Mark Twain: One Hundred And Eighty!

Happy birthday, Mark, you old ped. x

'Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.'

Chronicle of Young Satan.

PS How could you not realise Mark Twain was gay? Larry Kramer.

Stonewall: White Riot

LOL etc.

Made by Ben Dwork.

PS It's all been kicking off Stateside over this, with some calling for a boycott - even though they've only seen the trailer.

Larry Kramer responded; 'Don’t listen to the crazies. For some reason there is a group of ‘activists’ that insists on maintaining their prime importance and participation during this riot.

'Unfortunately, there seems no one left alive to say ‘it wasn’t that way at all,’ or ‘who are or where the fuck were you?''

What a rude old cunt he is, eh?

If your Grindr profile says “No fats, no fems, no Asians, no Blacks, and no guys over 30”, you will love Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall.

— Sam Kalidi (@samkalidi) August 13, 2015

History: Kramer Vs Evidence

Gay-rights activist and award-winning author Larry Kramer is 79 and in failing health, but that won’t defuse the impact of his latest bombshell project: the first 800-page instalment of a two-part history of America that tells of the secret gay life of figures from Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Richard Nixon.

The American People: Volume 1, subtitled Search for My Heart, has taken nearly 40 years to complete and may prove to be one of the most provocative historical, or pseudo-historical, accounts of American history.

Kramer, who is co-founder of Aids services group Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (Act Up), as well as a chronicler of queer life with plays including The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me, said the book is a labour of love designed to counter what he feels to be the exclusion of gays – or gay life – from history books...

From tomorrow's time-travelling Observer.

Can't wait to read this, sounds an absolute hoot.

In fine...

The American People, Volume I: Search for My Heart is causing consternation among historians, who say there is little evidence to back Kramer’s claims.

Ron Chernow, author of an epic 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton – the statesman Kramer claims was at least bisexual if not entirely gay – cautions against “ransacking history in service of a political agenda”.

Kramer also claims that John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln not because he was unhappy that the South was losing the civil war, but because Lincoln had spurned him.

“You only have to look at photographs of Wilkes and [co-conspirator] Lewis Powell to see that they’re full of their own beauty. We call it gaydar – the thing straight historians don’t have. Or take Mark Twain. He had a huge gay life.”

Kramer has a history of initiating high-profile disputes. He had a war of words with Tony Kushner over acknowledging Lincoln’s orientation in his screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 biopic of the civil war president.

...

The American People is likely to rankle with historians as there is no evidence many of historical figures were gay. He claims Lincoln biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin became “hysterical” at the suggestion of homosexual tendencies in the president but this was, he added, “only because she didn’t write it first”.

The book, which has been labelled as a novel to avoid legal complications, has divided US reviewers. LGBT magazine The Advocate said that at points in Kramer’s book “the reader will feel like the audience at Springtime for Hitler”.

Time for your nap, Aunty Kramer?

Update: Guardian interview with Larry The K.

Larry Kramer: On Activism

Successful activism is about being angry enough and loud enough to be heard. Choose your issues and your targets, and go after them in any way you think you can. ACT UP chose drugs into bodies. We knew little about the many things we had to learn enough about to be successful, so we taught ourselves. Identify your enemies and go after them with threats. Numbers are nice but one person stationed holding a poster up in a strategic location can be effective. You must not be afraid to be obnoxious or to concern yourself with what others might think of you, particularly other gays. You have a mission. You must care passionately about this mission and make it clear and concise. Do not water it down by including too many items on your agenda. This is not all that complicated. Anger, passion, and volume are your weapons. We all have these within us. The courage to let it come out is the necessary frosting for this cake. Be bold. You’d be surprised how strong you are capable of being.

From a lengthy interview with Andrew Holleran in The Advocate.

Shame the state-serving goons who've hijacked the name 'Queer Nation New York' don't take this advice.

The Normal Heart: Kramer Vs Streisand

His [Larry Kramer's] efforts to get a movie made of “The Normal Heart” were delayed by jousting with Barbra Streisand, who had the film rights for years. He admitted to demanding “a lot of money” and that the story be told his way. Ms. Streisand has said she couldn’t raise the money; in Mr. Kramer’s telling, she also expressed discomfort about the subject of gay sex.

“I said, ‘I really think it’s important that after eons of watching men and women make love in the movies, it’s time to see two men do so,’ ” he said. “I bought her a book of very beautiful art pictures of two men making love, and she found it very distasteful.” In response, Ms. Streisand released a statement saying her intention for the movie was “to promote the idea of everyone’s right to love. Gay or straight!”

