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Email Luke Essays Profiles Archives Search LF.net Luke Ford Profile Dennis Prager Jan 16 Luke Studies Journalistic Ethics Matt Welch Sacked By Lefty Mag A left-leaning magazine has canceled a piece from Matt Welch because of his involvement with Richard Riordan's new non-liberal weekly. That was the reason given for axing the long-ago commissioned piece. Matt Welch writes: Dear Luke, Your mail came just as the editor of some left-of-center politically-oriented publication, that had basically hired me on to become a media critic, just let me know that I was no longer wanted, primarily because of my affiliation with Riordan. Funny, huh? Mostly, weblogging has improved my career enormously, though since Sept. 11, left-of-center publications have been washing their hands of me. Which makes perfect sense, since I'm in favor of universal health care, think Henry Kissinger is a debased war criminal, write columns criticizing Republican bigotry & am totally against the death penalty. But, you know, whatever. Richard Riordan Returns From Austria LA Examiner publisher Richard Riordan (www.examinerla.com) has returned from Austria fired up to make his new LA weekly happen. Matt Welch and Ken Layne don't have jobs yet, officially, but they should soon. Cathy Seipp seemed to love the mock-up. We will have lunch Thursday. Khunrum writes: Looking for a spot on the new paper Luker? Bet you are...I hope there are no homos conducting the interviews at human resources. Cathy Seipp's Life As A Sitcom Cathy Seipp writes for UPI.com: LOS ANGELES, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- A few years ago, life became rather sitcom-esque for your faithful correspondent. My ex-husband split up with his Number Two ex-wife, and my father found himself (once again) between girlfriends, a job and a place to live. So they became roommates. People kept telling me to pitch the situation as a series. And maybe I should have, though I wonder how successful "The Odd Couple" would have been had the situation resembled this one, which was basically Felix and Felix. The biggest difference between them was that my ex-husband can't do repairs around the house and my father can fix anything, which came in rather handy when the Number Two ex-wife kicked in the door. My father is now comfortably ensconced downstairs in my guest unit, where he spends many happy hours watching Animal Planet. "Will you look at that!" he exclaimed one day as a parrot quickly solved a puzzle. "Sheila" -- one of the women in his life -- "wouldn't be able to figure that one out if you gave her a week." The Time To Act Is Now Chaim writes: Forget this trying to start at the bottom in Hollywood crap. You are your own story, your own bootstrap. The thing for you to focus on is getting your puss on television and landing a gig as a radio or television talk show host, a thing for which you are a natural. I guarantee that it would be a rock 'em, sock 'em hit. Sure, people would come initially for the freak value, but they will stay for the content, which is not available anyplace else - YET. And in that environment, the love between you and this fine Christian lass can only blossom into something that any real Jew would hate, if indeed he regarded you as Jewish. But he does not, so in all likelihood, they would wish you a hardy "mazel tov" allah Laura Winner. This niche is not going to be open to you forever, Luke. Either the Zeitgeist changes and the window closes, or somebody else recognizes it and seizes the opportunity before you. The time to act is now, and with the love of a beautiful Christian maiden backing you up, there will be no stopping you! Poof Sues Variety From LATimes.com: The longtime editor of the entertainment trade publication Variety was sued Friday by a former editor who alleges he was fired after complaining about being harassed because he is gay. Ramin Zahed sued Variety, parent company Reed Elsevier and editor Peter Bart in Los Angeles County Superior Court for wrongful discharge. Also named was another Variety editor, Thomas Tapp. Zahed alleges that the firing came after he complained to the paper's human resources department about having to endure slurs about his sexual orientation. The lawsuit alleges Bart set the workplace tone by frequently making slurs against gays and women. Khunrum writes: A few years ago a woman successfully sued the organization where I am employed. She claimed she was passed over for promotion because she was a woman and her supervisor, a gay male gave preference to his homo buddies. Thing was, although the supervisor in question was gay, and we all knew it, he was married and still in the closet. I don't think the case went to court. She got the promotion, he was humiliated and found another job elsewhere...kinda interesting eh! what? ................ "If you cover television at Variety," says a journalist who did, "Peter [Bart] doesn't care about you. He only cares about movies. I never had any of the problems that other people have said they had with him. Peter reminds me of Monty Burns, Homer's boss on The Simpsons." Peter Benton Bart was born in 1932 and raised on Manhattan's Upper West side by two public school teachers who immigrated from Austria to the United States. Bart doesn't like to admit that he's Jewish but the September 2001 issue of Los Angeles magazine revealed that his mother's maiden name was Clara Ginsberg. She came through Ellis Island in 1914 and her passenger record reads: "Ethnicity: Austria (Hebrew)." "I don't want to talk about it," Bart says of his religious heritage, to LA magazine. "I resent people's militancy on these issues. Everyone wants to peg everyone else because everyone is predictable. And I'm not." Bart told LA mag he's never dated a Jewish girl, never attended a seder, and only attended synagogue once, for the bar mitzvah of then-agent Michael Ovitz's son. ("I wanted to see what one was like.") "Listen, I got berated by the vice president in charge of business affairs at Paramount," he says, "because I did not take off Jewish holidays. And I was affronted. I basically told him to mind his own damned business." Bart compared himself to his longtime assistant, a light-skinned black woman: "She struggles with this, too. She feels she's a black person. But she's about as black as Felix [Bart's Siamese cat]. I feel she is a bit victimized by, again, that need to identify with some subculture that will help you. "You talk to a lot of the better-educated, wealthy black people. You know, they're not very black. The big distinction is between the people they call 'niggers'--who are the ghetto blacks, who can't even speak, can't get a job, and bury themselves in black-itude--and those people who are better looking, better educated, smarter, and who own the world: the black middle class," he says. "A lot of people in Hollywood--let's say if they happen to be Jewish people who come from Brooklyn--they are most comfortable with those people. Which is fine. It just doesn't happen to describe me." (LA magazine 9/01) A few minutes later he asks LA magazine's Amy Wallace, "Can you and I make a deal about this whole thing about religion? I would love it if we could dodge it in some way that you don't think is dishonest." He will repeat this request to Wallace several times. From 1990-2001, Bart was the most influential writer on Hollywood (and described as "the most hated man in Hollywood"). Though he's largely unknown by those outside of the entertainment industry, Bart dominated TV and movie journalism by virtue of his bully pulpit at Variety where he served as editor and chief columnist of Daily Variety and Weekly Variety. Variety is the most read and most influential trade magazine of the entertainment industry (its one competitor is the Hollywood Reporter). Trade journalism is not really journalism, as trade papers inevitably serve their constituencies more than cover them. More than 90% of advertising in trade papers like Variety come from the industry they purport to cover. Peter also wrote bimonthly pieces for GQ. In an industry filled with lies and flattery, Bart's writing is unusually frank. He's willing to diss the big boys like Barry Diller, Paul Newman and Warren Beatty. Bart's lived in Los Angeles since the 1960s, serving as a reporter for the New York Times, an executive at three movie studios, an author of novels and nonfiction as well as an independent film producer and screenwriter. In her devastating September 2001 profile of Bart, Los Angeles magazine's reporter Amy Wallace notes there are "two keys to success in Hollywood: relationships and information. Bart traffics in both. He lunches almost every day with a studio chief, a marketing executive, a top manager or talent agency head, an entertainment lawyer or lobbyist." Los Angeles magazine's cover story on Bart had the industry talking when it became public Friday, August 17th. Wallace's story noted: * Bart claimed he fired reporter Anita Busch and Dave Robb from Variety. In fact, Variety's personnel department confirmed they both quit. * Bart said on the TV show "Politically Incorrect" in May, 2001 that "I'm the only Republican here." Bart's been a registered Democrat since 1994. * Bart can speak disparagingly about many groups: the French, Germans, blacks, Jews, lawyers, agents, actors, publicists, feminists, fat people. He uses terms like "fags, bitches, cunts, Nips" in staff meetings. * Bart's non-existent note taking which doesn't prevent him from quoting his with Hollywood figures. Bart dictates these quotes off the top of his head and inserts them into reporters' stories. They often sound like they've been invented by Peter. * In a letter to the LA Times, Bart claimed, "I have covered . . . wars." He hasn't. * A publicist recalls Bart yelling at her, "I ran three studios and I will not be dictated to by a fucking flack!" Bart has run no studios. * Colleagues told LA magazine that Bart makes things up. "His relationship to the truth is very plastic. I'd go on interviews with him and he'd write something and I'd think, 'Were we in the same room?' He's just a storyteller. The narrative needs are more immediate to his imagination than what actually happened." * In the pages of Variety, Bart praises friends, associates, and even his own movies without acknowledging his involvement. The way Bart practices journalism would get him fired from any legitimate journalistic publication. * Amy Wallace caught Bart in numerous consequential lies. When Variety reviewer Joe McBride ripped Paramount's movie Patriots Games, Bart wrote the studio's then CEO Martin S. Davis: "I know that you and Stanley [Jaffe] feel that Variety has developed an anti-Paramount tilt in its coverage. This distresses me--we go back together many years and I personally feel a keen sense of camaraderie. Clearly you feel, however, that the 'old comrades' aren't taking care of each other. If that's your feeling, you and Stanley deserve better and I intend to take personal charge of this situation to set it right." Bart told Wallace he'd written no such note. * Wallace established that Peter Bart sold scripts on the side to persons he purportedly covers. Wallace caught Bart in numerous lies over this. In 1998, Michelle Manning at Paramount bought the purported Bart novel Power Play, which only runs 86 pages and looks like it was put together from Peter Bart's script of the same story - Crossroaders. Bart succeeded Victor Navasky, now the publisher of The Nation, as editor of the college newspaper at Swarthmore. After majoring in politics, Bart briefly worked as a copyboy at The New York Times, and then had a fellowship at the London School of Economics. In 1956, the Wall Street Journal hired him. Around 1960, he went back to the New York Times to cover advertising and the media. He married publicist Dorothy Callman in 1961. They had their first daughter, Colby, in 1962. In 1964 Bart became a national correspondent in Los Angeles. In 1966 his second daughter, Dilys, was born. Around the same time, he wrote a flattering profile of producer Robert Evans. Charles Bluhdorn, the new owner of Paramount, read the article and hired Evans, before he ever made one movie, as vice-president. In 1967, Evans became Paramount's youngest-ever production chief. He hired Bart as his number two. Together they decided what movies would get made, writes Wallace in LA magazine. During their reign, Paramount produced such hits as Harold and Maude, Rosemary's Baby; Goodbye, Columbus; Love Story; The Godfather; Don't Look Now; Chinatown; The Godfather II; The Conversation. When Barry Diller came in as Paramount's new studio chief in 1974, he forced Bart out, according to speculation. Bart has jabbed at Diller eversince, repeatedly claiming that Bluhdorn tried to marry off Diller so nobody would believe the persistent rumor that he was gay. Evans and Diller deny the veracity of the story. Many people in Hollywood would agree with the following comment about Diller by Bart, but few persons would have the courage to say it: "He treats everyone like shit." According to Amy Wallace, Variety paid Bart about $500,000 a year including bonuses, a green BMW convertible and a lavish expense account. Peter took over Weekly Variety out of New York in 1989. At the time it was losing $3 million a year and circulation had dropped from 52,000 in 1980 to less than 29,000. Bart turned the ship around, upgraded from newsprint to glossy paper, and assembled a new staff. In 1991, he took over Daily Variety, merged the staffs and returned to Los Angeles. Bart has a hard time with those parts of reality he doesn't like. For instance, he won't admit that he's Jewish. And he won't admit that Variety is a trade paper. Trade publications aren't regarded as serious journalism by serious journalists and those who crave serious journalism. "Bart has made Variety more global, more sophisticated, more fun to read," writes Wallace. "Staffers praise him for hating all the right things: lawyers, committees, focus groups--anything that obstructs Variety's (and his own) ability to act quickly, on instinct." Wallace writes that "Taking care of each other" is Bart's defining editorial principle vis-a-vis the Hollywood oligopoly. "He may be editor-in-chief of Variety, but he is still one of them." Bart routinely calls his favorite sources--Guber, Ovitz, Weinstein, Evans, producer Arnon Milchan--to vet stories and make adjustments. At a gala tribute to Bart at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 1997, Guber began the roast with this joke: "Will everyone here who owes Peter a favor for having killed a negative story please remain seated?" The room--filled with Hollywood's heaviest hitters--erupted in laughter. Everybody stayed in their seats. (LA magazine 9/01) Veritas Jones comments: "When Peter began these interviews, he was anticipating a lovefest designed to get him back into a studio. But forgetting that one should never trust a media hack, he ends up getting a 'Tina Brown' and the fact that Amy Wallace began this with him threatening to sue her confirms my suspicion." A Plea For Filtering Cecile du Bois writes: Mom's right. Like she said, if you don't filter this site, then it won't be really be "Luke Ford". The "Gay Mafia", the "Star Trek dudes" and other media junkies will take over this website and leave you to wade through your own email, no book will be published, and you'll be regretting this website, but if you treated them colder than Madonna, then you will be successful. Behave like a king, be treated like one too. Anita Busch, "XXX", is not an Israeli spy but a boring writer who is highly exaggerated into a fantasy realm similar to an average episode of Alias (with Jennifer Garner). Obsessing over a certain character or person will lead to a certain kind of idolatry. Other observers will think that Anita Busch must be very important if people think that she is a spy or some exotic thing. Like my mother said, as long as people think she's a spy, they might as well think everyone a spy. Media is this realm that includes talents and nontalents who cooperate together to create fantasy lives and at the same time, ruin people to the bone. By saying a writer like Busch is an Israeli spy is nonsense. XXX could do more interesting things, lose some pounds, take a hike, write an interesting article, etc. But staying glued to the computer as if it were his pillow is absurd. Computers and wasting time tend to make people go nuts. Anyways, C. Du Bois Luke says: That author, Stephen Fried of THE NEW RABBI book, speaks at Sinai Temple in Westwood Wedesnday 7:30PM with Rabbi David Wolpe. I have to confess the reason I haven't had much good content on lukeford.net for a while is that the site doesn't make me any money and I've had to concentrate on writing that does pay me, even if it is not stuff I'd prefer to write on. I do anonymous fact checking, research for other writers, screenwriters, producers. I write speeches etc anonymously. It pays the bills. LF.net is for fun, hoping it will lead to something... I was in shul shabbos lunch... talking to a 16yo girl at a local Orthodox day school and her parents... She loved Jane Austen. I recommended the R-rated movie BRIDGET JONES DIARY, which is based on Pride and Prejudice... Her parents shushed me, saying their 16yo wasn't old enough to see such a movie as BRIDGET... And then I remembered that you are only 13 and you had seen it... Gay Mafia Humiliated As Pro-Bush Floridians Beat Liberal Oakland like a Drum Quentin Twink: The-AllMighty is affirming the election of George W. Bush even as I type this. Quentin Twink: Humiliation to the Californians for permitting the Gay Mafia to rule them. And for not paying homage to my greatness. Men should not wear red....it makes them look like tampons. Khunrum writes: I detect sour grapes at The Ford Hovel. Fess up buddy. For a good job in the entertainment industry I'll wager you'd... Helpful says: He'd french kiss Jeff Wald for a free pass to the Universal Studios Tour....and take an extremely close look at Sid Bernstein's gun... Hollywood's Gay Mafia Hollywood's "gay mafia" or "velvet mafia" or "lavender mob" has long been the subject of gossip, with occasional blips into the mainstream press, such as during the Michael Ovitz incident in the summer of 2002. Terms such as "Gay mafia" refer to a group of powerful homosexuals who exercise extraordinary influence in the entertainment industry. "Gay mafia" is not a term used publicly or within polite company. It's not something we're supposed to talk