When I wrote about Tammy Bruce in June of 2011, I recounted her betrayal of the feminist movement. Since my essay could not possibly cover everything, I neglected to mention her abandonment of the cause of homosexual liberation. Bruce has betrayed herself not only as a woman, but also as a lesbian.
More than two decades ago, Bruce served as an activist in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP. The promotion of AIDS treatment and research was an obviously important cause for the homosexual community.
Since becoming a conservative commentator, however, Bruce has espoused homosexual stereotypes in order to promote herself instead. How do I know that? Those who side with the powerful against the powerless can only have selfish motives.
Before gays could openly join the military, Bruce expressed disdain at the prospect:
“And what is being openly gay in the military? You’re there to do a job. If that means you want to start up ‘militarymatch.com’, yeah, that’s a problem. You’re there to kill the enemy. You’re there to be trained to defend this nation. I don’t care, and I don’t think Americans care, who it is you want to sleep with…And for the military, this argument I found incredibly specious, that…you join as a gay person, …that you have to be gay in the military, whatever that might mean. I’m not sure…Does that mean adding a boa to your uniform? What does that mean? And if it’s about fraternizing, then go to a dance club. And if you’re going to go serve, whether you’re heterosexual or homosexual, you are going to serve, and your sexuality should be meaningless…You want to serve as a queen, too bad. And I don’t want queens. I want a soldier….in that pit, killing that enemy, running through Fallujah.”
(00:37:57)
Straight soldiers did not have to conceal their private lives, so their gay colleagues naturally felt entitled to the same privilege. Bruce’s comments about boa-wearing queens insulted every homosexual who had served with distinction in the military. Perhaps Bruce could speak contemptuously of her fellow homosexuals because she has distanced herself from her own sexuality:
“It is clearly a very private issue. Personally, it’s certainly not something that’s relevant every moment of our lives. Being gay does not change how I view things, or the air I breathe, or what I choose to eat, or anything else. It’s a matter of, for me, being public. It does affect, and is relevant within, political contexts on occasion.”
(00:00:40)
Bruce is wrong. I believe that sexuality is central to the personal identity of every human being. Whether private or public, sexuality is indeed relevant in every moment of our lives. I know nothing of her personal life, yet I would argue that her downplaying of the importance of sexuality is a form of psychological repression. In her attempt to repress her own sexual nature, she has repressed her capacity for compassion as well. When a caller to C-Span challenged her admiration for the late President Ronald Reagan, who had reacted to the early AIDS epidemic with profound negligence, Bruce lashed out:
“Well, I remember when AIDS first started…and I also remember that none of us knew what was happening. It was the ‘gay cancer’. It was, of course, at its most virulent when none of us knew it even existed. And I was involved with ACT-UP for a period of time, an AIDS action group. And I think when it comes to what we expect from government when you say: “Ronald Reagan did nothing to stop AIDS.” Well, we could stop AIDS overnight. The gay community, of course, also fought closing the bathhouses down. How can I still be gay or support the gay community when we do plenty to perpetuate the disease?...It is a slap in the face to all of us who were activists in the ‘80s… If we’re going to talk about people taking responsibility, let’s look at home first, and start discussing personal behavior, sexual promiscuity, sexual compulsion, and the spread of the disease… If you’re still complaining about what a man did or did not do twenty-five years ago…How I can still even remotely try to care about gay men in particular when AIDS is back on the rise after twenty-five, thirty years? Shame on you, not shame on Ronald Reagan.”
(01:21:40)
Obviously, President Reagan could not have prevented the spread of AIDS singlehandedly, but he failed to do what he could have done to help stop it, at the least. I would advise Hitchens Watch readers to consult And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by journalist Randy Shilts. The book is an informative and exhaustive study of the early years of the epidemic. Admittedly, the gay activists who opposed the closing of the bathhouses were wrong, and Shilts, a homosexual himself, made this clear. Although I disapprove of sexual promiscuity, I do not understand the point that Bruce was trying to make. Did she believe that promiscuous people deserved to die? A man who whored himself in 1982 San Francisco would have been extremely foolish, but if he had fallen ill, society would have been morally obligated to help him. Furthermore, Bruce did not even consider that not all AIDS victims were promiscuous. Monogamous people often have unfaithful partners. Finally, Bruce contradicted herself when she said, “It was, of course, at its most virulent when none of us knew it even existed.” It was unfair to blame gay men for the contraction of a disease whose transmission they did not even understand.
