We celebrated what would have been the 70th birthday of John Lennon on Oct. 9. Lennon first hit the US TV screens on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, and he appeared on the tube with both the Beatles and solo, and on talk shows like Dick Cavett's over the years. His last TV appearance was on the news, when he was murdered in 1980.
Lennon never won the Nobel Peace Prize, but he did dedicate himself to peace, and to a nonviolent world in which bullying of all kinds was anathema. Network news was full of appreciations of Lennon on his 70th, with attention to the mammoth celebration in New York's Central Park and Washington Square. We imagine Lennon would have spoken out about Tyler Clementi's suicide and what drove him to it. And that he would still be speaking out against the wars and against torture. We imagine that he would still be reprising one of his most famous songs. We just wish others would imagine the same: "Imagine, A brotherhood of man./ Imagine all the people, sharing all the world./ You may say I'm a dreamer,/ But I'm not the only one./ I hope someday you'll join us,/ And the world will live as one."
We've been pretty sick this week (get your flu shots, and no, you can't get the flu from the shot!). We tend to be both crankier and more prone to tears when we feel ghastly. Some things bring out the crankiness and/or tears in everyone but the terminally hard-hearted, as Oscar Wilde once noted. When one is sick, TV is right there to either comfort or make things a whole lot worse, depending on what one is watching. There was a lot of worse this past week on the tube, and most of it had to do with the fact that bullying has become a national (and international) pastime. Our own national leadership, and we mean both sides of the aisle, seems to be setting the tone for everyone else. If the people in office and people running for office are doing it, how can we complain when kids do it? Who are they learning from? Case in point: We're no fan of Meg Whitman, but calling her a "whore" is totally out of line from the Moonbeam team. And we don't mean to single out Jerry, we just expect so much more from his side.
We were heartened, if such a terrible event can be seen to have any positive side to it, that the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the 19-year-old Rutgers student and violin virtuoso who jumped off a bridge after being brutally outed by his roommates via the Internet, received so much attention on the tube. We aren't sure exactly why this suicide vs. many others over the past few years was so compelling to TV news, pundits, tabloids and talk shows, but we are still grateful for the coverage. Because the bullying has to stop, and TV is our best medium for that message.
As usual, our gal Ellen was front-and-center on the issue because, well, she does that. She knows what her role is as America's most likable lesbian, and she never misses an opportunity to remind people that there's a child next door somewhere like she once was who is gay, lesbian or transgender (or who maybe isn't, but people think so because a boy is too effeminate, or a girl is too tomboyish), who is getting the physical and emotional crap beat out of them. And no one is stopping it.
A host of celebrities spoke out about the Clementi suicide. Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard. Tim Gunn, top fashionista and one of the gayest men on TV. A very pregnant Alicia Keyes, who once got her share of bullying by people insisting she was queer because she had a lesbian affect. Queer-friendly Kathy Griffin. Oprah. Hillary Swank, who won an Oscar for playing murdered transwoman Brandon Teena. So many others. Even New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie spoke out about the tragedy, choking back tears as he did so. Let's hope he remembers Clementi when he thinks about signing anti-gay legislation.
Notably absent in the lineup of national names eager to lend their voices to the anti-bullying campaign: anyone from the Obama Administration, or the First Lady, who is, after all, a mother. So much for that self-proclaimed "fierce advocate of LGBT people" in the White House.
Nightline also devoted attention to the issue, and made the important point that Clementi's roommates were very regular kids. These kids were not the ogres we think of when we think of bullies. These were not Nelson on The Simpsons, but Molly Wei, a very pretty young woman, smiling out of her high school graduation photo, and the handsome young Dharun Ravi, both 18. Neither looked mean or frightening or like they had any axes to grind. They looked totally normal, which is the point: it's become the new normal to bully other kids to death.
One voice we were glad to hear was that of the Silver Fox, CNN's Anderson Cooper, whose own brother committed suicide by jumping from the window of the family's apartment right in front of Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. Cooper rarely talks about the tragedy, but felt this was a time when mentioning it was apropos.
In his interview with Ellen, Cooper took actor Vince Vaughan to task about a line in Vaughan's upcoming film The Dilemma, in which Vaughan's character says at a meeting, "Electric cars are gay."
Anderson told Ellen that the use of "gay" as a pejorative had to stop – that this was the most basic form of bullying because it created an us vs. them scenario, thus made the bullying of queer kids and students easier. Cooper did not use this occasion to come out on Ellen's show, however.
We couldn't agree more with Cooper, or with Ellen. We are what we speak. And when we speak hate, bad things happen. Clementi is dead, and Wei and Ravi are now universally reviled. We're pretty sure they've gotten threats themselves now and are on the other side of the bullying scenario. It's a vicious cycle that can only end when the bullying stops. We'd like to see the First Lady take on this issue, as she seems to have a great deal of free time, and since she has two young children, she knows first-hand that bullying can touch any child at any point.
