Evan Davis: Slut Praising

This was the big scandal while we were away.

Evan Davis made a light-hearted passing reference on Newsnight to gay sluttery, and some gaybores went on Twitter and whined about it.

Wow!

PS Mind you the whole tedious storm in a dating app did inspire a rare moment of humour from Pink News.

Chuka Umunna: He's Never Married

If you thought that a Tory majority government ostensibly being led by a moderniser might dull the instincts of social conservatives then think again. Conservative Woman founder and co-editor Laura Perrins has dedicated an entire post to her assertion that Labour leadership candidate Chuka Umunna not being married, errrr, “sets off alarm bells”.

Those wondering why Perrins never paused to consider whether this is any of her business should familiarise themselves with her oeuvre for the Telegraph and Catholic Herald, among others:

“You back gay marriage? Polygamy is fine then”
“Dave is comfortable with marriage, especially gay marriage”
“I deplore gay or straight surrogacy”
“Mothers are needed to save the family, not the economy”

From today’s piece:

“If Mr Umunna has been dragging his heals [sic] over his decision to get hitched it means one of three things. It could mean he is lazy and is not bothered with getting married; it could mean he is unromantic and ‘does not see the point of getting married’ (as is the way in the hip liberal North London set); or, he is a narcissist and he thinks no woman is really good enough for him. None of these traits is attractive."

This is bad enough when taken at face value. But could it actually be something far more sinister: namely a dog-whistle attack?

Some of the comments below the piece might suggest so...

Political Scrapbook.

Whatever, Chuka appears to be quite the ladies' man, but clearly still ripe for othering.

PS See also David Aaronovitch in The Times Thursday, Memo To Labour: We're all metrosexual now.

Even before Chuka Umunna had made his Swindon video and declared his candidacy for the Labour leadership, he had been declared geographically ineligible for the job. John Mann, the tweeting member for Bassetlaw (where Nottinghamshire cuddles up to South Yorkshire) said last Friday that Mr Umunna could not win in the north. The following day my fellow columnist Janice Turner, having asked whether Labour was still a party for the working class, described Mr Umunna as “a preening metrosexual who’d never cut it in the north”.

The Guardian: And A Very Informative Article About Rimming...

As many groups across the globe have worked to stop the [metaphorical anti-gay] violence, both systemically and socially, we have seen the urge to desexualise gay men in the mainstream representations of them and make them into fathers, your neighbor, your best friend or your mailman.

This push to make gay people “just like you!” is commonly referred to as heteronormativity – or the act of making subjects fit into the gendered nuclear family and ideals associated with it. And through this process, sex becomes a distant memory. It’s put on the back-burner, and for a group whose identity is founded in sexual differences, maybe it shouldn’t be.

Maybe we should be talking about the sex gay people are having because, when we do, we figure out that they are actually not all that different – without having all of us move to the suburbs.

From the data we know that men, straight and gay and everything in between, can derive pleasure from butts – their own and other people’s. We know that women can, too, with over 43% of women having participated in analingus according to that same 2010 academic study. And according to the most recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, straight people don’t just like analingus – they like going all the way: 44% of men, and 36% of women, reported having had penetrative anal sex...

Always illuminating to see what Guardian Unlimited readers are actually reading...

Tweets Of The Day: A Very Angry Will Young

Daily Telegraph: Astonishing!

It’s astonishing, given what’s happening in the real world, that TV comedy still consigns its gays to a fictional ghetto. A remarkable (yet almost silent) change has taken place in British attitudes over the past few years. The vast majority of straight people now barely notice the gay people in their midst, and gay marriage – which would have been unthinkable not 10 years ago – looks likely to sail through Parliament with hardly a murmur.

From the Daily Telegraph.

Yes, from the same Telegraph that's spent most of this year screaming like a dying banshee against gay marriage. 
Cut to uproarious canned laughter.
This is from an article using Vicious to gallop through a short, potted history of gay characters in British TV comedy, which contradicts itself at every turn. 
The journalist, Neil Midgley, is looking forward to Vicious because he doesn't like to see gay stereotypes - so I'm not sure what he'll make of these Vicious Old Queens.
He likes his gay characters to be "normal" and "ordinary", and not "camp and effeminate".
So just like straight people, then?
Little Britain though is singled out for praise for the "delusional" character Daffyd, because - apparently - they "used it to poke fun at gay people who still tediously insist on being special and different."
Zzzz... 