The self-loathing continued when Bruce joined GOProud as chairman of its advisory board in 2010. The gay conservative group actually cultivated Ann Coulter, an advocate of celibacy for homosexuals, a woman who inexplicably called former Senator John Edwards a “faggot”.
(20:00)
Coulter dismissed the concept of constitutional protection for homosexuals: “The equality clause is about just the blacks.” Bruce, in response, could only slobber: “She’s so wrong, but I love her.”
Bruce’s lowest point in her GOProud career came with the breaking of the boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel in San Diego that same year. Gay organizations, including the Log Cabin Republicans, had boycotted the hotel because owner Doug Manchester had spent $125,000 to ensure the successful passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment in California. Shamelessly, Tammy Bruce gave a talk at the Grand Hyatt. To make matters worse, GOProud welcomed $10,000 worth of credit from the hotel, as well as a $6000 donation from Dougie’s own Manchester Financial Group.
With incomprehensible logic, Bruce offered the following defense:
“The irony, after every civil-rights movement really was about making sure that people who are different, especially gays and lesbians, would not be shunned, would have an equal opportunity, would at least, by not fitting in, not be punished for being different, for not conforming –and what is it today? Protests outside this hotel for a bunch of gays who do not conform. To try to punish businesses and people for perhaps believing differently than you do and for voting and being politically active in that regard is shameful.”
It did not bother her that the patron of her own organization sought to deprive her of her own equal opportunity to marry.
Ironically, Bruce resigned abruptly from the organization after GOPRoud Chairman Chris Barron rightfully described attorney Cleta Mitchell as a bigot. Mitchell was a key figure within the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), and Bruce had no wish to antagonize the fanatical right wing. She had her own on-line radio program and her position as a Fox News “analyst” to consider.
I have decided to return to the subject of Bruce because of some curious postings on Twitter. On May 23, a fan tweeted: “You Are awesome Tammy. You need to fill in for O’Reilly sometime.”
Bruce gamely responded: “Thanks :) …I’d love to fill in for O’Reilly, but I’ve been told it will never happen because I’m gay. Go figure…”
Then, Media Matters reported on the tweets, and Bruce quickly backtracked. “You know, I’ve never even asked to host the Factor (or any other show at Fox), and no one at Fox ever told me I couldn’t,” Bruce wrote on her website, claiming to have only been kidding. “I do have a few suggestions for everyone on the left, including to more than a few of The Gheys, slobbering at the bit over this – look up the meaning of ‘Irony,’ ‘Sarcasm,’ and ‘Absurdity’.”
I find her denial hard to believe. If it had all been a fine joke, why did she accept the commiserating Tweet from one of her fans? A self-respecting lesbian would either have sued Fox, or quit, but television exposure means more to Bruce than any personal integrity. She had to protect herself after disclosing too much.
Now that Bruce is too much of a sell-out to even remain in a compromised organization such as GOProud, only one option remains. She must “convert” to heterosexuality.
The controversial novelist Salman Rushdie is the ideal figure of fun for Hitchens Watch.
Unlike many of the obituarists who have sought to exploit the most tenuous connection to the late Christopher Hitchens, Rushdie enjoyed a genuine friendship with the man. The British-Indian novelist felt greatly indebted to Hitchens, who had bravely taken his side against the fatwa of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. “I have often been asked if Christopher defended me because he was my close friend,” Rushdie wrote. “The truth is that he became my close friend because he wanted to defend me.”
Indeed, Rushdie could not have found a more eloquent advocate for his novel, The Satanic Verses. Appearing on C-Span, Hitchens responded to a Muslim caller with more respect than he would extend to his spiritual brethren a little over a decade later:
“I’m clear in my mind that no insult to the prophet, or to those who believe in the god of whom he is the messenger, is intended. The words that are complained of are spoken by a sick man, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, in a dream, in which he believes himself to be the Archangel Gabriel, who is a Christian icon. So, I think that is about as far fictionally as you could go to avoid the charge of blasphemy, but I must add that if Salman Rushdie had wished to be blasphemous, had wished to challenge the tenets of your faith, that would also be his right. So, don’t confuse me in giving you two answers. I mean them to be separate but related.” (9:50)
I agree that the blasphemous should freely express their views without either legal prosecution or threats to their own physical safety. Nevertheless, I must challenge Hitchens in his assertion that Rushdie intended no insult to Islam.
