alibi_shop (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibi_shop) wrote2019-07-13 06:07 pm
alibi_shop) wrote2019-07-13 06:07 pm
something I hadn't been missing
It may not exactly be news when The New Republic publishes some hideous bigoted bullshit, but I have to say I was a little surprised that they pulled Dale Peck from the back bench of bitter hatchet-job artists to write a piece about how Pete Buttigieg is the wrong kind of gay (which they've since removed from their site after nearly everyone said "WTF"). This really takes me back.
In 1992, the year that Peck mentions in his endless introduction about how he went to this cool bar and then he went to this other cool bar and he was a novelist and he met a guy but the guy wasn't even attractive, etc.—all in New York City of course, which he doesn't actually say, he just expects you to know that those cool bars are in Manhattan—New York was having a grotty little renaissance in the field of "writing about being an asshole." New York Press, the free weekly vanity publication of a right-wing dick who was out to destroy The Village Voice, was about 75% composed of this: they'd run a column on the theme of "I hate the homeless" or "I had meaningless sex with someone, let me tell you how ugly they were and how coked-up I was"—and then next week they'd fill three pages with the hate mail they got, i.e. it was pre-Internet clickbait. But the Voice was sometimes into it too (Robert Christgau does have things to say about music, but for a lot of people I think his main attraction is that he really enjoys being an asshole) and in general it was just a popular genre. The second most popular genre was rambling pleasantly about going to clubs and stuff and critiquing people's style, like Michael Musto's column, which seemed pointless to me but at least seemed to be about enjoying something.
Peck didn't exactly stand out from the crowd in being a universally venomous critic who made everything personal, but I guess he stuck with it longer than most. His main innovation in this piece is to add in a little Musto and a little Bret Easton Ellis by going on about his bar-hopping and his disdain for people, before he finally gets to his actual point about how Buttigieg isn't just evil for being kind of square, and for (in Peck's imagination) not liking the right sexual practices, but also because he clearly didn't party enough in his youth and so if he gets into the White House he'll go crazy with debauchery, as all recently-out gay men do. That that last part is indistinguishable from homophobic stereotypes is not a problem for Peck or for his editor. It's ostensibly political commentary but the actual political content is identical to stuff many other people have said ("neoliberal", etc.); really it's about the writer being more Authentic than his target, and in Manhattan in 1992, being Authentic meant drinking a lot and being a writer and being an asshole.
Oh yeah, also this guy now teaches creative writing at The New School, which I dropped out of in 1992. I guess I really missed out.
In 1992, the year that Peck mentions in his endless introduction about how he went to this cool bar and then he went to this other cool bar and he was a novelist and he met a guy but the guy wasn't even attractive, etc.—all in New York City of course, which he doesn't actually say, he just expects you to know that those cool bars are in Manhattan—New York was having a grotty little renaissance in the field of "writing about being an asshole." New York Press, the free weekly vanity publication of a right-wing dick who was out to destroy The Village Voice, was about 75% composed of this: they'd run a column on the theme of "I hate the homeless" or "I had meaningless sex with someone, let me tell you how ugly they were and how coked-up I was"—and then next week they'd fill three pages with the hate mail they got, i.e. it was pre-Internet clickbait. But the Voice was sometimes into it too (Robert Christgau does have things to say about music, but for a lot of people I think his main attraction is that he really enjoys being an asshole) and in general it was just a popular genre. The second most popular genre was rambling pleasantly about going to clubs and stuff and critiquing people's style, like Michael Musto's column, which seemed pointless to me but at least seemed to be about enjoying something.
Peck didn't exactly stand out from the crowd in being a universally venomous critic who made everything personal, but I guess he stuck with it longer than most. His main innovation in this piece is to add in a little Musto and a little Bret Easton Ellis by going on about his bar-hopping and his disdain for people, before he finally gets to his actual point about how Buttigieg isn't just evil for being kind of square, and for (in Peck's imagination) not liking the right sexual practices, but also because he clearly didn't party enough in his youth and so if he gets into the White House he'll go crazy with debauchery, as all recently-out gay men do. That that last part is indistinguishable from homophobic stereotypes is not a problem for Peck or for his editor. It's ostensibly political commentary but the actual political content is identical to stuff many other people have said ("neoliberal", etc.); really it's about the writer being more Authentic than his target, and in Manhattan in 1992, being Authentic meant drinking a lot and being a writer and being an asshole.
Oh yeah, also this guy now teaches creative writing at The New School, which I dropped out of in 1992. I guess I really missed out.