Thanks to Darren. x

Thought For The Day: Richard Littlejohn

"As an early and consistent champion of civil partnerships, I can’t get too excited about the announcement that gay and lesbian couples will soon be able to get hitched in church.
"I would, however, have thought that it was a matter for the church, not the Government.
"Meanwhile, in a reaction to the story about the boarding house which turned away a gay couple, a hotelier in Hampshire has put up a sign reading: ‘Poofters welcome here!’
"This was sufficient to stir parish councillors into a fit of righteous indignation, claiming that the sign was offensive.
"To whom, I wonder? [Poofters - Fagburn]
"When I lived in trendy Crouch End, North London (before my name came up on the escape committee), there was a gay bar opposite my local which used to advertise ‘Bona Bevvies’ — in deference to Julian and Sandy from Round The Horne.
"It always raised a smile. No one took offence.
"But Mike Sacqui, of the Penny Farthing, in Lyndhurst, also received a visit from the police over his harmless notice.
"Sometimes words fail even me. There’s no limit, is there?
"Now that civil partnerships are being sanctioned in places of worship, how long before some church puts up a poster advertising: ‘Poofters welcome here!’"

Richard Littlejohn, in The Daily Mail.
You couldn't make it up etc etc.
If only words would fail you, Richard...

• The Lyndhurst hotelier claimed his "Poofters welcome here!" sign was an ironic, Little Britain-inspired, pro-gay comment on the Christian hoteliers who were fined for refusing a double room to a gay couple.
And, yes, that's the actual illustration to Richard Littlejohn's column in today's Mail.

Come Fly With Me: Plane Crash TV

Reviews of Matt Lucas and David Walliams' Come Fly With Me have been predictably stinking.
Though pointing out that the targets for their comedy are often society's victims now seems as tired and predictable as... well, as an episode of Little Britain Abroad.
In fact Come Fly With Me has a broad speculum of comic characters, from Fearghal (pictured), a campy gay air steward on a budget airline, to Moses, a campy gay "executive passenger liason officer".
Verily, as Matt Lucas has said; "All human life is there."
Currently halfway through its first series arguably Come Fly With Me's main problem is that it's just not very funny.
However The Sun today have managed to find someone to defend the show;
"David and Matt's new series is absolutely brilliant and very funny.
"I don't believe for one minute they have a racist bone in their bodies.
"They are falling victim to political correctness - just as I did. And political correctness is killing comedy."
Who be this?
None other than right-wing comedy legend and wifebeater, Jim Davidson.
Nick nick!

Comedy Double Acts: Strange Bedfellows

"Double acts have almost always had two performers of the same gender, usually male, with the most famous female one, French and Saunders, still following the model of chums with a big/little, small/tall contrast. One reason could be that audiences seem to prefer double acts to be friends or enemies (bickering is part of the shtick), without any sexual tension. Morecambe and Wise famously shared a bed in their domestic sketches, as Laurel and Hardy had before them, with the joke depending on the asexuality of this arrangement, although biographies have revealed that Morecambe expressed concerns at being thought homosexual.
"This tension has been interestingly explored in recent duos where one of the performers is gay. Stephen Fry told me that he had never felt any flicker of sexual interest in Hugh Laurie, and was relieved by this, because he felt their partnership might otherwise have collapsed. For a while, Walliams's status seemed ambiguous, meaning it was conceivable that he and Lucas could become an item. Walliams now has a wife, though – so again we have a contrast, a difference, helping to give the double act its power."

Marl Lawson explores the dynamics of comedy double acts in his Guardian column.
If Mr Lawson wasn't so tragically fugly Fagburn would ask him to marry me.

Things I Learnt Over The Weekend

I've had a cold. Looks like I didn't miss much.

1. The Guardian still can't get enough of John Waters.
Superfreak made his third appearance in The Guardian/Observer in a fortnight.
This week he's explaining What I See In The Mirror.
Answer; the body of a junky and Little Richard's moustache.
I think the thing I like most about John Waters is how he revels in bad behaviour - his own and other peoples' - and he never ever apologises.
Unlike some more stately homos...

2. Elton John is the nation's favourite scratched record.
On Piers Meets Elton, a royal command performance of sorts, Sir Elton of John wibbles on about My Drugs Hell.
Again.
I guess it takes a special kind of talent to make taking shedloads of drugs sound boring.
Forgive him great British public for he has sinned...

3. Channel 4's The House That Made Me is the new mea culpa for "troubled" gay stars.
Boy George was on it this week.
It's Michael Barrymore on Thursday.
Both once much loved working-class lads from that London who've been in a spot of bother and are desperately seeking rehab with the great British public by showing off their roots.
Boy George mused; "I'm basically a gay version of my dad.”
Gor blimey, luvaduck, apples 'n' pears, 'ave a banana!
The one thing they won't talk about is the one thing on everyone's mind; the house that ruined them.
Rachel Cooke reviewed the bad Boy George in the New Statesman; "It's hard to be surprised by anything George-related these days. It's only a couple of years, after all, since the bizarre episode that led to his conviction for falsely imprisoning a male escort. The escort in question, who eventually escaped into the street in his underpants, was Norwegian - a detail that has for some reason stuck in my mind like glue."

