A cartoon from the Chicago Sun-Times (July 15) shows a minister marrying two men with the caption, ‘I now pronounce you domestic policy fodder for diverting attention away from any and all foreign policy failure.’
R.I.P.: The Chicago Tribune (Sept. 6) reports that dancer Willi Ninja has died of AIDS-related illnesses in New York (see related obit). Ninja influenced Madonna in her Vogue music video and also starred in the documentary Paris Is Burning. This film told of the fancy ball competitions and allowed voguing to come to the fore. ‘Ball participants are known as children of houses—improvised families that often serve as havens from hardships such as homophobia, poverty and racism [that] many members face. ‘ Ninja was 45.
Louis Sullivan, the great Chicago architect and Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor, died poverty-stricken and friendless in 1924. His reputation has climbed enormously since his death. The Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 3) reports that Chicago is preparing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Sullivan’s birth. (The Web site www.sullivan150.org lists the lectures, tours, films and other events celebrating Sullivan.) Several of his biographers suggest that Sullivan was homosexual and that this factored in both his architectural work and his downfall (extreme loneliness in a time when ‘gay’ had not been invented but suspicion of homosexuals was widespread).
The New York Times (Sept. 1) review of Ric Burns’s new four-hour flick Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film attains new heights of snarkiness. It ‘may set a record for the number of times the label ‘genius’ is applied to its subject.’ Other statements include: ‘For a while Warhol even stalked [Truman] Capote, who rejected his overtures of friendship,’ ‘With his blotched skin, bulbous nose and early hair loss (concealed under a series of bad wigs), Warhol regarded himself as a physical freak and hated to be touched,’ and ‘Although he had homosexual sex, he was essentially a voyeur.’ His films are depicted as voyeurism writ large.
From the ‘How-Strange-Is-That?’ file: The New York Times (Sept. 7) tells the story of a gay man finding a cache of photos in a local flea market. The pictures showed a group of men at a place called Casa Susanna, seemingly a haven 1950s cross dressers. They ‘looked like small-town parishioners … or your aunt in Connecticut.’ A book of these folks—some gay, some straight—was published and then details began to emerge. The casa was a dowdy bungalow camp in Hunter, N.Y., and was founded by a court translator and his wife (a wig saleslady) to serve as a weekend refuge for these cross dressers who were librarians, pilots, businessmen, a pharmocologist and at least one small-town sheriff. The pharmacologist, Virginia Prince, went on to become a founder of the transgender movement. She now lives in a retirement home, leading book discussions for other little old ladies and remembering her Casa Susanna days fondly.