about it. To do so, according to conventional wisdom, is to engage in homophobia or paranoia. It is the moral equivalent of anti-Semitism. The arts community has long had a disproportionate number of homosexuals and Jews. More than half of the leading power brokers in Hollywood are Jewish, and about a third of the powerful are homosexual, including David Geffen, Ray Stark, Calvin Klein, Aaron Spelling, Steve Tisch, Barry Diller and agent Sandy Gallin. This creates an atmosphere conducive to pushing "gay rights" and inimical to "gay bashing." In his 1999 book "Tabloid Baby," Burt Kearns, former managing editor for such tabloid TV shows as A Current Affair and Hard Copy, writes about the clash between his Australian tabloid buddies and Fox's head at the time, Barry Diller and his "Velvet Mafia." To Diller, "the Aussies were unwashing homophobic ruffians... Hollywood was a place where untold secrets unfolded in the back of limousines and behind the walls of cloistered mansions, where rubber sheets covered priceless bedspreads... "The manly men from Down Under had little reverence for the pampered poobahs of screenland and the secrets they held. They laughed at the Diller crowd and their fancy-pants airs. To be blunt, the Aussies regarded Barry Diller and many of his young male executives to be gay, and the Aussies referred to gays as "poofters." Diller...hated A Current Affair..." A Current Affair planned to do a story claiming that homosexual Cary Grant was straight. Their ad, written by Greg Snead, read: "Cary Grant: No More Fairy Tales." Diller phoned: "The...word...fairy...makes...my...BLOOD...BOIL!" Diller cancelled the entire month of A Current Affair's TV Guide ads and demanded to see copies of every promotional item Greg Snead had written in the past two years. (Tabloid Baby, pg. 46) Kearns hired homosexual Paul Nichols, to directed a pilot of FUNY, as in F--- You New York. Paul couldn't understand a heterosexual funny bit with a beautiful woman doing a US weather map while wearing a spandex miniskirt. Gordon Elliott read his script as sportcaster Adrian L. Adrian in a lisping effeminate voice of the stereotypical Aussie "poof." Paul got mad and walked out of the control room. Everything stopped until Elliott agreed to read it "straight." (Tabloid Baby, pg. 112) Spy magazine published Mark Ebner's controversial essay on the gay mafia in its June 1995 issue. For years afterwards, Ebner was blackballed in Hollywood. It was not until about 1999 that he started selling scripts again. From Taki's column in the 3/7/00 NYPress.com: I’m not at all surprised to read that Hollywood is dominated by a Velvet Mafia of rich homosexuals who demand sexual favors in return for work in the movies. In fact I would have been surprised if it were the other way round. Those old Mittel-Europa Jews who ran Tinseltown in its heyday established the casting-couch practice long ago; but, as they say, at least they did it with style and with the opposite sex. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood is the title of an upcoming book by Tom King, a respected Wall Street Journal reporter who it seems has hit pay dirt–and it’s dirt, all right–with his exposé of the unspeakable Geffen. Actually it’s poetic justice. Geffen invited King to write a book about his amazing rise to the top, and allegedly named dozens of former boyfriends, many of them now famous stars. Indiscretion aside, Geffen is a lowlife sans pareil. I haven’t read the book, but I am sure that some of the so-called boyfriends did it with His Grotesqueness out of burning ambition and despite their heterosexuality. I do not exactly hang out with scum like the Velvet Mafia, but about 10 years ago I got some firsthand information about how they operate. Libel laws do not permit me to name names. One of Europe’s greatest directors of opera, stage and screen gave a letter of introduction to an ex-assistant (and boyfriend) addressed to a very rich and particularly well-known tycoon, a member of the VM. I know both the director and his younger ex-assistant and they are gentlemen of the old school. Both are gay. As the assistant presented himself to the tycoon, he offered his CV and gave the director’s regards. "Screw the regards and the CV, let’s see if you know how to..." came the answer. My friend fled in disgust. But what bothers me is not the bestiality and arrogance of the Velvet Mafiosi. It is the message they send out through their movies. American Beauty, for example, is said to be a well-made film–I haven’t seen it–that will probably win many Oscars, but carries a subliminal message against the family. (Geffen, as rumor has it, is supposed to have been thrilled that in the movie a homophobe father beats up his son when he suspects him to have had a gay affair with Kevin Spacey’s character, and even more thrilled when it is later revealed that the homophobe was actually a repressed gay.) Geffen, of course, denies there is such a thing as a homosexual cabal, and, typically, charges anti-Semitism. According to King’s book, friends like Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin and Calvin Klein, among many others, keep a lower profile but apparently indulge in the sexual bacchanals that go with the territory. Alleged weekend-long orgies fueled by drugs at which Geffen and his powerful buddies run a " meat market" selecting young men for sex are apparently described in detail in King’s opus. Here is one of Bill Clinton’s close supporters, one who had a free run of the Lincoln bedroom, and was, I believe, once even called an adviser to the Draft Dodger, pushing a gay agenda of promoting stars and directors who make movies and records sympathetic to the gay lifestyle. Geffen is a natural for the Clinton White House. Sleaze is the operative word. Just think what Sid (the scumbag) Blumenthal would have done to Geffen if the tycoon were straight and a Republican. Has anyone in the Clinton administration–and that includes Al (the Liar) Gore–bothered to ask whether the Geffen agenda undermines our most important values? If anyone has, I’m Monica Lewinsky. Which brings me to the point I wish to make. Political correctness is the best way the left has to stamp out thought it doesn’t agree with. As the Spectator of London wrote recently, "If it’s impossible to say or write certain things, then it becomes impossible to think them and conformity is guaranteed for ever and ever." George Orwell’s 1984 is alive and thriving with p.c., except that this time it’s for real. What the left and its p.c. adherents have managed to do is to turn everyone who is not mainstream into a persecuted racial minority. As Paul Craig Roberts (the best columnist by far) pointed out in the John Rocker case, "Bud Selig thinks that kids with purple hair, repeat felons, welfare moms and homosexuals with AIDS are ‘ethnicities.’" Selig, in his haste to please the politically correct, misinterpreted Rocker’s remarks. Most kids with purple hair are white, not black, and repeat felons are criminals, not a racial classification. There are many white immigrants who don’t speak English–as in Russians–but try to explain this to p.c. commissars. Geffen and his ilk know all this. Ergo the anti-Semitism defense. Hollywood has never exactly been a moral place, far from it, but until the 60s and 70s it preached a hell of a moral lesson. God, the family, patriotism, even Mom were sacrosanct. Now it’s the exact opposite. Criminals are sympathetically portrayed, cops always negatively; people who think same-gender sex is wrong are fascists; businessmen are all crooks, while crooks are nice and quaint; drug-takers are cool, drinkers are fascist bullies. Well, you get the point. AIDS ribbons are in, while battle decorations are a real no-no. HIV, like lung cancer, is a lifestyle disease, but HIV carriers are celebrated in the manner winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor used to be. It is a topsy-turvy world, Hollywood, and I can’t wait to read Tom King’s book. In the meantime, don’t hold your breath before the Geffen spin machine, in cahoots with such Clinton flacks as the grotesque Geraldo Rivera, go to work on the author. After all, if a phony like Jeffrey Toobin can demonize Starr and acquit Bill Clinton, think what his kind can do in defense of the ghastly Geffen. ...................... The word "outing" refers to the publicizing of a person's homosexuality. "Outing" as in "out of the closet." "Outing" became widely used during the 1990s. Michelangelo Signorile, author of "Queer in America: Sex, the Media and the Closets of Power," is one of the leading advocates of "outing." But the outing pioneer is San Francisco Chronicle homosexual columnist Armistead Maupin who "outed" actor Rock Hudson. "When I came out of the closet (in 1973), I came to the revolutionary conclusion that there was nothing wrong with being gay and that included everyone else as well," Maupin told the LA Times. "It became clear to me that the only way to lift the onus was being as matter of fact about it as I possibly could. I've never accused anyone of being gay because I don't think it's worthy of an accusation." After Hudson, the next celebrity revealed to be homosexual was publisher Malcolm Forbes. A month after Forbes' death in February, 1990, Signorile wrote a cover story for the now-defunct magazine Outweek, "The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was written up in early 1995 for taking up with a male companion, following Wenner's divorce. 