Alec Baldwin v Liz Cheney: this week's battle of the bigots
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Version 0 of 1. I could be wrong about this, but my instinct is that Alec Baldwin doesn't hate gay people. I know he keeps losing his temper and yelling derogatory terms in the street and on Twitter – last week, he denied saying the fag bit of "cock sucking fag" to a photographer, but was still chastised by MSNBC, his employer. Before that, he called a reporter a "toxic little queen", for which he also apologized. It's probably just a matter of time before he falls off the wagon again. Baldwin, who I interviewed last weekend, should know better of course, but as a general point, as public use of homophobic language becomes less socially acceptable, so its potency diminishes. One understands that the main person Baldwin damages in these episodes is not gay people, but himself. (And actually, if any of the toxic little queens I know and love should care to put down what they're doing and engage with Mr Baldwin, I wish him great good luck in that exchange. As these outbursts show, without Tina Fey taking care of his dialogue, he's about as funny as an angry guy with a foot in his mouth.) More offensive and potentially more damaging are subtler variants on discriminatory language, on which topic, two interesting things this week: Liz Cheney's appearance on Fox News, and Lamar Kendrick's complaint about his treatment in an interview in GQ. After the supreme court's landmark decisions earlier this year giving those in same sex-marriages the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, gay rights, like feminism and civil rights before it, is probably transitioning from second to third wave, something its defenders will have to learn to accommodate. It's a tricky moment in any political movement, when legislative advances enable antagonists to say: what are you complaining about? Everything's fixed. So it was for a while in women's rights advocacy, when the term "post-feminism" was bandied about by those generally hostile to women, and, after Obama's first election, when civil rights activists had to deal with their detractors suggesting they pipe down and stop complaining now there was a black man in the White House. Eh voila, no more racism. Bigotry in these cases doesn't go away, of course, it just becomes more finely coded. So it was on Sunday when Liz Cheney appeared on Fox News to talk about her run for the Wyoming Senate seat. She didn't call anyone a cock sucking fag. But her affirmation in the "traditional definition of marriage" was couched in a language more pernicious and offensive than Baldwin's buffoonish outburst. After Mary, her gay sister who is married with children, protested, Liz Cheney clarified to the New York Times: "I love my sister and her family and have always tried to be compassionate towards them. I believe that is the Christian way to behave." There's nothing worse than someone who wishes you ill couching it in the creepy language of Christian "compassion" with its implication of "forgiveness". As my colleague, Ana Marie Cox, wrote this week, the Cheney family's acceptance of Mary would seem to be "the kind of acceptance one has for a family member with a disability". In this case, clearly, a moral disability. Over at GQ, meanwhile, the magazine found itself accused of racial stereotyping when Kendrick Lamar, the rap star on the cover of its current issue, complained through his record company about his treatment in the interview. Lamar was featured in the magazine by virtue of being chosen as one of GQ's Men of the Year and the magazine confessed itself "mystified" by his management's angry statement, not least, said the editor, because the offending piece was "incredibly positive". It was and it wasn't. "Kendrick doesn't smoke weed or drink booze," runs a typical line from the piece. "In the time I spent with him, I never witnessed anyone roll even the thinnest spider leg of a jay, nor did I see Kendrick so much as glance at the many, many girls around him." Complaints that the journalist focused too much on "drama" are the usual PR guff, but charges of the story's "racial overtones" and "lazy comparisons" hold up. Whether or not malice was intended, the language purports to do one thing – praise – but in reality, reinforces the idea that as a black rapper, Lamar is remarkable not just for his talent, but because he clears the bar of not smoking crack or running around pinching women's arses. Liz Cheney would almost certainly be moved to treat him with compassion. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |