The White Peril 白禍

Speaking of fags making civic-minded gestures of dubitable effectiveness, one of the higher-ups in the Stonewall Democrats chapter at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has decided that the logo for a new burger joint in town is offensive (via Advice Goddess). You've probably narrowed the reason down to just a handful of possibilities. Read the quotation below to see whether you guessed the correct PC transgression!

LSA senior Kolby Roberts, a member of the Stonewall Democrats who has led the effort, said he finds the logo's message inappropriate and offensive.

"I have a problem that you take a women riding a hamburger and you put it next to the word 'quickie,'" he said. "It just seems like it's not putting a good message out there for the objectification of women."

Please. No gay man on Earth is in any position to be complaining about others' sexually objectifying anyone. Sorry. Just, no. You can complain that it's inappropriate in a given context, but that would require more precise thinking. It would also require thinking about manners and the evolution of beneficial social mores and stuff, and you might end up saying something judgmental.

Anyway, the reason this story caught my eye, besides Amy Alkon's funny commentary, was the lameness of the complainers' reasoning:

Roberts said he believed the image was distasteful, regardless of the person.

"Basically, what it has is a provocatively dressed woman straddling a hamburger, and she's very busty and its kind of really horrible," he said.

"Kind of really horrible"? Good thing you're an engineering major, darlin', 'cause you're not doing our famed gay skill at delivering pithy witticisms any justice.

How things have degraded. Back in my college days, when dinosaurs and Massive Attack roamed free, the affronted leaders of feminist and gay student groups would at least have had some pseudo-philosophical hoodoo to make their pique sound deeply meaningful. Where's the mention of the "male gaze"? Where's the invocation of the "hostile intellectual environment"? And it's Michigan--shouldn't we be bringing Catharine MacKinnon into the act? What are they teaching kids these days?

Added on 29 March: Eric is in Ann Arbor at the moment and has checked the place out.

The story's a good week old, but considering what old news it is anyway, I don't feel all that dumb linking to it now. R.E.M. has a new album out soon, and the hype-o-rator has been on full-blast for weeks. Who knows? Maybe it really is the band's best album in over a decade, and old fans should be getting all spazzy with anticipation. (Personally, I dropped away after Automatic for the People, which to me is about as melodious and ear-pleasing as the reaction of a cat when you throw a bucket of ice water over it. I'm clearly in the minority on that one, though.)

Anyway, there's a usual flurry of interviews and photo shoots and magazine covers. GayNews reports that Michael Stipe has finally just cut the crap and identified himself as gay:

This week he told Spin magazine, "I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there."

Although Stipe has never felt the need to discuss his sexuality before, he informed the magazine that he now felt that it was important to be open and honest in order to provide understanding and hope for the younger generation.

"It was super complicated for me in the '80s. I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious."

Stipe stated that in the past he didn't see that being out could be so important for others. "I didn't always see that. But I see now, of course that's the case, of course that's needed."

Considering how fervently Stipe embraced everything else on the leftist checklist, it's kind of funny that he didn't see coming out of the closet, of all things, as being important. But I see no reason not to take him at his word. He did, after all, make a point of being uncategorizable and enigmatic about his private life--and why not?--and he's been open about being bisexual for years. If he's decided he is, in fact, gay, then sure, no reason he shouldn't be up-front about it with the public if he likes.

I'm not sure the announcement will have the effect of "helping some kid out there," though. Gay kids already know that it's possible to be an open homosexual if, like Stipe, you're constantly going to be pushing what a "transgressive" weirdo you are. Especially if you've also already made a pile and aren't risking much in the way of money and career trajectory. I'm not faulting Stipe for waiting until he was ready to reveal this or that about himself; I'm only saying that it's a bit late to be all public-spirited about it in the way he seems to want to be.

BTW, before anyone tries to call me on it: Yes, the joke of the post title is that "Superman" was neither written by R.E.M. nor sung by Michael Stipe.