Another big queer TV news story this week had bullying at its core: When do hate speech and bullying cross a legal line? That was the crux of the argument before the US Supreme Court when it opened for business on the first Monday in October. The hate-mongering Westboro Baptist Church group and their leader, Fred Phelps, are no strangers to the queer community, but now straight people are getting a taste of the Westboro message of anti-gay hate. In recent years, the monomania of the group has begun to transmogrify from the funerals of gay men and those who died of AIDS, which Phelps and his inbred familial gang had been picketing for years, to the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The father of one soldier, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, filed suit against Phelps and his crew, citing infliction of emotional harm when the group picketed the funeral of his son, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006. A federal court found in favor of Albert Snyder, the father of the dead soldier, but Westboro appealed the ruling.
The case brought new attention to the creepiness of the Phelps brigade. ABC did a series of in-depth interviews with the group for Nightline, which is well worth watching (ABCnews.com/Nightline). It's unclear why the Phelps family is so focused on homosexuality as the root of all evil, but it does seem to be their modus vivendi. Snyder was not gay, but it is the Phelps' contention that all American soldiers are dying because the US supports and tolerates homosexuality. Right. Apparently they haven't heard of DOMA and DADT. Watch the video. It's enlightening. And very much part of the national debate on bullying.
Nobel news
In the News You're Not Seeing, and speaking of bullies, we were glad that the Nobel Committee regained their rational minds and awarded this year's Peace Prize to someone actually working for peace. Last year the Committee went a little nuts and awarded the Peace Prize to Barack Obama. At the time, and still, Obama was prosecuting three wars (Pakistan is a third country) and had not lifted a finger to end torture or unmanned drone planes killing civilians in Pakistan. The claim by some members of the committee was that they thought Obama would do peaceful things in the future.
The award seems not to have been too much of an impetus, however, since just last week 24 civilians were killed by US planes in Pakistan, Guantanamo is still open, extraordinary renditions are still taking place, Administration-ordered assassinations are happening, DADT is still operative, and no matter what shell game the Pentagon and White House are playing, 200,000+ troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is still two wars the way we see it, even if the destroyed economy and the upcoming elections have knocked all of this off the political radar screen and the American TV news (because BBC and European news are still reporting what we do, even if we do not).
So the Peace Prize was more carte blanche to maintain and ratchet up the most egregious elements of the Bush Administration than it was impetus to actually, you know, doing something peaceful. Need we remind the faithful that Obama has also filed briefs to eviscerate Miranda, extend warrantless wiretapping (which he voted for as a senator) and tap into the Internet trails of Americans? So much for Mr. Peace.
Our unalloyed outrage (in which we were far from alone) at the inappropriateness of last year's award (and remember, we voted for the guy) was mitigated by the appropriateness of this year's award. Chinese writer/literature professor/dissident Liu Xiaobo is what the Peace Prize is supposed to be about: The 54-year-old was a leader of the Tiananmen Square revolt in 1989, and in the years since has spent repeated periods in prison at hard labor for "offenses against the state," more time than he has with his wife, whom he always refers to as his "sweetheart."
In December 2009, he was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" for writing things much like what we wrote above about President Obama. He is currently serving an 11-year sentence. Lui Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel for "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."
When the award was announced, Chinese TV went black for eight minutes, the length of the announcement. China expressed outrage at the award, and responded that Liu Xiaobo was a criminal and the award an insult to China.
Two years, two prizes, two very different perspectives. It seems to us, looking over past winners, that personal suffering and loss go with this award. Or should. And that the Nobel Committee must make it a point to never again give a warmonger or bully the award, but to reserve it for people like Liu Xiaobo, whose concern for freedom for all has superceded everything else in his life.
When we think of Liu Xiaobo in prison and separated from his "sweetheart" at this most difficult time in his life, we can't help but think of all the men and women in the US military dealing with a similar level of separation due to DADT. Maintaining DADT is bullying at an institutional level. Every single person involved in keeping DADT in place is a bully. Especially our "fierce advocate."
Bullying has long been an issue that Oprah has dealt with over the years. She's done groundbreaking shows on the ostracization of people with HIV/AIDS, and on the hell queer and transgender kids go through. She's taken her show to the schools to deal with bullying first-hand. In her farewell season, she's revisiting some of her past "big" shows, and this week she brought back the issue of black men on the down-low, which she first discussed over a decade ago. At the end of the show, a man who had been on her first show about the issue – but who had been backlit and had his voice altered, and who had refused to call himself gay – stepped out of the shadows and onto the stage, and declared himself an out gay man.
He said he feared reprisals, but he had to be honest. A grown man, still having to fear bullying from his peers. That's where we are as a nation.
So let's review: this week on the tube we had a TV black-out in China where free speech is disallowed when a national hero was honored, we had celebrities coming out against the bullying of queer kids, and we had Oprah opening the closet door for tortured gay black men.
So when you see bullying, be it on the tube or in your own neighborhood or own government, speak out. So many have died hoping someone would just say, "No," stop the violence and live up to the protocols of peace. Tyler Clementi is dead, John Lennon is dead, Liu Xiaobo and so many nameless others are in prison, ordinary queers are being forced by our own government to live a lie even as they risk their lives for this country. Bullying is all around us, it's institutionalized here just like it is in China, just in a different way. And because of that, we must be vigilant, and we must stay tuned.