5/14/95 Toronto Sun MINNIE KNOWS: Is there a corporation anywhere on our corrupt planet more obsessed with fostering and maintaining a straight-arrow, family-values image than Disney? Of course not. But Buzz, a lively monthly out of Los Angeles - it's sort of like Toronto Life but more fun - says in its cover story that a lot of people who push the squeaky-clean, mom-dad-two-kids-plus-dog, relentlessly upbeat Disney image are more than just cheerful, gang: they're gladly, joyously gay. Yes, kiddies, as many as 40 per cent of Disney's 63,000 troops are gay. Yeah? Who says so, I can hear you asking. Well, how about Disney chairman Michael Eisner, who gave this estimate to a gay-rights activist. Working for the far-flung Disney kingdom is "magic," says one gay employee. Recently, a gay and lesbian pride day was held at Walt Disney World and 12,000 showed up, walking down the streets of the Magic Kingdom "holding hands, embracing, and kissing." And in yet another example of synchronicity, Spy has a story on Hollywood's 'Gay Mafia,' a group that packs a tremendous punch in the movie industry's boardrooms. The big piece on "The Gay Mafia" in the June issue, for example, is ridiculous. Writer Mark Ebner mixes rumor with nasty, unattributed quotes about people like David Geffen, Sandy Gallin and Barry Diller, presenting it all as the final truth. Says "an actor with 20 pictures to his credit" about Geffen: "He probably wouldn't remember me because he's slept with so many people. . . . He had matchbooks with guys' phone numbers on them, and when he got home, he listened to messages filled with guys." This gay mafia makes and breaks careers, you see, and of course it's all sexually motivated. And are we supposed to think Neil Jordan is gay simply because he has directed movies with gay, lesbian and bisexual characters?! Maybe Spy should merge with the National Enquirer and call it a day. "Forrest Gump" producer Steve Tisch, a married father with children, isn't put out by his inclusion in a Spy magazine photo titled "The Gay Mafia." (Also in the picture: David Geffen, Calvin Klein and Sandy Gallin.) Last year, Tisch was named "Hetero Hero" by the gay magazine Advocate for his anti-AIDS action. "The only thing is," said Tisch, "I was 65 pounds heavier when that picture was taken." San Francisco Chronicle 1/28/96 No one denies there's still a closet on-screen in Hollywood films -- certainly for leading men. Off-screen, though, gay movie industry executives agree that the closet is indeed in many ways dead. Hollywood has always been accepting of homosexuals. Everyone in town who was even the teeniest bit hip probably knew Rock Hudson's secret, just as today everyone knows, or thinks they know, who paid whom how many millions to marry him and be his ''beard'' and not say anything about the boyfriend ensconced in the guest house. ''The closet exists for actors, absolutely, but I don't believe it exists for writers, directors and producers,'' says Rick Leed, president of Wind Dancer Production Group. ''If you're talented and you can deliver to a studio a quality movie -- and, hopefully, a quality movie that makes money -- nobody cares.'' Homosexuality can also be a common bond in an industry where contacts and information are everything. Everyone knows Hollywood is a ''boy's club,'' meaning straight men run it, but even if the straight boys don't accept someone, there are plenty of gays and lesbians to bond with, and there has even arisen, in the media, a phrase, ''the gay Mafia.'' It's a term one reads in the press but one seldom hears it in the business. It's a sneaky, double- edged coinage. On one level, ''gay Mafia'' pays homage to the supposed ''gay power'' in Hollywood, but on the other it makes that power seem sinister. One of the unspoken implications of ''gay Ma fia'' is that gay actors are sleeping their way to the top with gay executives. ''I don't know if it's to the top, but there are many who have slept their way to the middle,'' Leed says. It's nothing new. Gore Vidal's recently published memoirs report that way back during the making of ''Rebel Without a Cause,'' Sal Mineo was fooling around with the director Nicholas Ray. Ray had been married to Gloria Grahame, an actress who specialized in dangerous allure and played the town tramp in ''It's a Wonderful Life.'' She also turns up in ''The Celluloid Closet,'' getting a massage from a big, mannish masseuse in a scene from ''In a Lonely Place,'' also directed by Ray. Hollywood's Heterophobia I found this article by Daniel Jeffreys in the 4/1/00 Daily Mail. AT THE start of the film American Beauty, Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Burnham, says: 'In a year, I will be dead' - and by the movie's end, he is, killed by his repressed homosexual next- door neighbour. In the meantime, his middle-class life implodes as he falls in love with his teenage daughter's best friend and his wife finds comfort in the arms of a reptilian estate agent. We are left feeling that suburbia is a hellish place where happiness will for ever be absent. Everyone in the film is explosively dysfunctional, except for the Burnhams' other set of neighbours, an affluent gay couple who float through the mayhem with disarming serenity. To some, the film is a thought-provoking lesson in the importance of not taking stereotypes at face value and of seeking out the joy and wonder we otherwise take for granted in modern life. To the more sceptical, its main mesage seems clear: if only we could all be gay and out of the closet, we would be happy. The flip side to that message is that, as heterosexuals, we are doomed to unhappiness and strife. If we are lucky, the best we can achieve is manic depression. At worst, we will be murdered by some causality of heterosexual deviancy. The film that dominated the Oscars is a triumph of dark cynicism with some wonderful acting and direction, but I believe that it was only made because of what I call its 'heterophobia' - the systematic denigration of heterosexual lifestyles - that has become part of the Hollywood mainstream. American Beauty is heterophobia's propaganda masterpiece. Its sweep of the Academy Awards' top categories thrilled Hollywood's gay community, who have been trying to prove for a long time that heterosexuality is a sad form of sexual dysfunction. American Beauty is now regarded as a classic in the same mould as The Graduate, but far more interesting are the characters behind the movie and the agenda they hope to promote. In the Seventies, homosexuals had legitimate grievances. They were persecuted for their sexuality and discriminated in ways that were repellent. THE GAY rights movement that became increasingly vocal in the Eighties won deserved new freedoms for homosexuals. Nobody should be persecuted for their sexuality, except those who prey on young children. Yet at some time in the past ten years, a new theory gained currency among gays, especially in the entertainment business. This held that heterosexuality was a curse to be denigrated and mocked wherever possible, and that gays could never win the power they craved in society without undermining heterosexuals whenever possible. At the same time, gays who held this view began agitating for homosexuality to be accepted as a form of behaviour on a par with heterosexual activity. This was to be done in two ways. On the positive front, these radical gays argued that homosexuals should be entitled to get married in the same way as heterosexual couples, and that schools should teach about gay sex as if it were no more normal or abnormal than male-female intercourse. Academics began writing papers arguing for gay parenting, using statistics to suggest that children of gay couples had no more emotional problems that the average child of a 'straight' family. On the negative end, gays began countering undesirable images of homosexuality - such as the spread of Aids - with a bleak picture of what they derisively called 'straight sex'. Lesbians began affirming that any woman who had a sexual relationship with a man must, at some point, submit to rape. Workplace behaviour, such as mild flirting, once regarded as innocent, was lumped together with flagrantly intrusive and unacceptable advances, and all of it labelled 'sexual harassment'. The point of this exercise was to demonise normal heterosexual behaviour, and to make the ordinary rituals of attraction and relationships seem aberrant, so that gays could advance their own cause by claiming 'straights' led lives that were much worse than theirs. Along the way, sexual harassment law, and the industry which has developed around it, distorted from a sensible set of safeguards into something which could be used to attack heterosexuality at its roots, effectively conveying the idea that a heterosexual male was inherently dangerous and needed to be constrained by Draconian laws just as bars might hold back a rabid tiger. Into this picture enter the men responsible for American Beauty, who must be stunned that their insidious attack on heterosexuality has not only become an Oscar-winner but has broken box