Day: June 11, 2005

‘Happy Gay Pride’ to Paris & Kathy Hilton

Jon Ponder


In the Calendar section of today’s Los Angeles Times, we find this item:

When asked to be co-grand marshal of the Los Angeles Gay Pride celebrations this Sunday in West Hollywood, celebutante Paris Hilton answered with her trademark, “That’s hot.”

But some gay activists are offended that the 24-year-old heiress and her mother, Kathy Hilton, have been chosen as figureheads for an event themed “How Do You Wear Your Pride?”

“The first thing that pops into my mind is, are there no gay people that could possibly grand marshal our own parade?” columnist Charles Karel Bouley II wrote on Advocate.com, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender news website.

Puh-leeze.

I’ve never liked the concept of “gay pride” and a “gay pride day” or week or month or whatever. Deconstruct the phrase “Happy Gay Pride!”and you have a very silly string of words. I’m all for taking pride in who we are, especially in a society as filled with self-esteem issues as America today. But all the emphasis on “gay” and “pride” is just a reminder of a time when those two words were oxymoronic. Gaydom needs new branding – something a little less 1972.

So I never attended the annual Los Angeles area gay pride parade parade until five years ago when we bought a condo in West Hollywood about 50 feet from the route. Last year, my mother and my sister went with Page and me. This year, our friends Kim and David are motoring in from Sherman Oaks.

None of us thinks the choice of the Hiltons as grand marshals is controversial. And if I have any objections, it’s not because they are hets, it’s because they’re, well, celebutantes.

Fact is, Paris lives in West Hollywood. She may even be our most famous resident. (Sorry Sally Kirkland!) And with what she spends on fashion, hair and makeup, she’s probably done as much for gay people as anyone else.

So I say, “Happy Gay Pride, Paris & Kathy!!” See you at the parade.

Bush Nominee Said Blacks Prefer Selling Drugs, Hispanics Are Lazy

Jon Ponder

President Bush has nominated Henrietta Holsman Fore (right) to a State Dept. position in which she would head, among other things, the department’s human resources activities. But Think Progress reports that Ms. Fore got into trouble in the late 1980’s over racist comments she made in a public forum. (She even reiterated the comments in her published “apology” for the racist comments!) Here’s how the New York Times covered the incident:

A Wellesley College trustee’s remark that blacks preferred pushing drugs to working in a factory has precipitated an emotional debate on this bucolic campus already grappling with charges of racial insensitivity…

The trustee, Henrietta Holsman, a 1970 graduate of Wellesley who runs a manufacturing concern in Los Angeles, resigned from the board last weekend after apologizing for her comments, which also cast aspersions on the work ethic of Hispanic and white employees. But in a letter to the college newspaper, Ms. Holsman reiterated her statement that she had trouble keeping black assembly-line workers from going “…back to the street to earn more money … selling drugs.”

In her lecture, Ms. Holsman also said she had found Hispanic workers to be lazy, white workers resentful of having to work with machines, and Asians, while very productive, likely to move on to professional or management jobs. [NYT, 2/12/87]

Ms. Fore is currently director of the U.S. Mint.