Tuesday, December 01, 2009

We Get It Lambert-You're Gay


Pictured above-Adam Lambert, engaging in a good old-fashioned, wholesome act of simulated oral sex with one of his dancers during his performance at the American Music Awards.


While things like Kick A Ginger Day and Kick A Jew Day are thankfully rare events in American public schools, Kick A Gay Day is a pretty much on-going event, occurring randomly and seemingly with more spontaneity than thoughtful design. That's why I don't have a lot of sympathy for Adam Lambert and his disingenuous claims of double standards and discrimination in the American entertainment business. Yes, what he says is true, but that's beside the point. It is especially beside the point when you consider that people like Lambert would be right on the bandwagon calling for someones head if they dared say something deemed racist or homophobic. They would demand a public apology and if the apology was forthcoming, they would still be demanding the offending person be fired, such as Don Imus, or blackballed, such as Mel Gibson, etc.

So, yeah, Lambert, cry me a river. Frankly, I didn't care myself that Lambert kissed his keyboard player during his performance at the American Music Awards. Nor did I care that he engaged in a simulated act of oral sex with one of his dancers, who appeared to be giving Lambert a blow job right in the middle of the performance.

Now, after days of denials, charges, and counter-charges, in which Lambert refused to issue any sort of apology, explaining that he is "not a babysitter" but an entertainer, he finally admits he might have gone too far and promises from now on to focus first on his music.

Fine, but I still think he's lying about the whole thing being spontaneous. The kiss with the keyboard player, okay, that might, just possibly might, have been spontaneous. The whole thing with the dancer-sorry, I don't buy it. Dancers live, eat, and breathe choreography, and something like that would throw a dancer off his stride big time. Granted, a good dancer would recover pretty quickly, maybe faster than the eye could catch it, but it would still obviously be a big risk to take. Too big a risk. All it takes is for the slightest thing to go wrong, and it can lead to all kinds of mishaps, as witness J-Lo's fall, earlier in the same show, from the back of a dancer who's back was just a bit too sweaty for the aging cow to dance on and gracefully slink to the floor from.

And then there's ABC. Please spare me. Like they didn't know this was going to happen. Although I didn't watch Lambert's performance, I was going to and fro from one room of the house to another doing things when I caught the announcement, something to the effect that Lambert's up-coming performance would be one that "you will never forget", according to the announcer, who had a glint of mischievous menace in his eyes.

Yeah, right I said to myself, and went about my business. I didn't know about all the controversy until the next day, but earlier in the show, I did catch that flaming ass-hat Perez Hilton winking salaciously at the camera as he strongly implied that he did something with some guy in the bathroom. Where are all the apologies from ABC over that? Of course, there were none, because Lambert's performance got the lion's share of the complaints.

Since then, most of the talk has been about "the kiss", while very little has been said about the far more indefensible blow job. Naturally, as the kiss can be compared to the one between Madonna and Britney that appeared on a previous awards show a few years back. Lambert's oral sex simulation routine is, so far as I know, wholly unprecedented. So why bring it up? Concentrate instead on the kiss, which gives grounds for charges of a double-standard that at least gives the network some breathing space, and grounds for defense.

In the meantime, gay kids across America are yet again denied the potential for a positive role model, and are once more laughing stocks, and potentially targets for yet more abuse, all at the same time. In a world that sees The Folsom Street Fair as the descriptive embodiment of homosexuality and the gay lifestyle, can't there just be one gay person of fame and accomplishment who doesn't have to act like a flaming faggot for all the world to see, and that we should all like it or lump it?

I mean, come on, every group has some role models they can point to for the benefit of their kids, except that is for gay kids. Who do they have that they can point to with pride? Ellen? Ok, maybe for the lesbian girls, but who else. Rosie O'Donnell? Barney Frank? Who the fuck would want that piece of shit hanging on his bedroom wall?

Of course, the reason for all this is pretty plain-in order to be a positive role model as a homosexual performer-or civic leader, or politician, etc.-that would entail saying, "oh, by the way, I'm a homosexual and I support and promote gay rights", and otherwise pretty much just shutting the fuck up about it. You know, the way Lambert pretty much kept coy and quiet about it while he was still a contestant on American Idol. Just sing, dance, do your civic duty, do your job, whatever it is, like everybody else, and act like you're halfway human, as opposed to a cartoon-or a poster child for the Sodom and Gomorrah Travel Bureau.

But then again, that would be contradictory to the philosophy that insists that gays, in order to promote gay issues, have to make a spectacle of themselves. And they wonder why most people are opposed to gay marriage rights, and why more and more people such as myself increasingly fail to give a damn about it.

2 comments:

Rufus said...

After Wanda Sykes said she's gay I don't remember her ever talking much about it. Also Anderson Cooper's pretty low key, although I guess he's "in the closet", sort of.

I think where I'd disagree here is that it's not as if straight pop singers shut up about their sex lives. I mean, that's pretty much Brittney Spears's entire act. S

SecondComingOfBast said...

That's a fair point. I guess what bothers me about it is there doesn't seem to be any real well known gays that people can point to as just a regular person type, let alone a "role model". I didn't know Wanda Sykes was gay, to tell you the truth, and though I know there are some, such as the guy from Grey's Anatomy, there aren't any really big entertainers on the order of Britney.

I know it isn't fair. Gays have as much a right to be ass-hats as any other group, and frankly I get sick to death of hearing about how people should act in certain ways for the good of the children. I just think it's unfortunate that somebody that has the potential to be a really big star, and a really big potential influence, for a sub-culture that has so very little it can point to, has to do this.

But even that I could look over to a point, but he had to go then and start complaining about double standards and what not, when of course he was obviously purposely courting controversy the whole time.

I'm as mad at ABC as I am at him for trying to pretend like they didn't know it was going to happen. Well, they may not have, but the show's producers and staff sure knew it was going to happen, so why don't they step up and take some responsibility? I mean, if they think this kind of stuff is all right, then they should own it. Otherwise they're just like a bratty little kid that puts the others up to doing something and then goes running with the finger pointing and the blame game.