A key character in The Satanic Verses is Gibreel Farishta, an Indian film star who miraculously survives the mid-air explosion of a passenger plane. Landing safely on earth, Gibreel turns into an angel. In the course of the novel, Gibreel has visions of the founding of Islam in the Arabia. As the novel is a work of magical realism, Gibreel’s transformation was quite literal. Some of the characters mistakenly perceive Gibreel to be schizophrenic, so Hitchens was wrong on that point. Hitchens also erred in claiming the Archangel Gabriel solely as a Christian icon. In Islam, Gibreel is the Arabic version of Gabriel. Gibreel served as the intermediary between God and the Prophet Muhammad. If Rushdie was not writing about Islam, than what religion was he depicting?
Like Hitchens, however, Rushdie, a Muslim only by birth, also claimed to have meant no offense against Muslims:
“The visionary sequences, they’re not intended to have the validity of a kind of historical event because they happen in somebody’s dream. So, obviously in a dream, things change. Names change. Places change shape. Nothing is as it really is in life, and I wanted those sequences to have that kind of visionary quality. And so quite deliberately, did not call the city Makkah [the Arabian city where Islam was founded]. I did not call Muhammad Muhammad because I didn’t want it to be the picture of him, but a kind of dream of him.” BBC (9:53)
Now that I have read The Satanic Verses, I am convinced that Rushdie meant to insult Islam, but lacked the courage to do so in a direct manner. If Rushdie was not writing about Islam, than what religion was he depicting? Rushdie’s prophet founded a faith known as Submission, which is the English translation of the Arabic word Islam.
According to a tradition dismissed by most Muslims, Satan tricked Muhammad into temporarily permitting the community to worship a few pagan goddesses along with Allah. In the novel, the prophet preaches: “Have you thought upon Lat and Uzza, and Manat, the third, the other? They are the exalted birds, and their intercession is desired indeed.”
Of course, Islam is a strictly monotheistic faith, and many Muslims found inclusion of the legend of the satanic verses offensive. They were equally offended by Rushdie’s portrayal of the character of the prophet, a cruel and intolerant man whose teachings always suit his own personal convenience.
The teachings of Islam come in the form of the Qur’an, which Muslims regard as the word of God transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel. The Hadith, or the sayings of the prophet as recorded by his associates, has secondary importance. Both the Qur’an and the Hadith are open to interpretation by Muslims. To be fair, secular Muslims could agree with Rushdie’s view of Islamic teachings. Islam is not an easy religion to follow, particularly in Western society:
“Amid the palm-trees of the oasis Gibreel appeared to the Prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules, until the faithful could scarcely bear the prospect of any more revelation…rules about very damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one’s behind….It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free. The revelation – the recitation – told the faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep, and which sexual positions had received divine sanction…And Gibreel the archangel specified the manner in which a man should be buried, and how his property should be divided…”
What made Rushdie’s ridicule even more biting was the name he gave to the prophet, Mahound. Nevertheless, Hitchens insisted that the novelist did not purposefully offend Muslims:
“The word Mahound is used in the novel, and Mahound is, for those of you who haven’t read this yet, an extremely abusive term leveled against the Prophet Muhammad by the crusaders centuries ago, implying that he not just had failed to be the messenger of God, but that he was actually an emissary of the Devil. Therefore…just to use the word, is enough to indeed to offend people who don’t want to inquire any further, but the word is specially used in a way that satirizes its use.”
The oppressed often claim slurs “as satirical, ironic weapons against the intolerant,” Hitchens argued. “That’s what he is attempting to do. It’s a very honorable enterprise.” (C-SPAN 32:50)
Hitchens’s contention would have been valid if Rushdie had also mocked the religious opponents of Islam, but the novelist reserved his satire for believing Muslims.
