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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: PC/Media
Message-ID: <304@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 11-Nov-83 01:52:01 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.304
Posted: Fri Nov 11 01:52:01 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Nov-83 08:30:36 EST
References: cwruecmp.774 <2383@yale-com.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 28

I'm glad Robert has presented other interesting questions along with
Anne Wolf's item on teachers.  

I guess I'm pretty much a wonk, because when I hear the initials, "PC", I
immediately think of IBM.  "Political correctness" is an enormous
abstraction, and I don't know really what it means.  I would hate to think
that "gay liberation" means political orthodoxy within the rank and file.
When I meet someone, I like to think that I'm talking to someone with real
reactions and opinions, and not one necessarily conforming to some external
standards of behavior and opinion.

With regard to the presentation of gays by the media--this is a very broad
topic with many facets, depending on which medium you examine.  One
recurring theme that I have noticed in the last 10 years or so is "gay as
neuter".  That is, there have been several dishes served up to the straight
community, like an old Hal Holbrook TV movie ("That Certain Summer" ??), the
TV show, "Love, Sidney", and, most recently, the Broadway musical, "La Cage
aux Folles", in which, in order to make the subject palatable to the widest
possible audience, they present their characters as desexed, well-meaning
people who just happen to have this "affliction" known as
ho-mo-sex-u-al-i-ty.  God knows what it entails here, excepts that it's
much worse than the heartbreak of psoriasis.  Even though I KNOW it's a
device to win the hearts of straights without totally alienating them, it
really alienates me, because it presents an artificial view of what life is
all about.

/Steve Dyer
decvax!bbncca!sdyer