Cab drivers in Taipei don't like taking you to an intersection. Ask for "Zhongxiao East Road where it crosses Dunhua South Road," and you frequently get a blank look. "Which section?" the driver asks. (As in, "Do you mean the 300 block, or the 400 block, or what?") Once I didn't remember, and since I can write Chinese street names but can't speak Chinese, I drew a little diagram: See? These two streets. They cross here. Take me to the intersection...any old corner will do by this point. I stabbed conclusively with the pen. No reaction. Finally, I remembered I wanted Section 4. Scrawled it down. The driver beamed. Oh, okay. Zhongxiao East Road Section 4. Why didn't you just say so? Well, I gave you the intersecting street. We're not talking about Moebius Avenue and Tesseract Boulevard--they're two major arteries, and they only cross in one place!

Another time I was in a speeding cab with a few guys who do, in fact, speak Chinese. They asked for the intersection of Something and Something. "Which section?" An exchange of looks among the passengers--did anyone remember? "Section 2!" the guy next to me said, in clear confident tones. Then he turned to the rest of us. "It probably isn't Section 2, so when we get there, we'll just ask him to keep going to the next section until we get to the right intersection."

I've lived in Japan for twelve years and am used to being baffled by cultural differences. I have to say, though, I'm stumped by this one. Maybe it's because the cities I'm used to are New York (where the address numbers can't be divined from the street numbers) and Tokyo (where half the streets don't even have names), but most of the cabs I've been in in my lifetime refuse to move for you unless you pinpoint the intersection you're going to. No one has been able to explain to me how Taipei ended up developing the other way, though I can see why passengers would use addresses more often, since the address-numbering system here is very intuitive.

*******

You can be openly gay and get the benefits (nothing to hide), or you can be closeted and get the benefits (acceptance into the mainstream at all levels). You cannot do both. Those who want to be vociferously gay and simultaneously demand that people accept and adore them for it are insufferable, but it's people with the opposite problem who've been inflicting themselves on me lately, so they're the ones I'm going to grouse about.

You want to get married and have children? Good for you. It's none of my business. Whether you really feel affection for your wife or just want your family elders to get off your case or think you'll look more socially stable when it's promotion time at work, I don't care. However, sweetie, if you're going to sit in a gay bar (run by someone who's not afraid to show his face to the licensers and beer distributors and everyone else as the manager of a known gay bar), drinking whisky (served by guys who are not afraid to work at a known gay bar), talking to me (gay, for those who haven't noticed), then do not expect sympathy when you launch into a monologue about how hard it is to lead a double life, how you hate sneaking around, how you feel lonely all the time, and how you're really scared you'll run into a colleague in the wrong place someday. What exactly is the reaction you're expecting? We all make our trade-offs, and by definition, that means we're not going to get some things we want. News flash: If you hide what you are, you're going to feel like you're hiding all the time. Part of taking grown-up responsibility for your own choices is accepting that and not taking every opportunity to whine about it. Sheesh.

Occasionally, the thought flits through my head that maybe Go Fug Yourself isn't quite as funny as I think it is. Then I start guffawing again and forget all about it. This is Heather's riff on one of the photo-op photos from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions last night:

MADONNA: And the arms, they work, right? Young people have great arms. Justin probably has awesome arms. He's kind of my inspiration, actually. God, I just want to use my fearsome guns to tear off his young flesh and eat it.

JUSTIN: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly afraid that Madonna is going to use her fearsome guns to tear off my young flesh and eat it.

IGGY: I wonder what it'd taste like if I used Madonna's fearsome guns to tear off that kid's young flesh and eat it.

I'm still not sure how much of Madonna's strangeness of appearance is due to getting work done; a lot of it could be all the dieting and working out. No question, though, that she's bringing the same determination to staying "youthful" that she did to becoming a star. And (to bring up Taylor Dayne for the second time in a week) M. at least is working with her facial structure rather than against it.

To see Madonna's continued ability to polarize people in action, refer to this comment thread at Ann Althouse's.