The first was the media pillorying of Russian pole-vault 3-time gold medalist Yelena Isinbayeva, for her broken-English remarks which were solicited by a reporter at the world championships in Moscow. Isinbayeva was asked – indirectly – for her opinion on the new law which prohibits the dissemination of “homosexual propaganda” to minor children: more specifically, she was asked for her thoughts on the action of two of the Swedish athletes, who had painted their fingernails in the colours of the rainbow, either to demonstrate their defiance of Russian law or to show their support for gay rights. She replied, in part, “If we allow to promote and do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people. We just live with boys with woman, woman with boys…everything must be fine. It comes from history. We never had any problems, these problems in Russia, and we don’t want to have any in the future.”
It’s never a good idea to respond to a complicated and controversial question, especially one with such loaded international implications, in a language which is not your own, because the press will decide what you meant. And, sure enough, the wires lit up immediately with “Isinbayeva Condemns Homosexuality!!!!“
I want to pause here just for a moment to illuminate two points, both of which – I think – serve to illustrate the ever-expanding role of the popular press in shaping the narrative. The media has evolved into a natural arm of policy, both foreign and domestic, and most of its work now consists of spin on any issue except those which are not remotely controversial, such as reporting the location at which an event will be held. Mainstream media has progressed from a reality in which it merely reported the news to a reality in which the press is actively partisan, and a powerful driver in influencing how you perceive events, aimed at your arriving upon the conclusion certain interests want you to reach. This has been a process; it didn’t happen overnight and is not some kind of epiphany – but I wonder if many people realize the extent to which its formerly arms-length impartiality has been compromised.
Anyway, two points – Isinbayeva’s remarks were instantly characterized as a condemnation of homosexuality…but the actions of the Swedish athletes were not portrayed as an endorsement of homosexuality. No; they were cast as the far more noble “support for gay rights”. Isinbayeva, at the pinnacle of her sporting career and just at the moment she has decided to leave professional sports for family life, is held up as a disgraceful example of wicked homophobia, while the Swedish athletes are catapulted into the limelight as brave defenders of human rights. All it would take is a little jiggering of the narrative, assuming homosexuality was on the agenda for condemnation this week rather than adulation, and the Swedes would have been the villains and Isinbayeva a simple folk hero whose clumsy English would have meant something completely different. But that’s not the way its going – in fact, every attempt Isinbayeva makes to extricate herself paints her as more homophobic, as the press spits on its hands and gets down to work. The unified Anglospheric press position, obviously, is going to be “Don’t think you can squirm out by pretending you don’t speak English very well; you speak it well enough for us to know what you meant”.
The second point is another masterpiece of subtlety, creeping in on rainbow slippers: it has become unacceptable and politically incorrect to publicly defend heterosexuality, despite the fact that it is the sexual orientation of what is by far the majority. In the United States – currently styling itself the epicenter of global tolerance and gay-friendliness although gays are allowed to marry in only 13 states, other states are not obligated to recognize those marriages under the Defense of Marriage Act, and homosexual couples are not legally permitted to adopt as heterosexual couples can – only 11% of the population identified as “having some same-sex attraction” while a tiny 4% of the population identifies as LGBT, of which more than half identify as bisexual, mostly women. Yet it has become unacceptable for the 90% or so to champion their own sexuality over the tiny but vocal gay minority.
Anyway, I’ll just leave that for you to think about; I don’t want to get all tinfoil-hat here and start sounding like I am seeing the outline of a giant and monstrous media conspiracy which will force us all to take up gay housekeeping. It’s nothing like so complicated as that – the media is just taking orders from special interests to keep hammering on the gay thing to see if it will inspire an Olympic boycott, to punish Russia for granting asylum to Edward Snowden.
Next up, Chris Hayes, the headliner. Chris Hayes honchos a talk show for MSNBC, called, “All In”. Although he has been so partisan lately in his attempts to out-gay the gay that it might as well be called “All Out”. But we’ll leave that up to the MSNBC programmers.
