There is no such thing as “just kidding” in humor

My Sunday viewing was Outstanding: a Comedy Revolution, a documentary about LGBTQ standup comedians. It is framed by a record gathering of 22 LGBTQ performers on one stage on May 7, 2022 at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. It’s not really about that show. We do see bits and some behind the scenes shots, but not the whole thing. This documentary is about LGBTQ comics through history (well, since the 60s) who helped us get where we are now. The video of that 2022 performance is also on Netflix as Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration. I haven’t watched it yet, though it is now on the top of my list. Some of the comics I recognized (and there were many more I didn’t): Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Bruce Vilanch, Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, Joel Kim Booster, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, and Eddie Izzard. At a comedy show for human rights in 1977 Richard Pryor was included (I think at the suggestion of Tomlin). His jokes implied that he was gay (his Wikipedia page says bisexual). Then he noted that there were maybe four black people in this otherwise all white audience. He told the crowd: You’re here because of human rights? Black people want that too. One can be gay and racist. The crowd didn’t appreciate him. There was a fun moment when Ellen DeGeneres appeared on the Rosie O’Donnell Show and said she came out as Lebanese. O’Donnell followed her guest’s lead and said she might also be Lebanese. In this documentary O’Donnell said that her network knew she was a lesbian, but she didn’t think she could come out on-air. But when DeGeneres started this discussion O’Donnell knew she had to support her friend. So many of them said that if they said anything about being queer they would lose their job. Many felt they had to do it anyway. If they were out, there was a long time they couldn’t get jobs or could only get jobs at LGBTQ venues. A few of what was said about the nature of comedy: Comedy is resistance. Every word is a bullet. People will listen when they laugh. Comedy is a critic and disruptor of the social dynamic. There is no such thing as “just kidding” in humor. If we tell you your joke is transphobic you can’t say, “no, it’s not.” And a few comments about the decades: 70s variety shows portrayed a fabulous world gay people wanted to be in. These shows had implicit and explicit queerness, though no one called it that. In the late 70s there were characters coded as queer, and people loved them. Then AIDS hit and acceptance vanished. AIDS jokes aren’t funny, and LGBTQ comics weren’t the people telling them, but they got a laughs. The 80s with Reagan and the rise of the religious right brought the question: Why do we want to oppress each other? The news today had segments about how Harris will reveal her VP pick in just hours. Of course, there was yet another discussion of who is in the running. Econhistorian of the Daily Kos community says there is a sudden emergence of a new dark horse candidate. Or maybe this is the dark dog candidate. Since JD Vance has alienated cat lovers, perhaps this pick will firm up dog lovers for Democrats. In an article for ProPublica posted on Kos Alec MacGillis discussed the guy who was the director a Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation. The guy is Paul Dans and he stepped down a few days ago, as others said it would be “shut down.” Dans was going to step down soon anyway because Project 2025 planning is essentially done. It can sit on the shelf and not do anything until a Republican administration opens it up and starts implementing it. The other part of the plan is the database of eager minions ready to implement it. And Dans was very much instrumental in creating it. That part is still very much active.

The most important pillar of Project 2025 has always been about personnel, not policy. Or rather, the whole effort is animated by the Reagan-era maxim that personnel is policy, that power flows from having the right people in the right jobs. To that end, the plan’s most pertinent proposal is reinstating Schedule F—a provision unveiled near the very end of Trump’s term, then repealed by the Biden administration—which would shift as many as 50,000 career employees in policy-shaping positions into a new job category that would make them much easier to fire. ... Propelling the project has been a worldview that can be easily overlooked amid Trump’s talk about restoring the halcyon days of his first term. The people preparing for his return to the White House emphatically do not view his first term as a success. Rather, they view it as a missed opportunity to implement the MAGA vision. For Dans, Trump’s first term was an object lesson in how difficult it could be to reach Trump’s goals without a captive bureaucracy.

Dans is the son of a liberal college professor, but as he matured he went much more conservative than his parents or twin brother Tom. In law school he joined the campus branch of the Federalist Society. When the nasty guy got to the Oval Office Dans wanted to work for him. At first he was rejected as “too MAGA.” Those doing the hiring wanted someone more bland. In 2018 he did get into HUD. He saw HUD as this avalanche of money to be directed to various agencies. How to get it flowing in the way conservatives want? The problem he saw was the career employees who followed the law (as in the budget approved by Congress) and weren’t going to bend to an elected administration. Another problem was his fellow appointees who didn’t know what the agency actually did and just wanted the cocktail parties and international junkets. In February 2020 Dans was installed at the Office of Personnel Management as “senior advisor to the director.” He soon became de facto director. One goal was to hire as many conservatives into career employee positions. Another was to recategorize positions so they would be filled by presidential appointees. And he ran out of time. So when Project 2025 came along he knew exactly what to do about the personnel side. While there are about 10,000 names in that database and about 50,000 positions that would be affected by the Schedule F changes (more, depending on how it was implemented), a new Republican administration would need to fire only 1,000 and make a big example of them. That would scare the other 49,000 into falling in line. That way one gets compliance and still retains institutional memory of how to get things done. Tracy Hunte of NPR reported on a new interpretation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats." Yeah, this is the musical that appeared in 1982 and hung around Broadway for a long time. When it opened it was radical. But, since there isn’t much of a plot, it has become a bit of a punchline. I saw “Cats” with Sister perhaps a year or two after it debuted. We visited the Chicago production. Sister complained (and I agreed) that the sound system made the words of the songs hard to understand. And there isn’t much to the show beyond the words. She was disappointed. Back to the NPR report. This new interpretation is playing at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City. The cat costumes are gone. The Jellicle Ball now looks like queer House Ball and all the performers are queer or trans. And it makes sense! A lot more sense when it was supposedly about actual cats. Said Hunte:

Ballroom culture was developed in nightclubs in the late '70s and early '80s, primarily by Black and Latinx trans women and gay men. During these events, performers representing different houses compete in categories like face, body, runway, and vogue for cash prizes and trophies. It's like a fashion show, beauty pageant, dance contest and party, all in one. In this new production, the stage is a 50 foot runway. The cast is decked out in purple satin suits, sequined tops, tight mini dresses, and long, silky wigs and neon-colored afros. The dancing blends the ballet and modern from the original with voguing, a dance technique born in the ballroom. The one thing that remains unchanged is Andrew Lloyd Webber's score, with songs like "The Rum Tum Tugger."

And...

JOSEPHINE KEARNS: The two pieces of feedback I get most often are this made more sense of "Cats," and wasn't "Cats" already gay? HUNTE: That's dramaturg and gender consultant Josephine Kearns. She says with its themes of rebirth and transformation, much of "Cats" does speak to the queer experience. In the show, cats are said to have three names - the names their owners give them, their nicknames, and a third name known only to themselves. KEARNS: And I think probably every queer person can resonate with that on some level, right? And especially, like, as a trans person myself, who very actively changed my name.

A big reason why the gay version is better is it became more real. It went from “camp and artifice to authenticity.” It now is about the struggles of actual gay and trans people when interacting with mainstream society. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted a meme related to all the pushback against JD Vance’s verbal attack on childless cat ladies. This one has a bright yellow background and shows a black cat holding a snake in its mouth. The caption says, “I’ll tread wherever I want.” I leave Wednesday morning to spend a couple days in Stratford, Ontario with it’s Stratford Festival. I’ve got tickets for four plays. So I might not post tomorrow evening (depends on how packing goes). I’ll post again on Friday or Saturday to share my theatrical adventures.