4. Matt Lucas isn't a bundle of laughs.
And like Boy George and Barrymore, there is one place we aren't allowed to go.
A prickly Lucas is interviewed inThe Observer Magazine.
His camp straight (comedy) partner, David Walliams, fields most of the questions.
"I make what seems a harmless enough inquiry about Lucas and he fires back that, should I report any details in this article, "I would caution you from a legal perspective right now... that you run the risk of being on the end of a lawsuit."'

5. If you are a grumpy old queen, as Quentin Crisp might have said, then turn being a grumpy old queen into your style.
The Daily Mail wonders; Who'll Save Dun Sulking: Ted Heath's home reveals an unexpected side to Britain's grumpiest PM - so why does it face being sold off?'
Apparently he never married.
"There are photographs of his devoted parents and his brother, John, but no clues as to any lady friend who might have cracked this sturdiest of bachelor hearts..."
This stately (alleged) homo's stately home sounds like the world's grandest confirmed bachelor pad.
"He had no immediate family but that is precisely why his home is such a treasure. Instead of leaving it be carved up by relatives, he left it all in a charitable trust — ranging from gifts from Mao Tse-Tung to the moneybox his father made him as a child."
So if you can't be a national treasure, then leave one to the nation.

Come Fly With Me: Is It Okay If I Don't?

Can there be a phrase more certain to strike dread into the hearts of all right-thinking people than; "Matt Lucas and David Walliams new series is due to be shown later this year"?
If anyone cares apparently Come Fly With Me is set in an airport and centres around the hilarious comings and goings at a budget airline.
So lots of opportunities for those two overgrown public school boys to sneer at working class people again.
And to poke fun at some gayers too, no doubt - almost certainly trolly dollies.
And as it's at an airport, there can be loads of those funny foreign people!
What larks.
Well probably not - if it's anything like Walliams and Lucas's last few desperate outings, it'll have less laughs than a graveyard.
Johnann Hari wasn't the first to point out that Little Britain was comedy founded on "mocking the weakest people in Britain" in his 2005 Independent article; ''Why I Hate Little Britain'.
But he probably said it best.
"Their targets are almost invariably the easiest, cheapest groups to mock: the disabled, poor, elderly, gay or fat. In one fell swoop, they have demolished protections against mocking the weak that took decades to build up."
Enjoy!

"Gay Vicar Weds Nigerian Toyboy": Readers Explode Across Middle England

Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage.
Of course they do, that's why it said so in that song.
And for the tabloids there are a few other things that are just made to go together.
Like the words "toy" and "boy", and "gay" and "vicar".
Well today the gods must have been smiling, as many papers were able to get all four words into a single headline.
As did - but of course - The Sun; 'Gay Vicar Weds Nigerian Toyboy'.
Bingo! Cue mass outbreak of Little Britain-style Tory Ladies vomiting across Middle England.
And - oh hallelujah - it also touches on two other tabloid obsessions; gay marriage, and there's a hint of "immigration scam".
And - praise be - in tabloid terms this is no ordinary "odd couple", they're not just the same sex, they're from different races and continents and - oh heaven forfend - different generations.
Or as The Daily Mail worded it; 'Gay vicar, 65, to 'marry' Nigerian male model half his age.' (Fagburn can't remember anyone being described as a "male model" since the Jeremy Thorpe trial...)
Good job too - as beyond ticking just about every box that's bound to make a bigot explode, this is more over-the-garden-wall gossip, than a news story.
Rev Colin Coward ("bearded... 65") and Bobby Egbele ("25... a model") aren't actually getting married - they can't.
They're having a civil partnership, but not in Colin's church - they can't do that either.
But they are having a "blessing-type service" in the church afterwards.
And Colin's not saying if the relationship is celibate - cause gay vicars can't do that either.
And if you read the small print in some papers he's not even a practising vicar anymore.
Confusing isn't it?
The Mirror missed the immigration angle, but - predictably - The Express didn't, though surprisingly they didn't milk it; "Bobby, a Nigerian citizen, is in the UK on a holiday visa. The couple are awaiting permission for him to remain in the country from the UK Borders Agency. This is expected to be a formality but the marriage – which means Bobby would become a UK citizen – cannot go ahead until permission is granted."
Fagburn has only seen one media source come right out and say... well; "Of course we all know it's just a sham ceremony so Bobby can get his citizenship papers. You know how those homosexuals are always exploiting marriage laws for immigration purposes."
That was Queerty - and I trust they were being ironic.
The Sun says Colin and Bobby's holy/unholy union has "stunned his flock".
But the only other person they have quoted is the in-no-way barking mad Stephen Green of Christian Voice.
Mr Green thinks the idea is "an abomination before God."
He told The Sun; ""Mr Coward is an emotionally disturbed man trying to inflict his predilections on the rest of the church. I fail to recognise him as a Christian."
Funny. A lot of people say the same thing about Stephen Green.