From the ‘Revisionist-History’ file, Newsweek (Aug. 13) reports that the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which is called ‘The Scroll’ (because the Beat author, for his own peculiar reasons, taped the typed sheets together into a 120-foot roll), is being published. The first editors censored it heavily. Kerouac came out with a devilish slightly bisexual aura, but in The Scroll he and friends Neal Cassady and poet Allen Ginsberg spend the famous cross-country trip ‘hook [ing] up’ with one another, not to mention picking up male hitchhikers for more of the same. It’s much gayer than all those ’50s readers could have dreamed of.
Is Newsweek channeling The Advocate? The same issue as the one above talks about the new gay superhero Thom Creed, who in a young adult fantasy published by Disney (whodah thunk?), falls for another gay superhero and, incidentally, saves the world. Is this all the culmination of the thoughts of psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, who (in 1954) said that Robin and all those other characters in tights promoted homosexuality?
Also in the same issue, Newsweek tells us of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s relationship with queer folk. She seems, they say, ‘…eager to bask in gay love.’ She’s going to a forum or two to talk about gay topics but may run into a problem: Activists are ‘tired of happy talk about equality and want to see results.’
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg once again takes on the Westburo Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., in the newspaper’s Aug. 6 issue. The church (with all of 12 members) believes that all problems in modern America stem from the coddling of homosexuals. They picket military funerals, you know? They’re going to picket the funerals of the victims of the Minnesota bridge collapse. (The only, really obscure connection between bridges falling and homosexuality is that the book The Bridge of San Luis Rey was by gay author Thornton Wilder.) Steinberg points out that ‘…Westboro is also the logical end of where a thousand [anti-gay] lawmakers across the country would nudge us, all in the name of a more moral society.’
One hates to be another P.R. agent for gay blogger Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr., a.k.a. Perez Hilton a.k.a. ‘The Queen of All Media,’ but if The New York Times (July 29) can do it, so can we. Hilton says anything he wants about celebrities and many people (fans? detractors?) listen to him. He’s big on pointing out ‘excessive drinking, promiscuity or denying homosexuality.’ He hosts two TV shows, is doing a book and has hired his family to help him. His quick rise, he says, is to take advantage of the fact that he may be ‘… yesterday’s news next year.’
R.I.P., Zaza. The New York Times (Aug. 1) reports the death of actor Michel Serrault, who became known worldwide as the tempermental drag queen Zaza (Albin by day) in the original film version of La Cage aux Folles. He may have been straight in real life but he scored big points for gay tolerance.