I believe that all authority figures, including spiritual leaders, are fair game for ridicule. The Prophet Muhammad possessed great power, and we have every right to evaluate his exercise of that power. Justified and substantial criticism can often involve tasteless humor.
The problem is that Rushdie’s ridicule of the prophet’s wives was neither justified nor substantial; it was only tasteless. By making the prostitutes in a brothel adopt the names of the prophet’s wives, Rusdhie only compounded the insult. “The fifteen-year-old whore ‘Ayesha’ was the most popular,” Rushdie wrote. Ayesha was Muhammad’s favorite spouse. Obviously, standards of morality and behavior change over time, but demeaning a young girl will never be anything more than a cheap shot. Rushdie only wanted to hurt the feelings of Muslims.
Dear readers, you may accuse me of lacking a sense of humor. Yet, I am a fan of comedian Dave Chappelle, and I have failed to find any record of true wit on Rushdie’s part. At the most, the novelist engaged in childish banter with Hitchens. Now, you can give Rushdie at least partial credit for the stupid title of Hitchens’s memoir:
“Hitch-22 was a title born of the silly word games we played, one of which was Titles That Don’t Quite Make it, among which were A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, To Kill a Hummingbird, The Catcher in the Wheat, Mr. Zhivago, and Toby-Dick, a.k.a. Moby-Cock.” (Vanity Fair 2/2012)
Is anyone laughing yet?
The people who actually know Rushdie can testify to his weak character far better than I can.
One friend, Farrukh Dhondy, perceptively realized that the hullabaloo over The Satanic Verses was not accidental:
“I knew when I read the book that Salman was completely aware of stirring a controversy within Islam. It was mischief, and it was deliberate magic realistic mischief. What I said to Salman is: ‘You’ll be shuffling from TV studio to TV studio defending your views against the mullahs.’ And he said: ‘Ha! Bring it on.’” BBC (11:08)
Rushdie’s attitude only worsened after the imposition of the fatwa. Dr. Hesham El-Essawy is a dentist and prominent Muslim activist in Britain. El-Assawy opposed Khomeini’s fatwa. After their mutual appearance on a television broadcast, El-Essawy spotted him on the train home:
“I went to him and I said: ‘Well, Rushdie, look, I would advise you to put a little health warning on the book to say this is a novel.’ And he shouted at me, and he said: ‘If you don’t get out of here, I’ll call the guards.” BBC (30:32)
If The Satanic Verses was merely a work of fiction, why did Rushdie overreact to the dentist’s sensible proposal? Ironically, Rushdie did agree to meet with the El-Essawy more than a year later, claiming now to be a true Muslim: “And he did in such, what appeared to me, to be extremely sincere voice.” BBC (1:12:00)
Rushdie followed with a public statement:
“What I have said is that in all my writing, I have moved closer and closer to an engagement with religious faith. And I have no quarrel with the central tenets of Islam, which is the oneness of God and the validity of the prophecy of the Prophet Muhammad…I am able to accept the central principle of Islam.” BBC (1:15:00)
Even as fellow writer Hanif Kureishi defended Rushdie’s “re-conversion,” he revealed much about his friend’s true nature:
“I don’t think any of us really believed it. I think everyone thought: ‘Oh, he’s going to try that now to get out of it.’…No, I didn’t think he was sincere about it. I didn’t think sincerity was important at all. Why would you want to be sincere? You know, you just do anything in order to get out of this terrible situation. You just say what you need to say and hope that these bearded ones will bugger off.” BBC (1:17:07)
If sincerity does not matter, why should we take Rushdie’s work seriously at all?
Sameen Rushdie, the novelist’s elegantly self-possessed sister, reacted with horror to her brother’s cowardice. She immediately called him up to ask: “What the hell is this news?...Have you gone mad? What are you doing this for?” BBC (1:17:07)
Rushdie soon retracted his profession of faith. You may find reasons to justify the novelist’s manipulative conduct, but you certainly cannot call it heroic or brave. He had never been a champion of free expression, and even went out of his way to avoid considerably less pressure.
His first major novel, 1981’s Midnight’s Children, dealt with the first few decades of Indian independence. The original draft of the novel included the following line about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi: “It has often been said that Mrs. Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay accused his mother of being responsible, through her neglect, for his father’s death; and that this gave him an unbreakable hold over her, so that she became incapable of denying him anything.”
