"If Michelle Obama wears shorts, it infuriates people who remember past First Ladies. If she tries to keep up with modern trends, it does the same thing. What's a Lady to do?"--Patricia A. Galimberti, North Bergen, N.J., letter-to-the-editor, "Voice of the People", New York Daily News, August 15, 2010.
Maybe Michelle Obama's detractors would prefer she wear her birthday suit in public.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A Few Words From James Patterson
"One of the nice things about working on a lot of projects at the same time is there's no such thing as writer's block. If I'm writing and a chapter isn't coming, I just move ahead.
In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting."--James Patterson, from Q & A interview, Time magazine, July 5, 2010.
In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting."--James Patterson, from Q & A interview, Time magazine, July 5, 2010.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Requiem For The Physical Book
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, has predicted that the physical book will be dead in five years (techcrunch.com, Aug. 6, 2010).
The impending death of the physical book is greatly exaggerated. The more likely scenario will be the co-existence of the physical book and the e-book. After all, the physical book has been around for hundreds of years. That's a lot of history.
Anyway, Americans are not known to be the most bookish people on earth. Only about two percent of the U.S. population bothers to buy and read books. I don't know how digital books will change that.
One other thing, how does one highlight a passage or make marginal comments on a digital book? Will these devices allow those activities to be performed?
The impending death of the physical book is greatly exaggerated. The more likely scenario will be the co-existence of the physical book and the e-book. After all, the physical book has been around for hundreds of years. That's a lot of history.
Anyway, Americans are not known to be the most bookish people on earth. Only about two percent of the U.S. population bothers to buy and read books. I don't know how digital books will change that.
One other thing, how does one highlight a passage or make marginal comments on a digital book? Will these devices allow those activities to be performed?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Mad Men And The Color Line
Michael Ross's theroot.com article, "The Other Mad Men" is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of black people in the advertising business .
Let's hope the producers of AMC's popular series, Mad Men, read it and decide to follow Ross's suggestion to put "some darker faces in the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce."
Let's hope the producers of AMC's popular series, Mad Men, read it and decide to follow Ross's suggestion to put "some darker faces in the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce."
Friday, August 6, 2010
Gay Porn Star For President
"If I could choose any one single job, I would definitely go the presidential route. I wouldn't mind being President of the United States. Absolutely."--Junior Stellano, gay escort/porn star, from Q & A interview, Time Out New York magazine, August 5-11, 2010 (Issue 775)
Here's an idea for a "reality" show that would be worth watching every week, a gay escort/porn star campaigning for the presidency. It would be so outrageous and over-the-top , it would probably be a hit show. Junior Stellano could be made the star of the show.
The chance of such a candidate winning the election is as likely as me landing on the moon in a homemade rocket ship. But it would be humorous and highly entertaining, especially the reaction of people on the campaign trail.
Since the forthcoming Oprah Winfrey Network is having some trouble filling its schedule with enough new programs, here is an idea they should take into consideration for their 2012 season.
Here's an idea for a "reality" show that would be worth watching every week, a gay escort/porn star campaigning for the presidency. It would be so outrageous and over-the-top , it would probably be a hit show. Junior Stellano could be made the star of the show.
The chance of such a candidate winning the election is as likely as me landing on the moon in a homemade rocket ship. But it would be humorous and highly entertaining, especially the reaction of people on the campaign trail.
Since the forthcoming Oprah Winfrey Network is having some trouble filling its schedule with enough new programs, here is an idea they should take into consideration for their 2012 season.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Book Review: "Arkansas" By David Leavitt
The following is an excerpt of a previously unpublished book review I wrote in 1997.
Arkansas: Three Novellas by David Leavitt (Houghton Mifflin)
Reviewed by Charles Michael Smith
David Leavitt's Arkansas, a collection of three novellas, is further proof that he is one of America's brightest young fiction writers.
It is also proof that he is not afraid to stir up controversy. At the beginning of the first novella, "The Term Paper Artist," Leavitt refers to the controversy that involved himself and the late English poet Sir Stephen Spender who "sued me over a novel I had written because it was based in part on an episode in his life."
This time it is "The Term Paper Artist" that has created what New York Daily News columnists Rush and Molloy have described as a "litquake." They stated that Esquire magazine decided not to publish an excerpt of the novella out of fear that the references to male sexual organs and oral sex would offend readers and advertisers.