office records. The screenwriter, who won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, is Alan Ball. He grew up in the American South, in Georgia. Ball's family life was, by his own admission, dysfunctional. He compares his childhood to American Beauty's Ricky, the son of Lester Burnham's mad neighbour and eventual nemesis. Ball's home included a father who was remote and distant, plus a mother who suffered severe depression after Ball's sister died in a car accident. Ball says he did not even know he was homosexual until he went to university, but claims to have suffered enough persecution at the hands of heterosexuality to believe it is inherently evil. At school, he was weedy and bespectacled. He played in the school band and was bullied by members of the school football team, who always dated the prettiest girls. He recalled recently that it was a time when homosexuality was so taboo he could not even acknowledge to himself that he was gay. Once Ball arrived in Hollywood, he became successful writing scripts for TV comedies and it was here his contempt for heterosexuality hardened. He wrote American Beauty while working for Cybill Shepherd on her show Cybill. It was a relationship forged in hell. Shepherd, a vivacious blonde, is an aggressive heterosexual. If her new autobiography is to be believed, she once had group sex with her personal trainer and his best friend because she wanted all her pleasure points stimulated simultaneously. She is also the kind of girl who would have spent time with football players at school - the kind of guys who used to slap Ball around. BALL has made no secret of his hatred for Shepherd, and sources say much of the shrillness in Lester Burnham's wife - played by Annette Bening - is based on Ball's antipathy towards a woman who made no secret of her unalloyed enjoyment of the kind of macho hunk Ball has never been. American Beauty provided Ball with another opportunity to promote his agenda. Last year, he wrote and produced a TV series called Oh, Grow Up, which featured two straight men sharing a house with a gay man, who, predictably, has much the better life. The series did not do well but in his film Ball was able to make his anti-heterosexual themes work with more power. In American Beauty, Ball's central characters, Lester and his wife, by focusing their sex drives on a teenage girl and a married man, are ciphers for the idea that heterosexuality must always mutate and become something damaging or perverse. The Fitts, who live next door to Lester, have different problems. Mr Fitt is a violent ex-Marine who persecutes his wife - making the point that heterosexuality always tends to become abusive - and beats his son. Mr Fitt's problems, of course, stem from the fact that he is gay but cannot accept it. When Fitt mistakenly decides Lester Burnham is also gay, he makes a pass. Spurned, he shoots Burnham in the head. The only battle Ball lost with his English director, Sam Mendes, and star, Spacey, as the script was filmed, tells much about Ball's motivations. In the final cut, Burnham stops just short of consummating his desires for his daughter's Lolita-like friend. Ball wanted the consummation to happen so that, according to sources, Burnham, the dark soul of heterosexuality revealed, could be seen as completely irredeemable. But Burnham is allowed to show a sudden emotional maturity, rejects this chance of a seedy seduction and dies gazing lovingly at a picture of his wife and child. The revised ending weakens Ball's attack on heterosexuality, but by then the main damage has been done. Were Ball the only prosletysing gay character in this off- screen drama, the case against American Beauty could not be made, but that is far from the truth. LONG before it became an Oscar hit, Ball's script was picked up by Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who eventually produced the film and were on stage last Sunday to collect the Oscar for Best Picture. These two men got to know each other in 1995 when Cohen invited Jinks to be on the steering committee of Out There, an activist group of gay entertainment executives that he had co-founded. Sources say that one of Out There's key objectives is to promote the gay lifestyle within films and members talk openly among themselves about how best to mock heterosexuality. Members of Out There have been actively involved in films like American Pie, which makes adolescent heterosexuality seem like a monstrous affliction, and the U.S. TV series Will And Grace, whose two leading gay men always seem to get the best lines, usually at the expense of a hapless heterosexual. Given their Out There affiliation, Jinks and Cohen knew just where to take the American Beauty script to get it made - to fellow Out There sympathizer David Geffen, Steven Spielberg's partner in Dreamworks. As, The Operator, a new biography of Geffen makes clear, Geffen is a predatory homosexual who has devoted considerable energy to projects that target heterosexuality. He is allegedly the main force in the Velvet Mafia, a loose association of powerful gay men who use their influence in Hollywood to advance gay issues. Sources say Geffen has frequently changed scripts if they seem to be too sympathetic towards heterosexual love or if they show any hint of antipathy towards gays. In 20 years of filmmaking, Geffen has become infamous for making or breaking careers based on whether the people involved are gay and willing to be part of his extremely active sex life. His summer parties at Fire Island, a gay resort 30 miles outside Manhattan, are legendary as the place the Velvet Mafia meet to indulge in extraordinary bacchanals. HIS GUEST list begins with designer Calvin Klein and includes other Velvet Mafia members such as Barry Diller (who helped create The Simpsons), George Michael and Sandy Gallin, the super-powerful talent agent who discovered Madonna, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. In recent years, several guests at Geffen's Fire Island house have described weekend-long orgies, fuelled by drugs, at which Geffen and his powerful friends ran a 'meat market', selecting young men for either sex or stardom. 'If you weren't incredibly handsome and well-built, there was no way you would get in,' says a New York movie agent who has been to several Geffen parties. 'Dress was minimal or nonexistent, and Geffen would prowl with his friends, squeezing men like they were cattle.' When Jinks and Cohen took American Beauty to Geffen, the billionaire producer was ecstatic. He rushed the script through the approval process - virtually unheard of for a screenplay by a writer with no previous movie hits - and maintained a close personal interest in casting. Geffen, Jinks, Cohen and Ball all attended half a dozen Oscar parties after the triumph of American Beauty. One producer who is close to Ball said they had good reason to be happy. After all, he said, they have created a film that is both a masterpiece and the most corrosive satire of heterosexual life that has ever made $100 million from the very people it vilifies. And that is the hard truth about American Beauty. It exists and triumphed because, for some gays, it is not enough to win civil rights and equality of opportunity. They want more: a society in which heterosexuality is so condemned that homosexuals can win any increases in power they might choose. ................ Camille Paglia writes 5/26/99 in Salon.com: Would an admission of gayness hurt a young male singer's career? Of course it would: This junior Adonis type requires the electric charge produced by the mass projection of adolescent girls in erotic hysteria. Elton John, after his sham marriage, could afford to be openly gay because he caricatured himself as a sad-sack clown, crying through his sequins. Pretty boys, with their androgynous glow, have a more direct and dangerous sensual appeal. If Ricky Martin turned out to be just another buff gay clone, he'd cut himself off at the knees as an international artist. Current gay male culture is too shallow to provide the kind of psychological development that a performer needs. 