When the prime minister sued Rushdie, he quickly capitulated by removing the offensive line, as he later admitted in his 2006 introduction to the novel.
In conclusion, readers of Hitchens Watch must look elsewhere for a hero.
Our Swedish correspondent has been kind enough to send us her latest essay on Salman Rushdie. Since it will take a while to mark it up, let us review one of The Great Man's finest moments according to SR.
Laughter and Hitchens were inseparable companions, and comedy was one of the most powerful weapons in his arsenal. When we were both on Real Time with Bill Maher in 2009 along with Mos Def, and the rapper began to offer up a series of cockeyed animadversions [OK, William F. Buckley] about Iran’s nuclear program and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Christopher became almost ferally polite, addressing Mos, as he tore into his ideas, by the faux-respectful moniker “Mr. Definitely,” a name so belittlingly funny that it rendered even more risible the risible notions which Mr. D. was trying to advance.
Caught up with the HBO "Recount" movie at last, it was not bad at all. Two gripes, it reinforces the great Republican Myth about the 1960 Election (by having a Republican repeat it-and letting it stand uncorrected- "Mad Men" did the same thing) that "Daley Stole the Election for Kennedy" by cheating in Illinois. The supposed mystery of Nixon not asking for a recount was no mystery at all- Kennedy won with a solid electoral college victory and putting Illinois in his column still left Kennedy the winner by a fair margin, though the popular vote was very close. Now that I have disabused you of that whopper, you may get on with your lives.....
Also, a Gore worker summing up the "what ifs" that hurt his man at the end of the film intones "if Clinton had gotten a blow job from Sharon Stone instead of Monica Lewinsky, his approval ratings would have gone through the roof.." No disrespect to Ms. Stone, but Monica actually did quite nicely, and Clinton's approval was indeed through the roof the week of his Impeachment. It would take two solid years of the spurned Media's payback (they had clearly stepped over the line and were in bed with The Republicans in going after Clinton's head- a fact which may have well have saved him) to make the Election, in Eric Alterman's accurate phrase, "close enough to steal."
Of course, Hitchens played his role in those events, best summered up in Cockburn's Obit where he wrote, "there were many other bad moments." It's also worth remembering, however, that Hitchens told his readers, making no particular case, that the evidence showed that Bush had WON Florida. This again debunks the "he was wrong about Iraq" gang, as Hitch was already running interference for The White House that would give him his war.
By the late nineties Christopher Hitchens was telling his audiences "find a good Republican and vote for him." One of his major arguments was that there were ALWAYS appointments to The Supreme Court coming up, and so why worry about that? This lapse of judgement was ignored in even the damning Hitchens obits, which were mostly written by progressives like Glenn Greenwald who were likely on the same page as Hitch at the time, and couldn't have known they were abetting the election of the worst Presidential Administration in modern history and quite possibly ever.
Hitchens often lied (there really is no other word for it) in saying that Hillary Clinton had destroyed the movement for health care that had been growing for generations. Only the least honest Clinton hater can deny that the Clinton's clumsy but sincere attempts to advance this issue are the origin of the baby steps taken by "Obamacare." As things stand now, it is Bush's opportunity to pack the court with right ideologues that may rob Americans of those baby steps for perhaps another generation.
Of course, Hitchens didn't pick the judges himself, and the Dems failure to block Alito was the nadir of their haplessness. Hitches probably convinced few with his foolish "what me worry?" take on the selection of Justices, but as his sympathy for poor Clarence Thomas illustrates, this was one more issue where Hitchens displayed a particularly grievous stupidity.
Unless it helped him get his many gigs in the always media friendly role of "leftist who beats up on leftists" in which case it was quite wise in the mercenary sense.
Hitch's tears fall from White Man's Heaven as Gorgeous George takes the Blackburn, er, Bradford West seat in a smashing upset over Labour's Imran Hussain, so thank God for the Torygraph.
There was a Respect campaign banner behind Mr Galloway as he spoke. The slogans on it were in English and Urdu. The Urdu slogans were above the English ones.
A spectre is haunting Bradford West... As we welcome our new Islamic overlords, let us review some of MP Galloway's greatest hits.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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