The whole issue is much ado about nothing. There is indeed frank language in the novella, but nowhere are there the kind of explicit sex scenes found in hard-core gay skin magazines. Leavitt discreetly turns away from such depictions. For example, here is how he ends one such scene: "Then for about half an hour, though he made other noises, he didn't speak a word."
"The Term Paper Artist," which uses a lot of autobiographical details from Leavitt's life including the use of his name as the name of the first-person narrator, is about a young writer who enters into a "prostitutional" arrangement with seven heterosexual male college students. The arrangement was that he would ghostwrite their term papers in exchange for sex, thereby becoming "an industry." Whether this term paper arrangement actually happened to Leavitt is unclear. (Leavitt teases the reader by having his namesake say that "Writers often disguise their lives as fiction. The thing they almost never do is disguise fiction as their lives.") His namesake admits that it is "unethical" and "goes against everything I believe in." But it beats sitting in the UCLA library doing research on the new novel about the scandal that resulted when a homosexual brothel was discovered by the police in 1889 London.
In Arkansas David Leavitt probes the hearts, minds, and souls of the people he knows best--the suburban upper middle class.
Arkansas: Three Novellas by David Leavitt (Houghton Mifflin)
Reviewed by Charles Michael Smith
David Leavitt's Arkansas, a collection of three novellas, is further proof that he is one of America's brightest young fiction writers.
It is also proof that he is not afraid to stir up controversy. At the beginning of the first novella, "The Term Paper Artist," Leavitt refers to the controversy that involved himself and the late English poet Sir Stephen Spender who "sued me over a novel I had written because it was based in part on an episode in his life."
This time it is "The Term Paper Artist" that has created what New York Daily News columnists Rush and Molloy have described as a "litquake." They stated that Esquire magazine decided not to publish an excerpt of the novella out of fear that the references to male sexual organs and oral sex would offend readers and advertisers.
The whole issue is much ado about nothing. There is indeed frank language in the novella, but nowhere are there the kind of explicit sex scenes found in hard-core gay skin magazines. Leavitt discreetly turns away from such depictions. For example, here is how he ends one such scene: "Then for about half an hour, though he made other noises, he didn't speak a word."
"The Term Paper Artist," which uses a lot of autobiographical details from Leavitt's life including the use of his name as the name of the first-person narrator, is about a young writer who enters into a "prostitutional" arrangement with seven heterosexual male college students. The arrangement was that he would ghostwrite their term papers in exchange for sex, thereby becoming "an industry." Whether this term paper arrangement actually happened to Leavitt is unclear. (Leavitt teases the reader by having his namesake say that "Writers often disguise their lives as fiction. The thing they almost never do is disguise fiction as their lives.") His namesake admits that it is "unethical" and "goes against everything I believe in." But it beats sitting in the UCLA library doing research on the new novel about the scandal that resulted when a homosexual brothel was discovered by the police in 1889 London.
In Arkansas David Leavitt probes the hearts, minds, and souls of the people he knows best--the suburban upper middle class.
Friday, July 30, 2010
TV Movie Review: Serving in Silence
The following is a previously unpublished TV movie review I wrote in 1995. It was assigned by the late Mel Tapley, who was the arts and entertainment editor at the New York Amsterdam News. No reason was ever given for why it never ran. The review is still timely because of the continuing controversy about gays in the military.
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995)
Directed by Jeff Bleckner
Written by Alison Cross
Reviewed by Charles Michael Smith
"Controversial" and "television's first lesbian love story" are the words the press has used to describe NBC's two-hour movie, Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, which aired recently.
Such descriptions would have caused viewers to believe they were going to see steamy bedroom scenes and other forms of titillation. Serving in Silence is not a movie about lust and sexual conquest. Instead it is about discrimination ,intolerance, hate, fear, and prejudice in the U.S. military toward its gay and lesbian members. The movie is an attempt to "humanize this issue," says Donald Suggs of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), which is organizing a postcard campaign to thank those companies that bought advertising time in the movie's time slot.
