I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report.

I can. It was propaganda like this that people saw on prime time in their living rooms. Usually following TV/ or radio evangelical shows. Reporting like this that fueled countless assaults and murders of GLBT people. Not to mention everyday discrimination. And many that were never even reported from either fear, or authorities just not giving a shiat. Parents and religious figures made negative comments and conversations with children, those kids took it to school, then grew up with it as gospel.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

The effects of this report has, and will continue to have a negative effect on innocent people just trying to live their own lives.

I love me some Gore Vidal.

Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Replace "gay" with "minorities" or "women". Still willing to stand behind your assessment?

downstairs: Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Replace "gay" with "minorities" or "women". Still willing to stand behind your assessment?

I already used slavery as an example. Should we shred the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a bunch of slave owners? I guess everything those racist, slave owning, assholes thought up was poison.

All I was saying is that I'm not going to let Wallace's obvious bigotry towards gay people make me think the man is irredeemable. I don't know enough about his body of work as a whole to say the man was a disgusting, inhuman, closed-minded, jerk.

This means that Nixon is really President, or something. Just make sure you vote Republican

Eh, he was ignorant, he asked who he thought were experts (anti-gay bigots are experts on bigotry, right?), and it influenced his conclusions. GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out. At least he fessed up later and admitted how terrible it all was.

MIKE WALLACE: They are attracted mostly to the anonymity of the big city - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. The permissiveness and the variety of the cities draw them. The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life - his "love life" - consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits and even on the streets of the city. The pick-up, the one-night stand. These are characteristic of the homosexual relationship. And the homosexual prostitute has become a fixture on the downtown streets at night, on street corners and subway exits, where these young men signal their availability for pay.

Sounds good to me. *shrug*

Cythraul: I already used slavery as an example. Should we shred the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a bunch of slave owners? I guess everything those racist, slave owning, assholes thought up was poison.

No. But a news report stigmatizing gays is not the same as the Declaration of Independence. If the Declaration of Independence said that slavery was a-ok and blacks were less than human, we certainly should reject it.

"MIKE WALLACE: There are those who suggest that there is a kind of homosexual mafia in which the homosexual in the arts, in a mutually protective way, helps his fellows."

Wasn't there an episode of Will and Grace about this?

By which I mean farking awesome. (By way of clarification.)

I mean, replace the word "homosexual" with "college student" and it would be accurate today.

God, I miss college.

Cythraul: All I was saying is that I'm not going to let Wallace's obvious bigotry towards gay people make me think the man is irredeemable.

There's a wide margin between claiming someone is irredeemable and condemning them for their words.

Wow. 1967 and already there was the idea of the Pink Mafia.

Awesome.

Am I the only one that read Wallace's remarks in a '60s crime-drama voiceover?

dv-ous: Sounds good to me.

Sounds like the anti-gay sermons I used to hear in "Church". Now I know where they got their material!

bdub77: "MIKE WALLACE: There are those who suggest that there is a kind of homosexual mafia in which the homosexual in the arts, in a mutually protective way, helps his fellows."

Wasn't there an episode of Will and Grace about this?

Same thing gets said about the Jews.

People in the creative arts tend to work with their friends. You end up with gay string quartets, jewish choirs, and all-WASP theater companies.

Self-segregation is a choice.

downstairs: Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Replace "gay" with "minorities" or "women". Still willing to stand behind your assessment?

It was very progressive for the time, perhaps even shocking to many that it was discussed with some sense of acceptance. You can't judge it in modern context.

I've never had the attention span to sit down and watch the full news report, but what I've seen of it would be hilarious in its ridiculousness if not for the fact that people believed it at the time and acted accordingly.

I can't remember where I read it. but apparently Mike Wallace had been given several opportunities over the years to express regret over that piece and never really did consider that he'd made a mistake with doing the piece.

Interesting bit of history. The fact that Gore Vidal brouoht up the idea of (even then) outdated ideas dominating American popular culture...we've not come such a long way, baby.