“Larry was at the forefront of this battle and, God love him, he’s still fighting,” she said. “But there’s no need to fight me by misrepresenting my feelings. As a filmmaker, I have always looked for new and exciting ways to do love scenes, whether they’re about heterosexuals or homosexuals. It’s a matter of taste, not gender.”

Referring to the gay couple at the center of “The Normal Heart,” she added: “I was trying to reach a large audience, and I wanted them to root for these two men to get married.”

Mr. Murphy initially used his own money to buy the rights, Mr. Kramer said, “which shows how much he wanted to do this, and how tacky it sort of is that Barbra never would think of something like that.”

New York Times.

The famously curmudgeonly Mr Kramer, there.

Fagburn wouldn't be surprised if his account is a complete distortion. 

The Normal Heart airs in the US on HBO Sunday.

The Normal Heart: Beats At Last

Here's the full trailer for HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart
Directed by Ryan Murphy of the rather different Glee fame, and starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons and Julia Roberts, it airs on May 25th in the US.
Awards ceremonies here we come!

• And here's a very thorough article from Hollywood Reporter on the 30-year saga to get the movie made.

An Open Letter To Larry Kramer: Shut The Fuck Up

Dear Mr. Kramer,

First off, let me personally and sincerely thank you for your art, activism, and anger. I want to congratulate you and everyone involved with A Normal Heart on its success and your much-deserved Broadway run. As a young high school student from Wyoming, I used a monologue from A Normal Heart for college scholarship auditions. The scholarship I received from Whitman College allowed me to get the hell out of Wyoming in 2000. In more ways than one, your life’s work has without a doubt saved my life. Thank you for that.

With that being said, I respectfully ask you to shut the fuck up about the tragedy of my generation. I have listened to your speeches, essays, and interviews over the last decade and while I agree with so much of what you say about the joy of being gay, about the hatred that exists for people of difference, about the nature of our oppression, I cannot sit idly by as you continue to ignore my generation’s contribution to the history of LGBTQ folks...

J Ricky Price writes an open letter to Uncle Larry in The New Gay.
Here's the recent Salon interview with Kramer it was written in response to - though "It's not as good as the olden gays" is a long-running riff from Kramer, who often comes across as a terrible snob.
It was announced today that the Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's Aids play, The Normal Heart, has received five Tony Award nominations.

Thought For The Day: Larry Kramer

"I am a gay person before I’m anything else. I’m a gay person before I’m a white person, before I’m a Jew, before I’m a writer, before I’m American, anything. That is my most identifying characteristic and I don’t find many people who would say that. The polls say the same thing: People do not identify themselves as gay. And that’s too bad. In fact, it’s tragic. It will prevent us from ever having what we deserve, I believe."

Larry Kramer, in an interview with Salon.

Stephen Fry: The Wolf Is At The Door

Can there be any more dispiriting trick in the journalists' lexicon than to start a column with the word "So"?
"So Stephen Fry has been in the midst of a whirlwind of condemnation for his remarks in an interview for a gay magazine in which he seemed to say that women — unlike gay men — don’t actually enjoy sex, and have sex only to secure relationships..."
Naomi Wolf writes in The Sunday Times - regardless of the fact Stephen Fry did not say that.
But after siezing the wrong idea, she then proceeds to take it for a walk.
Are some of her best friends gay?
You betcha!
If you believe Naomi, she was cruising the Castro in the Seventies...
"I remember hearing this oddly jingoistic notion — that gay men were the ones who really 'got it' about men and sex, and women had no clue and were just going through the motions — from a few gay men in the Castro district of San Francisco in the early 1970s."
It's such a cavalcade of nonsense it would be cruel to pick points in it.
But here's a highlight; "To state the obvious, women don’t tend to “cottage” because they can get raped and beaten up..."
To state the obvious gay men most often get beaten up when they are "cottaging" or "cruising".
Nor do they do it in inverted commas.
I could go on.
To be fair to Wolf, later in the week she did recant somewhat.
By adding the line; "To be fair to Fry, later in the week he did recant somewhat..."
Suffice to say that Wolf quotes two gay men approvingly; "the cutting edge" Andrew Sullivan and the "prophetic" Larry Kraymer.
It would be hard to find two bigger right-wing gay house trained homophobes - the "good" gays - apart from Mark Simpson, of course.
I. Give. Fucking. Up.