to care about body image, and learn to love herself as she is. Then she’d go out for coffee with her female friends and not talk to any of the boys or care about them, and just be self-sufficient for once.

There’s yet another psychology study claiming Bush is a nutter. But most of us knew that already. He’s as crazy as … well, significant portions of the political fringe, and probably significant portions of the world as well.

This isn’t the first study looking at Bush’s actions for hints of pyschological frailty, mining the rich territory of alcoholism, manichean fundamentalism and warmongering, the insistence on loyalty and uniformity. And of course he’s not the first leader of the world to go nuts, either. Look at Rome.

In seventh grade, my history teacher Mr. Dupree told us how the US was a lot like the Roman Empire– how we were living in the glory days and it would all go downhill from here. The first Gulf War was beginning and the enemies of our Nation-State were gathering strength. Probably not the best thing to teach seventh graders, to be honest. I spent weeks having trouble sleeping, thinking the world really was going to end, that we were going to lose a war and that I would personally suffer for it in some inexplicable and awful way.

Perle, the Prince of Darkness, is getting away with… well, with dodging accusations and not really coming clean. I don’t doubt that there’s something fishy here, but it’s not been proven– nor, I’m afraid, is it likely to be examined in any detail.

Election-committee control means election control. It doesn’t matter who casts the ballots: it matters who counts them. Well, I guess we’re fucked.

Nickel and Dimed shouldn’t be that controversial. It certainly presents only one point of view, but if a college doesn’t help students get around that, then it’s not much of a college. Besides, those privileged college kids have already seen the other side of the story.