Herp derp like this needs a good spoof, so here's Monty Python's The Mouse Problem

bdub77: "MIKE WALLACE: There are those who suggest that there is a kind of homosexual mafia in which the homosexual in the arts, in a mutually protective way, helps his fellows."

Wasn't there an episode of Will and Grace about this?

I will make him a FAAAABULOUS offer he cannot refuse.

Cythraul: downstairs: Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Replace "gay" with "minorities" or "women". Still willing to stand behind your assessment?

I already used slavery as an example. Should we shred the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a bunch of slave owners? I guess everything those racist, slave owning, assholes thought up was poison.

All I was saying is that I'm not going to let Wallace's obvious bigotry towards gay people make me think the man is irredeemable. I don't know enough about his body of work as a whole to say the man was a disgusting, inhuman, closed-minded, jerk.

Don't forget, they grew the devil's weed too. Filthy drug dealers, the lot of 'em.

Godscrack: Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report.

I can. It was propaganda... They knew exactly what they were doing.

This.
Like father, like son.

R.I.P. Mr. Wallace

dv-ous: MIKE WALLACE: They are attracted mostly to the anonymity of the big city - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. The permissiveness and the variety of the cities draw them. The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life - his "love life" - consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits and even on the streets of the city. The pick-up, the one-night stand. These are characteristic of the homosexual relationship. And the homosexual prostitute has become a fixture on the downtown streets at night, on street corners and subway exits, where these young men signal their availability for pay.

Sounds good to me. *shrug*

from the gays i [know | see in public] this is all perfectly accurate. at least with the younger ones. retired gays seem to settle down some i guess...

Oznog: It was very progressive for the time, perhaps even shocking to many that it was discussed with some sense of acceptance. You can't judge it in modern context.

They are attracted mostly to the anonymity of the big city - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. The permissiveness and the variety of the cities draw them. The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life - his "love life" - consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits and even on the streets of the city. The pick-up, the one-night stand. These are characteristic of the homosexual relationship.

Well that describes my college age life, but with women instead of men.

Mimic_Octopus: from the gays i [know | see in public] this is all perfectly accurate. at least with the younger ones.

The same can be said for young straight people as well. The thing is, straight guys have less success because girls don't put out as readily as guys do.

dv-ous: MIKE WALLACE: They are attracted mostly to the anonymity of the big city - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. The permissiveness and the variety of the cities draw them. The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life - his "love life" - consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits and even on the streets of the city. The pick-up, the one-night stand. These are characteristic of the homosexual relationship. And the homosexual prostitute has become a fixture on the downtown streets at night, on street corners and subway exits, where these young men signal their availability for pay.

Sounds good to me. *shrug*

Seriously. If they lose the social stigma, it seems unfair to straights.

Mimic_Octopus: from the gays i [know | see in public] this is all perfectly accurate. at least with the younger ones. retired gays seem to settle down some i guess...

So... there's no one between 25 and 65 that's gay, in your experience?

"In the fashion industry, many observers see an effort to blend the sexes, to de-feminize woman - to replace curve and contour with sexless geometric sterility."

Kate Moss: fashion model.

Wallace wasn't ALL wrong in this report.

In the 40 years since the report, look at the trend line for what pop culture perceives as the ideal feminine form. With the exception of the occasional outlier (which, statistically, you'll basically always have), the trend has been towards ever-skinner, ever-less-curvy women. The creatures who inhabit fashion catwalks today would never have gotten a date to the prom in 1967.

So, while the homophobia is wrong and hateful and damaging, don't let it cloud the value of what time has proven to be a valuable observation: when gay men dominate the fashion industry, they design clothes for people who fit their aesthetic. And big bouncy tits aren't part of it.

Before we all slide too far down the muddy slope of "You accept racism," "You hate history..."

There's a difference between understanding how something could happen in the time that it happened and that something being acceptable now. Jefferson was a great man in his time, and he owned slaves. Mike Wallace was a great investigative reporter, and he paved the foundation for a lot of culturally-accepted gay bashing by giving a megaphone to homophobes during a time when the majority of outspoken people with a strong opinion were homophobes.

To use HailRobonia's example (I wonder if they were trolling), while the Declaration makes no mention of slavery in the final draft (the mentions were excised at the behest of the Southern States), the Constitution definitely declared blacks to be worth 3/5ths of a human for voting. The document clearly had slavery baked into it in the past, and generations between the originators and this one removed it. Does the document's origin make it a bad, bad document that we should tear up today? Clearly not; that's silly. Was it a bad, bad document when it was drafted? If your standard is some absolute moral truth, then sure (but what's to be done about it if you lack a time machine?). If your standard factors in historical context, then it was a product of its time to be learned from and not emulated in its totality (though it says some pretty useful things about power separation and a post office).

You can think Mike Wallace held a wrong opinion in an absolute morality sense while respecting that the opinion was a product of the time. "Mike Wallace is a bad, bad person in 2012 because of the opinions he held in 1967" is a view that doesn't factor in personal growth over time.

"Mike Wallace should have known better in 1967" is a position one can logically hold, but one needs to have strong evidence that Wallace had opportunity to be shrewder than his interviewees to back it.

Cythraul: After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well

Wait, is there any evidence of this? Not that I'm saying they didn't, but I thought people just didn't discuss sex openly back then, gay or straight.

As a gay person: While clearly terrible, this report was from a different time. Much like the racist Bugs Bunny cartoons of the '40s, it's important to view it in a historical light, and perhaps think of it as a warning ("Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"). It doesn't make Mike Wallace a bad person; it just makes him somebody who was alive in the '60s.

Now, if some modern bigot tried using this report as an excuse for their hatred - that would piss me off.

midigod: Mimic_Octopus: from the gays i [know | see in public] this is all perfectly accurate. at least with the younger ones. retired gays seem to settle down some i guess...

So... there's no one between 25 and 65 that's gay, in your experience?

You obviously aren't aware of the gay life cycle. When the larval form, known as "twink" reaches 25, he forms a protective cocoon where he pupates until age 45 when he emerges as a "daddy."

I'm pretty sure that my uncle P was living with his partner back in 67, or pretty close to it as I remember them being together all my (long) life. They stayed together until his death about four years ago.

/Hope heaven has crossword puzzles and cigarettes in heaven, D.S.

Cythraul: I can't really condemn him for this report. Very few people were standing up for gay rights at the time (compared to today), and I can't hate someone for giving in to the vastly popular group-think of the time. After all, most of our 'founding fathers' hated homosexuals as well, and owned slaves. We shouldn't renounce everything they did, not saying this article suggests we do so to Mr. Wallace.

Of course you won't condemn it since they fit your definition by the time they died but anyone else who was not exposed to that culture are now heathens if they don't just accept everything fed to them.

This has been my point the entire time, once issues get exposed without all the fear mongering they gain public acceptance shortly after. Don't forget the Memphis 3 were convicted partly on the basis that metallica played satanic music so they have to be guilty.

Fluorescent Testicle: As a gay person: While clearly terrible, this report was from a different time. Much like the racist Bugs Bunny cartoons of the '40s, it's important to view it in a historical light, and perhaps think of it as a warning ("Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"). It doesn't make Mike Wallace a bad person; it just makes him somebody who was alive in the '60s.

Now, if some modern bigot tried using this report as an excuse for their hatred - that would piss me off.

What about people who remember this report and have very little contact with gays? Propaganda can be deep set in peoples minds.

HailRobonia: Cythraul: I already used slavery as an example. Should we shred the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a bunch of slave owners? I guess everything those racist, slave owning, assholes thought up was poison.

No. But a news report stigmatizing gays is not the same as the Declaration of Independence. If the Declaration of Independence said that slavery was a-ok and blacks were less than human, we certainly should reject it.

When the Declaration of Independence was written, those things were taken for granted, though Jefferson did feel the need to name Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages" in the text. In the later Constitution of course, slaves (who were black) were defined as less than other humans.

Wallace was reporting the common sentiment at the time. Back then just about everyone but homosexuals thought homosexuals were abominations. Not that it's okay even then, but Wallace did reform and express regret for these sentiments in later years, and he at least gave Vidal a chance to present an alternate view.

