Steve Martin, hosting the Academy Awards, joked: “Stay tuned, at the end of the show, we vote somebody out of show business.”
He didn’t know that in only a few years, this would become the obsession of the bird-brains on Twitter. Almost every day, a trending topic is “BOYCOTT…” some store, “FIRE….” some actor, and demand that somebody “NEVER…” make another film, get another record deal, or write another book.
One of the pioneering victims of the “you’ll never work in this town again” brand of witch-hunt, was a good looking witch by the name of Anita Bryant. She wasn’t a “Communist,” which you might recall led all-American bully, Sen. Joe McCarthy, to terrorize Hollywood and blacklist (or RED list) a variety of actors, writers and directors.
She was just, oh, one of the vast Christian religious fanatics who thought being gay was a mental disorder (and the Catholic Decency people would’ve added Henry Miller books, the movie “Baby Doll” among others, and being Jewish). You know this bunch? Despite Anita’s banishment, they are STILL active. How about them fine Westboro Baptists picketing cemeteries? PS, other religious groups are even more obnoxious, but since one such group, Muslims, tend to throw gays off buildings, and play with machine guns, bombs, and knives, people try and look the other way.
UPDATE, December 31: if you think the problem ended because Anita Bryant was never allowed to sing again, how about Margaret Court? Court, who still sits atop Serena Williams for most all-time Grand Slam wins, is now a Pentecostal pastor at a church in Western Australia. She voices traditional Biblical views of "Adam and Eve." And you know what, it's possible that some psychologists would agree with some of what she's recently said:
"Children
are making the decision at 7 or 8 years of age to change their sex. No...it’s
so wrong at that age because a lot of things are planted in this
thought realm at that age, and they start to question ‘what am I’?”
"You have got young people taking hormones and having changes, by the
time they are 17 they are thinking, 'Now I’m a boy and really I was a
girl.”
While Preacher Court couches all this by pointing to the Bible, there are many therapists who do believe that homosexual thoughts are a phase, a part of growing up, and some serious evaluation is needed on what course to take, be it carving into the body, or just saying "wait a while," as you would if your kid wanted to get a tattoo of Taylor Swift or Harry Styles.
A problem with Court now, and with Bryant several generations ago, is that the message is couched with a dash of religious fanaticism, and this is especially odious when their religion also suggests "turn the other cheek" and have "tolerance." It crosses a line when you start claiming that somebody's behavior is "the devil's work." Or that somebody will "go to hell" or "needs to be saved" just because they have a sex quirk.
It’s a thorny, or Crown of Thorns problem: what do you do with somebody who is bigoted or just plain stupid? The fabulous Quakers would “Shun” such people. But not jail or starve them. Just not talk to them, I guess. They could still shop for food, but if the person said, “I’d like a bag of flour. Oh, and how are you today,” all that person would get would be a bag of flour and a dirty look.
These days, the answer seems to be: fuck their creativity. They are DONE. Usually. Selectively. We still hear Richard Wagner’s music all over the place even if he was a Nazi. Nobody’s banning Morrissey’s music or Roger Water’s Nazi-esque music. Woody Allen? Don’t let him make another movie even if he was NEVER convicted of ANYTHING. Don’t hire touchy-feely Spacey, either. Somehow Jeffrey Tambor was kicked off one TV show, but allowed to act on another. Well, he made a play for a woman who was a tranny, so things DO get confusing.
Bryant was an easy target. First off, what's a woman gonna do? When that gay guy (now dead) hit her with a pie, and stood waiting for a cat fight with her, she didn't oblige. She only quipped, "It was a fruit pie." Think that guy would've pied Louis Farrakhan? Isn’t it a bit odd that Louis Farrakhan is still around and preaching? Despite his backward and bigoted views? Oh...he's got nasty looking guys around him who probably have weapons. Back off HIM. But go after the soft target. Anita Bryant. A bit fishy, huh?
Farrahkan's a total maniac with a dangerous habit of talking violent rhetoric to gullible morons. He's hardly alone in that. The Ayatollah. The various Imams. The jerks on YouTube. The neo-Nazi forums. The various hate groups hiding on Facebook. Did taking down Anita Bryant really do much? Are the Westboro Baptists still picketing cemeteries? Are the Arabs tossing gays off rooftops? Are morons now sensitive and tolerant about ANYTHING, or are they WORSE THAN EVER?