Serving in Silence is based on Cammermeyer's autobiography of the same name. The film traces her rise to colonel in a career that spans nearly 30 years. As a combat nurse in Vietnam, she received numerous medals, including a Bronze Star, "a rare achievement for a woman in those days," writes Randy Shilts in his book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military. Married with four sons, she later divorced her army husband of 15 years. As she (portrayed by Glenn Close) says in the film, she always knew she was a lesbian, she just found it hard to come out to herself.
In 1989, she applied for chief nurse of the entire National Guard. This would raise her to the rank of general and require her to attend the War College. But she must first pass the security clearance interview. When she was asked about her sexual orientation, she admitted to being a lesbian. "I assumed that since I had been a good soldier and had been in the military so long," she says in an interview in the New York Daily News, "I couldn't possibly be seen as a security risk." From that point on, the army began taking steps to have her dismissed. She, on the other hand, was determined to fight them. Lawyers from a gay legal defense organization come to her aid.
Throughout the film we see the anguish and turmoil her public battle causes her family, most of whom nevertheless support her, and especially her artist/teacher lover Diane (Judy Davis), who would rather avoid the limelight and live a quiet domestic life.
Despite the hoopla from GLAAD, Serving in Silence is not all that controversial or groundbreaking . The Kiss much talked about comes during the last ten minutes when it is too late for viewers offended by such behavior between members of the same sex to change channels. Very brave, producers. (Barbra Streisand co-executive produced.)
Serving in Silence, like other gay films (Philadelphia and Making Love, to name two), emphasize the highly educated, upwardly mobile gays and lesbians because their makers are afraid straight audiences will be less willing to see these films otherwise.
I'm still waiting for the day when an ordinary hardscrabble black gay man from Harlem or Bedford -Stuyvesant with a minimum wage job and an unsympathetic family is depicted on television. That would be truly groundbreaking and, perhaps, controversial.
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995)
Directed by Jeff Bleckner
Written by Alison Cross
Reviewed by Charles Michael Smith
"Controversial" and "television's first lesbian love story" are the words the press has used to describe NBC's two-hour movie, Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, which aired recently.
Such descriptions would have caused viewers to believe they were going to see steamy bedroom scenes and other forms of titillation. Serving in Silence is not a movie about lust and sexual conquest. Instead it is about discrimination ,intolerance, hate, fear, and prejudice in the U.S. military toward its gay and lesbian members. The movie is an attempt to "humanize this issue," says Donald Suggs of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), which is organizing a postcard campaign to thank those companies that bought advertising time in the movie's time slot.
Serving in Silence is based on Cammermeyer's autobiography of the same name. The film traces her rise to colonel in a career that spans nearly 30 years. As a combat nurse in Vietnam, she received numerous medals, including a Bronze Star, "a rare achievement for a woman in those days," writes Randy Shilts in his book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military. Married with four sons, she later divorced her army husband of 15 years. As she (portrayed by Glenn Close) says in the film, she always knew she was a lesbian, she just found it hard to come out to herself.
In 1989, she applied for chief nurse of the entire National Guard. This would raise her to the rank of general and require her to attend the War College. But she must first pass the security clearance interview. When she was asked about her sexual orientation, she admitted to being a lesbian. "I assumed that since I had been a good soldier and had been in the military so long," she says in an interview in the New York Daily News, "I couldn't possibly be seen as a security risk." From that point on, the army began taking steps to have her dismissed. She, on the other hand, was determined to fight them. Lawyers from a gay legal defense organization come to her aid.
Throughout the film we see the anguish and turmoil her public battle causes her family, most of whom nevertheless support her, and especially her artist/teacher lover Diane (Judy Davis), who would rather avoid the limelight and live a quiet domestic life.
Despite the hoopla from GLAAD, Serving in Silence is not all that controversial or groundbreaking . The Kiss much talked about comes during the last ten minutes when it is too late for viewers offended by such behavior between members of the same sex to change channels. Very brave, producers. (Barbra Streisand co-executive produced.)
Serving in Silence, like other gay films (Philadelphia and Making Love, to name two), emphasize the highly educated, upwardly mobile gays and lesbians because their makers are afraid straight audiences will be less willing to see these films otherwise.
I'm still waiting for the day when an ordinary hardscrabble black gay man from Harlem or Bedford -Stuyvesant with a minimum wage job and an unsympathetic family is depicted on television. That would be truly groundbreaking and, perhaps, controversial.
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