'Gay Mafia' Takes Over Control of Hollywood by Paul Richert (from the May/June 1995 issue of The Nationalist Times) If you're wondering why homosexuals have skyrocketed in recent years to join blacks and feminists at the top of liberalism's hallowed list of "minority groups" entitled to special rights and privileges, look no further than Hollywood --- Tinseltown is controlled these days by the "Gay Mafia." The Gay Mafia is dominated by three individuals --- Sandy Geffen, Barry Diller, and Sandy Gallin. Geffen is a billionaire mogul who has recently joined forces with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg to start "Dreamworks," a new studio which may well come to surpass all the other studios, given the resources and clout of its partners. An expose of the Gay Mafia in the May/June issue of Spy magazine by Mark Ebner states that Geffen "can end a career with a phone call." Geffen "married" Bob Brassle, a Warner Bros. vice president, at an est outing, in a ceremony replete with wedding bands. But Geffen is known for sleeping with countless male Hollywood executives and actors. Diller is another superrich Hollywood executive. Ebner calls Diller the "smartest don in the Mob," noting that he has made "gods" out of those loyal to him --- people like Michael Eisner, Katzenberg, Peter Chernin, Sherry Lansing, and Dawn Steel, among many others. Although Diller still refuses to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, according to Ebner he was known for cruising the dorms at UCLA and holding homosexual parties. Gallin is a 54-year-old agent, manager and TV producer. According to Ebner, Gallin has had more plastic surgery than Michael Jackson, in an effort to perpetually look like a 30-year- old. Beyond the three "dons" of the Gay Mafia, there are of course many film executives, agents, and actors --- and the mafia acts in concert to protect each other and their images. Agent Steve Dontanville was sued by a man for sexual harassment, but the mafia has kept the story hushed up. Another agent, Scott Zimmerman, was caught having sex with his male personal trainer in his office at the same time he was divorcing his wife. Zimmerman did not receive so much as a reprimand. The Spy article notes that "straight agents, or any mid-level industry powers for that matter, would have --- and have been --- fired, blasted in the trade press, and sued for such indiscretions." A very powerful agent was Stan Kamen, employed by the William Morris agency, who died of AIDS a few years ago. His clients included Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Goldie Hawn. About his homosexuality, "[T]he straight guys who came off his desk idolized him, and wouldn't mention [his sexuality], or even [kid] around about it. It was just not spoken about --- ever. It's fear, and a reverence built out of fear . . . It's not based on intellect, but based on what will happen to you," according to a former employee of Kamen's. Jann Wenner, the founder and publisher of Rolling Stone, the far- left, pro-corporate music magazine, recently left his wife for a man. Every single U.S. publication blacked out the story, until it was finally printed by The Mail, a British paper with a circulation of over 2 million. Geffen made sure the movie "Interview With a Vampire," directed by the homosexual Neil Jordan (who also directed the perverted movie "The Crying Game") had its homoerotic undertones removed. This was also insisted upon by lead actor Tom Cruise, who has been the subject of much speculation about his sexual orientation. Cruise "squirmed around" that subject area when interviewed by Vanity Fair last year. The Disney studio, once an icon of American wholesomeness when it was run by Walt Disney, has five top executives who are homosexual. Even the Los Angeles Police Department has decided to leave the super-powerful Geffen alone. The LAPD recently busted David Forest, the head of a male prostitution ring on a par with the one run by Heidi Fleiss. According to Spy, Geffen's name was at the top of Forest's client list. But the LAPD refuses to use Geffen's name as evidence during the trial, a detective being quoted as saying, "We don't wanna touch Geffen." Ebner also writes about the "Circle of Fire," a group of young, good-looking guys who are flown around the country to the "big orgy parties" held by homosexual power brokers. Even the existence of the Lavender Mafia is denied by most of the principles involved. The incessant need to not only advance their fellow homosexuals but to zealously protect each other from public scrutiny is because the "need to maintain America's wholesome image of them is something that connects Hollywood gays at all levels --- whether one is a struggling (or a mega- star) actor, writer, agent, or producer," Ebner writes. Virtually all of the "Gay Mafia" are Jewish. Vicious character attacks are always leveled at anyone who has noted the undeniable fact that Hollywood has been Jewish dominated since its inception --- yet most Americans are aware of that fact. Probably very few are aware yet of the rise within that subculture of a homosexual subculture to dominance. Many critics of the current System note that even as Americans seem unable to influence the political process with their votes for two essentially similar, bureaucratic political parties, they have absolutely no sway over powerful institutions like the media, who hide behind the smokescreen that they are "objective" and that the ideology and agenda of those who control the most powerful instruments of persuasion ever invented are never to be subjected to close scrutiny.. Homosexual militants demand that their "lifestyle" be treated as equal to the traditional family, yet most still scrupulously hide their identity, preferring to do their subversive undermining of American culture as "closeted" revolutionaries. A Nationalist government will regulate the media, by ending the media dictatorship currently exercised by the radical left, and making sure that what Americans see and hear is commensurate with this country's heritage and values." Funny, Anita Busch doesn't look like a gov't operative... Cathy Seipp writes: Seriously, folks, if Anita's a secret agent/infiltrating the Mossad/an undercover visitor to Tel Aviv, whatever, then I am the Queen of Romania. Luke, may I respectfully suggest that you consider filtering -- just a little -- the loonier postings people send to this site? Because otherwise it's in danger of becoming some fantasy nerd chatroom, like those "X-Files" sites where people used to argue endlessly about the significance of Mulder's sofa upholstery... Luke says: My source tells me to look at the 1995 Tom Clancy-inspired TV movie Op Center to better understand Anita Busch's role with the intelligence community. I hear that investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith is moving to San Francisco. Jill Stewart phoned from Sacramento Thursday evening laughing about this profile of her. Anita Busch - Government Operative? XXX writes: This Anita Busch person is a government operative. She used to live in Tel Aviv and that is not her real name. After a short stint in Karachi she returned to the U.S. and took cover in Chicago. She was then assigned to Los Angeles to infiltrate the Mossad in the U.S. She speaks several languages and has been trained in Krav Maga. The reason she is so good at breaking stories is because of her government contacts. Her cover is entertainment journalism. Many of her sources are afraid of her connection to Mossad. be careful. a friend. GB writes: Hey bro....get over the LoLa......been there, done that, and I know how cruel Uri can be - sure he packs a bigger one than John Holmes & really knows how to use it - check out the Adams Apple. According to your website he apparently is an Israeli agent who has infiltrated the American Entertainment Industry. If that is true, then be careful, you are one of the few people who know that Anita is really Uri and when his assignment is over - his people are known to clean up all the loose ends....final advice, don't eat any apple pie (sodium morphate) - signed, another of Uri's jilted lovers. Frank writes: Ok Mr. Luke......you finally got to me. I was doing some background research and I decided to add a name or two onto my search list. To my surprise...I came across a very interesting little something something. I thought that it might be something that would be of some interest to you. This Anita Busch person that you have been writing about all over your website for the past few months...can you tell me why she might have not one..but two ISS [Israeli Security Service] files?..and why might one of those two files be a secured file? I came across this by total chance and it was something that really caught my attention....quite an intriguing discovery. How much do you really know about this individual? Do you know if she has ever traveled outside of the United States? Do you know if she has ever been to Israel? BTW, the secured file and any record of it no longer exists in the available databases. To borrow a term.....REMOVED....:poof:....no longer exists. Remembering Edgar Scherick Michael Dains gave me a tape of Edgar J. Scherick speaking at a "Producers on Producing" forum at AFI May 9, 1985. Here are some highlights: Edgar: "What's important is to take your work seriously and not yourself. We are transient. We don't matter. This town has been going on for 80-years and the titanic clashes [of egos] are all forgotten and what lives on are the pictures. "I have four children. All are in the industry in one form or another. I have not got one of them a job. I've never told any of them what to do. "If you have a reasonable idea of yourself, you shouldn't have difficult evaluating other people. You look at a person and you can pretty well tell if that person is going to be any good or not. "The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3 [1974]. I think it's a terrific picture. United Artists distributed it. It was the first time I had done a picture for a studio. Freddy Goldberg was in charge of advertising. They prepared an oil painting (at a $5000) for the campaign of a scene inside a New York subway station. One man was standing with a sub-machine and another man had a woman around his throat. It was beautifully done. "We snuck the picture in New York and it went like gangbusters. The audience was screaming. But the movie didn't open well. I was working with a