Bryant? A pie in the face wasn’t enough. Neither was losing her Florida Orange Juice commercial, which was really the only visibility she had, since her style of singing was no longer popular. She ended up divorced, she was hounded everywhere she went, and her “ministry” collapsed. I think it’s still technically around. There’s a website or something, but she’s an old lady now, and she might not even be preaching to a small circle of pews. And yes, peee-uww to her sad, sad notion of intolerance to others. How Christian is THAT? Even if you think gays ARE slightly nuts (or as pervy as people who like to whip each other, wear adult diapers, or sniff feet), live and let live.
We know, for example, that the odds of a gay teacher molesting students, or encouraging them to be gay, is less than the odds that the local priest might be a pedophile, or the straight female teacher might start giving blowjobs to 14 year-olds.
All I’m saying is that give Anita Bryant some credit as a singer. When given the right material, she was a good one. Oh, and I think Lenny Bruce would’ve agreed: she was one good-lookin’ shiksa! All-American looks, man. This is what the ideal was. Fuck Doris Day (if you wanted to), what guys really wanted, in Anita’s time, was Anita, and all the other Miss America types. So wholesome. Brunettes — not those slutty blondes like Monroe or Mansfield. You married a BRUNETTE. OK, she might NEVER go down on you, but you could fuck her, right? At least until you had two kids. After that, maybe you’d be in the bathroom with the Sears Catalog underwear pages. But jeez, Anita Bryant. Late 50’s early 60’s. A wholesome jerkoff fantasy like the quaint (at this point) brunettes who appeared topless (sometimes just in a gauzy negligee and NOT topless) in Rogue or The Dude or Gent or Swank.
At one point, strangely enough, Anita was being aimed at the teen market. I guess Dick Clark had the hots for her.
I guess if Connie Francis could appeal to teens, somebody thought Anita could, too. But really, her hit "Paper Roses" was aimed at an older audience. Not a hipper one; she was not Julie London. Anita didn't sing jazz, she sang more mainstream and gentile…ah, GENTEEL numbers. Gogi Grant? She was Jewish, ya know. So was Dinah Shore. But Anita Bryant was SO Christian…ok, TOO Christian, as it turned out. She definitely lacked the Christian charity to show some tolerance in her jibes about how God didn't make "Adam and Bruce."
But Christian charity is never easy to find. Take the Christian bitch Christ-in Jellybrain. Or whatever her name is. This blond shiksa made it her business to call out the Jew, Al Franken, and force him out of the Senate. He was only one of the better Senators, certainly more articulate and effective than Senator Jellybrain. But she wanted to run for President and she saw witch-hunting Franken as her ticket to ride. Right, stir up a frenzy against Al, because…he TOUCHED the clothed tits of a sleeping bitch, and somebody took a gag photo of it? Ooooh. And this was when he was a comedian, not a senator.
I’ve had friends who died of AIDS, and who hated Bryant, and I’m not minimizing the hurt she caused in voicing her dumb opinions, but people are still voicing those dumb opinions without her. We’ve got crackers out there who own guns and have swastikas on their faces and on their homes, and confederate flags flying, and have the fucking arrogance to say “Learn yer history,” because such symbols are NICE and GOOD. They go into black churches and synagogues and kill, kill, kill…showing no mercy to unarmed and harmless old people.
Freedom of Speech is always tricky. We stand up for it when we agree. SOME magnanimously show their pseudo-scholarship by saying, "I will defend to the death your right to say something I disagree with." But, not really. Because the primitive notion remains: bash the person who said something you didn't like. Judge Wapner said "words are just words," but people get violent over them. Sometimes, it's understandable. The more nasty or racist or stupid the words, the more you want to say "fire that person." Otherwise they get worse.
Who'd want smug Anita to do a whole album pushing not her religion but her anti-human agenda? Something like...
How about this: Cat Yusuf Stevens Salami Giorgio or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself — agreed that a writer should be KILLED because some bearded turd who declared himself God’s messenger said so. WHO? Did you hear it from GOD, Cat? No, you heard it from some phony fuck-o asshole claiming to be God’s messenger, which is no different than some jerk on a soap box in a London park, or Jim Jones or some sex maniac peddling “magic underpants” and the notion that guys should have as many wives as they want and breed as many MORONS as they want. Who the FUCK are you, to declare a man’s life should end, because some scabrous old lunatic who insists HE has a direct line to his INVISIBLE FRIEND, says so?
