Yes, it's fascinating, and seems informed - though can anyone check any of his allegations from 50/60 years ago?
Is its popularity with some, perhaps, because its subtext could be; "It was basically The Gays, you know"?
It's a very, very long article written off the back of Jimmy Savile being accused of sexually assaulting 300 girls.
So why does he only really write about some well-known and long-dead gay men?
Could O'Hagan's argument not be summarised by these lines from Jim Davidson writing on his blog, ironically published at about the same time that the LRB piece was published.
"To me [Savile] was just another pervert.
There are lots of them in Showbiz. There seems to be more gay ones than straight, but that's because there are probably more gays in showbiz than most professions."
Same argument, less fancy words, more simply put...
Posts
he O'Hagan piece is junk. It's a collection of spurious points - loads of men on the Brighton beach were reading a book that touched on paedophilia??? Wow, what like when loads of people were reading Lolita? Were they all paedos too? - he keeps on going back to Gamlin who had "boys" regularly at his London flat; yet it says they visited him there or were rent boys, so they could well have been mid or even late teens considering the views of homosexuality at the time; he doesn't ask the man whose testimony he's relying on how old they were or seemed. He just lets the suggestion that they were "young" stand on its own. And the man even says that the "young boy" who he had a coffee with probably thought Gamlin would give him a job; so how young can he have been? - the last quote of that biographer summed up the whole article to me: "He (Gamlin) was an actor wasn't he? Part of a BBC paedo ring, I presume".
ReplyDelete"I presume" would have been a good title for the whole piece.
He kept going back to Gamlin again and again. It read like a good bit of research about a single (gay) person - who may have had sex with and exploited underage boys or may have just liked younger men - that was padded out with a lot of guff.
The Joan Bakewell quote where she says "The homosexual element was murkier. You just didn’t hear about it": does she mean murkier as in it was unknown or murkier as in darker and more exploitative. The second sentence seems to suggest it was just unknown, in the shadows as one would expect, but it's just left there in the piece to suggest that the gay "element" was full of paedophilia.
And why doesn't he write more about "Uncle Mac"? His vileness and the abuse he inflicted on children seems far more certain and there are various people who have attested to his crimes, but he just glides over him and instead focuses on Gamlin even though there's absolutely nothing concrete presented in his piece against Gamlin.
It's fucking depressing that this bunk is being forwarded all round twitter and now the FOF as some kind of paragon of journalism.
wow. exactly how i felt, after the half a day it took to finish it.
Deleteyes, he was belabouring the young boy bit. not just boy, or teen, or adolescent. but young boy. we get it andrew. we do.
i'm sorry but there can be a world of difference between a sexually pro-active 14/15yr old boy and a prepubescent young boy. i was once a 14yr old hormonally driven teen boy, a sexually predatory one too, exclusively hunting out much older guys, because that's the kind i was attracted to. that said, it doesn't excuse the guys for taking me up on my generous offer. and yes, ultimately i was the more exploited. regardless, i knew what i wanted.
joan almost certainly only meant murkier in the sense of obscure.
is he saying kenneth williams was in fact a paedophile…but only when he got a sniff of hubbly-bubbly plpes or a kiddie in a fez?
the joe orton revelation was depressing; and i suppose we can add ginsberg, william s. burroughs, kerouac, tennessee williams as well because they also went to morocco. hey, they're dead so who cares.
it really was a different time. i remember the mandy smith bill wyman relationship in the 80's, she was only 13 or 14 and the press was mildly tutting, whilst giving a nudge and a wink, but mostly just laughing at the silly old fool. now if it had been an adolescent boy….
btw, just as a disclaimer, because this topic is a fucking minefield -- remember stephen fry's notorious flight from blighty -- in no way do i endorse paedophilia …personally i still strongly prefer guys mid30's to early 40's. but you'll just have to take my word for it.
Quite right.
DeleteThere are so many clearly ludicrous claims in the LRB piece that people are leaving unchallenged, but such is the nature of moral panics and witch hunts.
LRB readers probably snort at Sun readers "who believe everything they read", but they don't question balls in something like this.
Also, it's instructive - I think - that the only allegation against Savile the police ever investigated was the only one from a boy - at the Jersey childrens' home...