company that was an exceptional merchandiser of packaged goods. They had nothing to do with the movie business. I knew a guy in the marketing research department. I told him I wanted to find out why this picture was not clocking them. "He set up some research. The motion picture had never done this before. No business ever marched on so blindly ignorant of their own market as the motion picture business. He set up research in which he checked what the expectations were from seeing the advertisement and what the reaction was after seeing the movie. Out of that came a lesson - an advertisement sets up expectations for a movie. If the audience's expectations are not fulfilled by the movie, they come out and give you lousy word-of-mouth, the key factor in selling a movie. "This advertisement created a violent millieu and all the violence freaks zapped into that movie and it wasn't really a violent movie. And the violence freaks came out and told all their friends, 'Screw it. It's no good.' But the people who went into it who weren't violence freaks, and who didn't see the ad, liked the picture and came out speaking positively about it. We had spent millions of dollars convincing the real audience for this picture not to come. "The man who did that research quit his $17,000-a-year job and came to Hollywood and became one of the most important figures in market research and telling the movie companies what to do. His demise began when he advised Warner Brothers not to do Star Wars. "I don't think I've ever made a movie I wouldn't have my children watch. "At the time I resigned as head of programming for ABC Television, ABC was the largest owner of theaters in the United States. I told Leonard Goldenson, head of ABC, 'I think you have to go into the business of producing movies because your supply of movies to your theaters will be threatened if the major [studios] succumb to the changes going on.' He said, 'Why don't you come back and form a subsidiary company to produce movies for us?' So I formed Palomar Pictures, which made films in New York. "When I came out here [to Los Angeles], I realized that self-aggrandizement was important, so I changed the name of the company to Edgar J. Scherick and Associates. "I try to find the best in people. If I meet a man, I try to find a part of him that I like and I relate to that part of him." Luke Loses His Cool, Lashes Out With Long Laborious Paragraphs About His Feelings It's interesting to notice what upsets one. I think this matter upsets me because I know I am sloppy and lazy and frequently a shoddy journalist. I've found myself pouring forth whole paragraphs to a woman I had one meal with, and about three brief chats, exchanged a couple of emails and some minor gifts. Nothing really. Why did I get upset? She runs a website where she published a mocking email from a competitor: "Carly, I read about you hanging out with Luke Ford.... I was surprised Luke didn't just stay in Los Angeles, wait for me to write something, then steal it. That would have been easier for him, and much more enjoyable for his readership." My accuser then linked to a Top Ten List he'd written, which I'd published uncredited. I wrote a response saying the list had come to me uncredited, and that I had since deleted it from said site, and that I was sorry. I then went on to lambast the journalistic integrity of his publication. My female acquaintance decided to delete the whole matter from her site. She didn't want to be in the middle of a war. So now I've found myself exchanging about six emails Wednesday evening with this woman, and writing numerous paragraphs about my feelings. She thinks I should take off my blistering response. I write: Your site has a niche... You have a feminine sensibility, and you mix in gossip with more high minded stuff... It's not an icky experience to visit your site and its not corporate. It's uniquely you... There's a sweetness to you, a humanity. And that's a compliment. I try hard to overcome my natural sloth and credit your site (or any source) if I ever quote it or learn something from it. I like you. I like your husband. I thought we kinda had an understanding that we would not use our sites to humiliate, gossip about, or put down the other. I realize this is a hazy area, so I'm exploring it with you now. I hope that the next time you're ready to publish something that makes me look like I've committed the greatest sin a writer can (plagiarism) you'll pause and either 1) contact me first, or 2) encourage the person to take it up with me directly unless they want a public battle, or 3) after leaving such a serious charge on your site for 12 hours, publish my response. XXX accused and convicted me, on your site, of plagiarism. Hundreds of people who read that on your site, and didn't read my response... think I plagiarize. When a writer has been convicted of plagiarism, it usually ends their career. So no, I'm not taking my response to XXX off the site and letting XXX go free. He set out to publicly humiliate me. He did humiliate me. He wrote his note in a way to maximize the insult to me. Since my return, I've not gotten into any feuds with anybody, none particularly with journalists. I have friendly relations with many people at VVV. I leave them out of my column. I make sure I don't say or do anything to get them into trouble. If XXX has a problem with my response, or if he has a problem with anything I've done or said, then he can contact me personally. That's what a gentleman does. I'm only bothering to go into this depth because you will be frequently assailed, and it looks like you already have been, of being my friend. Many people will then say, 'How can you be friends with that horrible guy Luke Ford. Don't you know he did X to me?' And you can either publish said complaint on your site, leave it be, or say, if the situation is appropriate, 'You know, you might consider taking that up with him. If he sees he's done a wrong, he will try to fix it or will apologize for it.' Now, I haven't gone into such depth in any email with anyone for months, may be years. It's a compliment to you, your husband (I consider couples one entity, in a sense), your site and your sensibility, that I think you deserve to know how I think and feel about such things. Luke Sniffs Out More Homophobia In News Media I'm even more offended you are, dear reader, by the recent string of homophobic articles on my website. This comes from LaExaminer.com:
Wall Street Journal Fluffs Steve Wynn Normally I have great respect for the Wall Street Journal but reporter Christina Binkley sure did a fluff job on gambling empresario Steve Wynn today. For the definitive job on Steve Wynn, read this great book on Wynn, "Running Scared", by Las Vegas Review Journal columnist John L. Smith. I emailed Christina if she'd read Smith's book. She replies: "Yes, I've read the book. There are many parts of wynn's life that we didn't get in the story!" A source writes:
A Jew For Luke R. Cohen writes in to LaExaminer.com: I'd far rather see Luke Ford on Hollywood than annoying, aging Gidget-witch Lynda Obst. And Susan Estrich? Why? Do shrill, feminist diet-book writers work cheap? Let's hear from people that we DON'T see on KCET. Jack writes: Lynda Obst? Eeewww--she is such an unpleasant person! Riordan's minions have to realize that while she's smarter than many other Hollwyood producers (but day-old produce is smarter than Wendy Finerman, right?) but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed...... Give War A Chance Cathy Seipp writes Matt Welch: Matt, here's what's been on my mind about that, and if anyone can help I'd be very grateful. Have you noticed how here in Silverlake there are many "No War" yard signs but not one sign expressing support for the other side? Here's the thing: You can't buy one! I've tried and can't find any. Of course, "No War" is a brilliant and succinct (despite specious) piece of propaganda because no one wants war. It's like the anti-abortion crowd using the term "Pro-Life." As if everyone else is against life. Sometimes you need to be willing to fight small wars in order to avoid larger ones. Except "Yes War" is ungrammatical and "No Appeasement" is too long and most people probably wouldn't know what it means anyway. What I'd like is a sign that says "Give War a Chance" (a la P.J. O'Rourke) to paste on my garage but I don't see any for sale via the Internet and you know I'm not techy enough to design one and print it out at Kinko's etc....I had to call a friend over to figure out how to change the toner cartridge on my new plain paper fax. And then yesterday I went over to her house and saw a big "No War" sign in her yard. Help! Cecile du Bois replies: In response to cathy seipp: If there is a sign that says "give war a chance", it may be hard to get and a waste of money, since no one would agree with you, and in CA, no one would dare produce such. I think Cathy's idea is so creative, that along with her essays and articles that are pro-war and logical, Cathy, my mother, could make her own flag, and if anyone likes it, sell copies of it, in her own manner. Or, if she is feeling uncreative and lazy, then she could just get a piece of paper and write "give war a chance" in bold marker. Either way, it sends the same message, no matter how much money you spend. Besides, if the liberals boldly express themselves, why do you want to lie down with fleas, or roll around in a mud puddles along with them? Just a thought, yours (bossy daughter taking after her mother), c. dubois Luke: "Don't all girlies hate war?" Cecile replies: OK, boys love war, and girls hate it. At my school and Sunday School though, all of the boys and girls alike oppose war. High School Memories Of Anita 'Hot Legs' Busch I asked a guy who went to high school with Anita Busch what he remembered about her. He replies:
