Here is an article from Peter Hitchens on the film 'Milk', which was published in the Sunday Mail this week.
"Penn and the tricky truth about gay power
I rather thought the extraordinary film Milk, starring Sean Penn as the American homosexual activist Harvey Milk, would pick up a few Oscars. This is a subject that really gets Hollywood going.
Milk is an interesting movie, though like so many these days it is much too long. It does at least hint at the extraordinarily promiscuous lifestyles of many pre-HIV homosexuals. It also contains a very telling and honest moment where Milk – no slouch at the tricks of politics – proclaims that he is
‘a homosexual with power’, and proceeds to wield it. He was the first of many."
I don't think i have to say too much, other than I find Hitchens a disgrace. Apart from the obvious fact that Harvey Milk was certainly not the first homosexual with power, i would like to also know what other films about gay politicians have been produced by Hollywood as its a subject that "really gets Hollywood going".
I also wonder if this article is another attack in his ongoing battle with blogger Iain Dale, following the last pile of homophobic drivel he published.
The man is a bigoted fool and the Mail should have nothing to do with him.
1 comment:
Interesting blog, thanks for posting it. A couple of thoughts:
"i would like to also know what other films about gay politicians have been produced by Hollywood as its a subject that "really gets Hollywood going".
I think Peter Hitchens is saying that films with a Gay subject do well at the Oscars. Based on the success of Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia at the awards it seems at the very least a supportable assertion.
"Apart from the obvious fact that Harvey Milk was certainly not the first homosexual with power"
I don't think Hitchens is arguing that Harvey Milk was the first Gay man to wield political power, but that he was one of the first openly Gay politicians and that he used his power in office to promote gay rights. This isn't a controversial opinion, and in fact is one the Milk filmmakers would agree with;
Milk was I quote "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States" and "a martyr for gay rights"
None of this is to say that there isn't an argument to be had with Hitchens on whether those fought for rights and freedoms are a good or bad thing. I suspect I disagree with Hitchens on the issue of Gay Rights, but he's a more complicated character than he's given credit, for example here is something he wrote on British Gay Rights Peter Tatchell:
"Amazing as it may now seem, Peter Tatchell was not in those days openly homosexual. He (quite reasonably) dodged questions on the subject which people asked him when they had no business to do so. He stuck to the main plank of his campaign which was an excellent one for Bermondsey "Houses with Gardens". I suspect the sheer nastiness of the experience changed Mr Tatchell's life. Looking back, I think his quiet dignity and guts under an unending hosing of innuendo are one of the most moving political performances I've ever seen. And Parliament is the poorer for his never having got there. He is a principled defender of freedom of speech, amongst other laudable things. I've publicly apologised to him for any part I may have played in the campaign against him, in anything I wrote at the time. Those of us who were there now mostly realise that the man we portrayed as the villain was in fact the hero of the occasion."
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