So, just yesterday, Chris started his show with a short video clip which showed a skinny older man being roughly handled by a beefy younger-looking man in a white polo shirt. The younger man holds the older one so he is helpless, and a blonde woman enters the frame. She slaps the older man hard in the face, and shouts imprecations at him – she may even have spit on him, it’s hard to tell. A container of water is thrown over the man, and he stumbles away to derisive laughter. Freeze frame – enter our host. Adopting a tone of solemn outrage and making chopping and pointing gestures to emphasize his thoroughgoing disgust, Chris intones, “That video is one of the more disturbing things I have seen in a very long time. And it’s just one of the many like it posted to the web depicting gay men in Russia being lured on the internet into meeting up in person, only to be accosted, harassed, insulted, humiliated and beaten for the cameras. It is a sickening illustration of what is happening in modern-day Russia…”
Is it, Chris? I’m afraid not. The beefy guy in the white polo shirt (thanks for the tip, Peter) is one Maxim “Tesak” Martsinkevich, a former neo-Nazi who currently occupies himself as leader of a vigilante group which hunts not gays, but….pedophiles. The skinny guy in brown is not gay – well, he might be, but that is not the offense which has attracted their attention. He is a pedophile, a diddler, a sexual predator who preys upon children. The blonde woman is the child’s mother – as she approaches, Martsinkevich introduces her in a cheerfully conversational tone; “Eta mama malchik” (this is the boy’s mother).
The clip has nothing whatsoever to do with the gay issue, and was merely pressed into service because it shows the desired degree of physical violence to backdrop Chris’s hyperbolic proselytizing (“Deeply, deeply, deeply evil”, in case double-deeply evil did not quite get the fabricated point across). However, nobody said a word about it not portraying violence against gays. Notably, not self-proclaimed Russia expert Julia Ioffe, who has lived in Russia, can say “Sheremetyevo” and speaks fluent Russian. Wouldn’t you think the phrase “This is the boy’s mother” would have been a little jarring in a video which purports to show violence against homosexuals? Is it possible a person who has lived in Russia as a journalist and can say “Sheremetyevo” and considers herself an expert on Russia does not know who Maxim Martsinkevich is?
Or is it simpler than that? Have we entered an era in which the press no longer cares about journalistic accuracy, and the news has just become a farcical carnival of push-polling bullshit in which no technique is too low as long as it sells the product to the rubes and sends ’em on their way happy that they have their finger on the pulse of world events? Just like the BBC’s use of a grisly photo of windrows of shrouded dead little bodies to showcase the sickening murder of civilians in the Syrian town of Houla, at the hands of government forces. It was revealed within hours to be a fake, a photo actually taken in Iraq nine years previously. The BBC apologized, but if it had not been pointed out the impression would have been allowed to stand, and decent people the world over would have shaken their heads in dismay and muttered, “Something must be done about that fucker Assad”. Just like now, when those people must be muttering “Something must be done about those gay-hatin’ fuckers in Russia”.
“Russia is where the USA was (on gay rights) 30, 40, 50 years ago”, Ioffe burbles confidently. And she knows, because she is an expert on Russia. She told us so.
I hope not, Julia. Because here’s where the USA was on gay rights 40 years ago. In 1973 in New Orleans, a “troubled individual” named Roger Nunez started a fire in the stairwell of The Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar. It rapidly spread to the bar itself, and in 16 minutes 29 people were dead. Three more died of their burns shortly thereafter. One man flung himself, blazing, to the street, where he died. Reverend Bill Larson, unable to escape a barred window, clung to the frame and slowly burned to death in terrible agony; his charred body remained visible from the street for several hours.
But that’s not the story. The real sense of where America was on gay rights was revealed in the public’s reaction. A cab driver was quoted in the newspaper as saying “I hope the fire burned their dresses off”. Radio talk show jokesters cracked “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars”. It remains the largest massacre of LGBT people in American history – yet national television networks covered the fire for one night, immediately after it happened, and never mentioned it again.
Metropolitan Community Church assistant pastor George Mitchell escaped the fire, but realized when he was outside that his boyfriend, Louis Brassard, was still in the bar, and ran back in to save him. Their bodies were found huddled together by rescue workers overhauling the scene.
If George Mitchell had run back into an inferno to save his wife or girlfriend, the New Orleans Ladies Auxiliary would have wept into their organdy ruffles and muslin, and he would have been eulogized as a profile in courage and selflessness fit to walk among heroes with his head held high. But he was just a stinking homo degenerate queer, so nobody cared.
It would take quite a stretch to bring anything Isinbayeva said anywhere close to that, I’m afraid, Julia.
But what drives the irony to a quivering high note almost beyond the range of the human ear is the shrieks of protest from gay activists who claim the new law paints them as pedophiles. And Chris Hayes’ sanctimonious effort to portray Russia as an intolerant hellhole that must be immediately and severely punished for its deep, deep, deep evil…features a pedophile.
Stay classy, Chris Hayes. Don’t you go changin’.