And is anyone banning Cat’s irritating music anywhere? No. Anyone finding it a bit hypocritical that this gruff-voiced mucous-toned fuckup is singing “Peace Train” while calling for a writer’s death? Any no-longer-moist menopausal ex-hippie chicks out there NOT still wistfully listening to “Wild World” or “Lisa” and wishing she could give her dried pussy to the ex-Cat?
Anyway, back to Anita. You know what? Anita was dumb, but she was religious-dumb. Today, we allow religious-dumb to knife people on London Bridge, blow people up in bars and nightclubs, and get let out of jail early and NOT get deported. The Christian nations, UK and USA, are SO understanding of CERTAIN forms of religious bigotry….ones that come from dangerous people who are allowed to spout hate and threaten the big Allah-kaboom. But Anita Bryant? A mere female magpie with a smug holier-than-thou brand of obnoxiousness? She had an opinion. Don't argue with her: destroy her, and keep her destroyed, even her art. Go ahead, sell Manson’s drawings and the Killer Clown’s paintings. But not Anita’s records.
Last week some Christian assholes were screaming “BOYCOTT THE HALLMARK CHANNEL” on Twitter. Why? Hallmark showed an image of a gay wedding, and two lesbians kissing. Christ, how many Christian men have dialed up lesbian porn and seen babes like that licking labes? What hypocrisy, but that’s another word for RELIGION, ain’t it?
“All Alone Am I” showcases just how good Anita Bryant could be. Give her a decent ballad, and don’t have Mitch Miller or some other asshole fuck up the arrangement, and she was fine. “Cold Winter” is also on this blog, and it’s another example of how she stacked up against Patti, Gogi or Doris. Bryant could sometimes sing a number as well as ache-voiced Connie Francis, or the more country-tinged Brenda Lee. At least give her that credit. Put an asterisk on her ass, and yes, point out that she was too sanctimonious and ignorant for her own good, but don’t be stupid. It’s like pretending that awful Harvey Weinstein didn’t produce a lot of sensitive and romantic movies, including films that no other studio would’ve touched. Nothing is black and white except a fucking Oreo.
Jesus was pretty good about not casting the first stone. He wasn’t big on INTOLERANCE. He wasn’t fighting holy wars, and he wasn’t marrying child brides. He wasn’t whining “BOYCOTT” every other day. And really, when he was on the cross, he could’ve at least said, “BAN NAILS!” But he was pretty much alone. Some were talking him up, but nobody was taking him down. He was alone.
“All Alone” is Anita Bryant, and over the past decades, she hasn’t shown her face too often. Her website hasn't been updated since 2006.
All alone is she? Well, her notoriety is still very much with us.“The Loneliest Girl in the World” was staged as a musical in San Diego last year. The 2018 show is a fictionalized account of Tommy (based on Thom Higgins) who goes from being a Bryant fan to ultimately her worst nightmare via the pie attack. (The real Thom Higgins couldn’t make it to the show, having died in 1994). The story of Tommy runs alongside Bryant’s story of losing to Mary Ann Mobley in the Miss America Contest (this is somehow a running joke, with an actress playing Mobley) to becoming an All-American singing star and then a sell-out and a Bible zealot. A reviewer actually felt that the actress playing Bryant turned her into a “relatively sympathetic and definitely multi-dimensional character.”
There you are, even NOW, when she’s laying low in Oklahoma, and her “Ministry” website has no store, no current events, and really just a biography of her as reading material, Bryant remains a perfect target for gays looking back in anger, and a convenient symbol of Americana to jeer and throw stones at. Christ, we all know that nothing white is any good, nothing Christian is any good, and any music made by a middle-aged white woman in the 50’s or 60’s should be banned. Statue of Kate Smith? Take that DOWN! It’s all just that simple.
Nobody’s playing Kate Smith anymore, and really, her version of “God Bless America” was not exactly the highlight of any baseball or hockey game. But is that right, and is that really an AMERICAN thing to do or more an IRANIAN thing to do? Anita Bryant’s voice was actually much more expressive and pleasant, which includes her take on “Power and the Glory,” as well as the item below. If you actually think that an artist’s creative work might not deserve to be banned for some other belief, especially one that’s based on the same religious principles that are given a free ride most of the time, you too can sing along and mean it: “All Alone Am I.”
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