Luke replies: I once dated Anita (in my dreams) and she dumped me. I'm still nursing a broken heart. In the Flesh: Undressing for Success From New York Daily News 1/7/98: Members of Hollywood's Velvet Mafia may be quivering in their Lear jets now that a long-delayed tell-all is headed for bookstores. Almost eight years ago, Putnam bailed out of publishing "In the Flesh: Undressing for Success," the memoir of former gay porn star Gavin Geoffrey Dillard. But Barricade Books renegade chief Lyle Stuart has pushed the work into print by giving fig-leaf names to the two major moguls who Dillard says were his boyfriends. "Success," is the memoir of former gay porn star Gavin Geoffrey Dillard. But Barricade Books renegade chief Lyle Stuart has pushed the work into print by giving fig-leaf names to the two major moguls who Dillard says were his boyfriends. Among the juicier passages in Dillard's tome, which has already drawn a warning letter from Dolly Parton's lawyers: "He was small say five-six about ten years my senior, nice- looking, dark-haired, Jewish, but no one to die over . . . I became accustomed to waking up there each morning, yawning while Mr. Mogul attended to his array of early morning phone calls. It amused me no end to lie there teasing his sensitive parts while he schmoozed and cavorted with Paul McCartney, John and Yoko, Paul Simon, Cher. "He was paying for my voice lessons, but I steadily refused to sing for him. . . . One particular morning I heard `Sam' scream from the bathroom. I ran in to find him flushed with anger and confusion. Did I know if I had the clap? " `The Bear' and I were introduced through `Sam" . . . This was Mr. Hollywood . . . His kisses were timid, but direct. He was elegant, commanding, yet, I was sure, yearned to become putty in someone else's hands. I came to learn that Bear lived both in New York and Beverly Hills. In New York, he was seen publicly with a fashion {designer}; she rarely came out West. . . . I would spank his bottom that very night! "Bear and I spent our afternoon at the casual mountain lodge of {a major Hollywood star and noted partyer} . . . we settled into the cushy sunken livingroom floor, where {the actor} dipped liberally into the cereal-size bowl of white crystal powder as though it were a heap of pretzels." Hollywood Mag Variety Spikes Pedophile Warning From World Net Daily: The leading entertainment industry magazine Variety has backed down on its agreement to publish a paid ad that warns makers of an upcoming film on sexual revolutionary Alfred Kinsey that they are on the verge of glorifying a notorious promoter of pedophilia. Ad rejected by Variety magazine Variety publisher Craig Hitchcock rejected two versions of an ad negotiated by Kinsey critic Judith Reisman, calling it "inappropriate" for the entertainment publication. Reisman believes Variety spiked the ad because it would embarrass the Hollywood elite, "who hypocritically scream 'censorship' when we protest their sex and sadism fare." "It's an amazing disrespect for their own constituents' right to know," Reisman told WND. "They call themselves the 'bible of the entertainment industry,' and yet they refuse an advertisement that they have admitted is clearly legal and merely provides the facts." The ad was prompted by Reisman's attempt to warn makers of the Kinsey film that they were about to produce a whitewashed picture of the man she calls the "most infamous pedophile propagandist in scientific history." Kinsey died in 1956. The United Artists and Myriad Pictures film, to begin production this spring, will be produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon, known for his hit "Gods and Monsters." Reisman has charged that Kinsey's socially explosive 1948 book, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," contained a record of human experiments conducted by pedophiles on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. The Kinsey study, widely seen as the book that launched the "sexual revolution," has been used to support the contention that sexual activity in children is natural and healthy and should not be repressed. The Never-Ending War Against Racism Must Extend to Movies Not Made By Jews Luke asks: Why do you say the Lord of the Rings movies are blatantly race-conscious? Chaim Amalek replies: This was written up somewhere in the press lately - apparently someone in the civil rights establishment took Peter Jackson to task for the fact that the only negroes used in the production play the role of savage "oruk chai", or however you spell that. Particularly their generals. This movie is about a bunch of "races" (is this not itself racist?), the supreme of which are the elves, who are not just white, but damn white, with white robes, caucasion motifs, etc. Nowhere in this work is the superiority of a multiracial society acknowledged. I have already commented on the possible cryptic presence of the Jew in this work: the ruined hobbit with the suspiciously jewish-sounding name "Smegal". Sniveling, ugly, pencil necked, bald, with bulging Peter Laurie-ish eyes. (Did you know that Laurie was a Jew?) Put a beard and clothes on him and he could pass for a rabbi or an investment banker. Servile when cornered, treacherous when not. (Just like Peter Laurie's character in Fritz Lang's "M".) Caring only for his "precious" gold ring and nothing else, he is a caricature of the money grubbing jew whom Alfred Rosenberg himself would have recognized as such. Perhaps Tolkein meant for this "Smegal", also known as "Golum", to represent the Eternal Jew, wandering the moral wasteland of his ruined diaspora in search of a redemption that will never come to him in his denial of Christ. No doubt many, many of your readers are far better informed regarding Tolkein than I, who have yet to read any of his books. Fraternally Yours in Liberal Thought, Chaim Amalek, Liberal Upper West Sider in a Hurry Amalek: I have a public service announcement for your site. "Chaim Amalek is available to date suitable young Christian women living in New York City." The Never-Ending War Chaim Amalek writes: Hard on the heels of the commercial success of the blatantly race-conscious "Lord of the Rings" movies comes this disturbing story in the Christian Science Monitor:
A Clarifying Plea From Chaim Amalek for Help: I am looking for a good Church to attend in New York City - NOT Los Angeles. I will travel as far as Brooklyn, but no farther. Like most church-going folk, I want to attend with people who look like how I wish I looked. Bonus points if these include receptive young white women (not that I want to look like one, only that I want to get one). And if it is going to be political, then please let it not be any regurgitated sixties mush or any of that feminist crap that the women of my previous religion invented. Any suggestions? Khunrum writes: An acquaintance of mine, a Jew living on the lower East Side attends Quaker meetings. I asked him once what transpired at these get togethers, he said "nothing." He walks into a room where people are sitting around not talking, stays for a while and leaves. Sounds rather downbeat but I bet that Quaker ----- is great if you can get some of it. That movie Witness comes to mind. What a beautiful set that Kelly McGillis had. Wonder if she is a real Amish? Another thought comes to mind. Chaim, have you considered becoming a Baptist? You'd be in heady company. Former Pres Bill Clinton, Jerry Farwell, Al Sharpton, (and just about every Afro in the US) plus millions of Anglo~Saxon crackers from the Southern States...Your extended family as it were. Carrying a tune is a must for this potential conversion as you will want to join the congregation in singing gospel songs of devotion. I suggest boning up with a Porgy and Bess CD...."Dat Ol' Man Ribber.....Dat Ol'Man Ribber...It Doan Do Nottin" etc. etc... Some of the liberal excesses from your Manhattan upbringing will have to go. None of this Pro Choice nonsense. You will want to spend much of your down time picketing abortion clinics. All in all this could be the salvation you are seeking. I'll bet there are scores of good Baptist women just waiting to show a wayward Jew the true path. And you have Luke to tutor you should you need to pass an exam to earn your wings. Gentlemen, again I must state that for meeting single women there is no better vehicle than www.Match.com (Chaim you are so stubborn) My lads and I have done it all, singles mixers, singles at the symphony zzzzzz, Christian singles tennis (we were lucky to escape with our lives and rackets....picture if you will, not one, but several man hungry Hounds of the Baskervilles) singles everything. I will attempt to locate a nice Asian lady for Chaim. Give me a few minutes... |