Oznog: It was very progressive for the time, perhaps even shocking to many that it was discussed with some sense of acceptance. You can't judge it in modern context.

yep.
you can't judge the past by what is possible now. you have to judge it using the historical context that existed.
it's what makes Woodrow Wilson a inveterate racist and Teddy Roosevelt an enlightened progressive (even though today he would be a bigot probably).

It funded my project:

Link

relcec: Oznog: It was very progressive for the time, perhaps even shocking to many that it was discussed with some sense of acceptance. You can't judge it in modern context.

yep.
you can't judge the past by what is possible now. you have to judge it using the historical context that existed.
it's what makes Woodrow Wilson a inveterate racist and Teddy Roosevelt an enlightened progressive (even though today he would be a bigot probably).

"Also, judge individuals, nations and civilizations by the times in which they existed. It is easy to criticize the child labor of the Industrial Revolution, just as it will be easy for our descendants to criticize our destruction of the earth's forests, despite the warnings of places like Easter Island. People who lived in the past are responsible for the past. We are responsible for now and the future. "
-Jon Olivia, "Night Castle"

Guuberre: Am I the only one that read Wallace's remarks in a '60s crime-drama voiceover?

That would be the Jack Webb Voice, and yes, that's how I read it.

Fluorescent Testicle: As a gay person: While clearly terrible, this report was from a different time. Much like the racist Bugs Bunny cartoons of the '40s, it's important to view it in a historical light, and perhaps think of it as a warning ("Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"). It doesn't make Mike Wallace a bad person; it just makes him somebody who was alive in the '60s.

Now, if some modern bigot tried using this report as an excuse for their hatred - that would piss me off.

Word!

midigod: Mimic_Octopus: from the gays i [know | see in public] this is all perfectly accurate. at least with the younger ones. retired gays seem to settle down some i guess...

So... there's no one between 25 and 65 that's gay, in your experience?

Nope. Teh Ghey pretty much goes from hot, smooth, young twink, dancing around in hot-pants and combat boots to aged queen almost overnight. They go to bed as that kid from Glee and wake up as Ian McKellan.



NTTAWWI
I haven't seen the Glee but I love McKellan's work, and not just the sci-fi/fantasy stuff.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: Guuberre: Am I the only one that read Wallace's remarks in a '60s crime-drama voiceover?

That would be the Jack Webb Voice, and yes, that's how I read it.

There's the clattering of typewriters behind it, and sheets of carbon paper being ripped out of carriages too in my mental show.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: Guuberre: Am I the only one that read Wallace's remarks in a '60s crime-drama voiceover?

That would be the Jack Webb Voice, and yes, that's how I read it.

I read it in Professor Hubert Farnsworth's voice.

coco ebert: I love me some Gore Vidal.

loved him before, love him even more after that read.

HailRobonia: AngryJailhouseFistfark: Guuberre: Am I the only one that read Wallace's remarks in a '60s crime-drama voiceover?

That would be the Jack Webb Voice, and yes, that's how I read it.

I read it in Professor Hubert Farnsworth's voice.

Good news!

Uberunder: "In the fashion industry, many observers see an effort to blend the sexes, to de-feminize woman - to replace curve and contour with sexless geometric sterility."

Kate Moss: fashion model.

Wallace wasn't ALL wrong in this report.

In the 40 years since the report, look at the trend line for what pop culture perceives as the ideal feminine form. With the exception of the occasional outlier (which, statistically, you'll basically always have), the trend has been towards ever-skinner, ever-less-curvy women. The creatures who inhabit fashion catwalks today would never have gotten a date to the prom in 1967.

So, while the homophobia is wrong and hateful and damaging, don't let it cloud the value of what time has proven to be a valuable observation: when gay men dominate the fashion industry, they design clothes for people who fit their aesthetic. And big bouncy tits aren't part of it.

Of course, if hetrosexual men ran the fashion industry, women would be urged to wear nothing except a pair of clear plastic stripper heels.

The real question is: Why aren't women running the fashion industry, as opposed to gay men?