Obama: “Shameful!”

President Obama fired a warning shot at Wall Street on Thursday, branding bankers “shameful” for giving themselves $18.4 billion in bonuses as the economy was spinning out of control and the government was spending billions to bail out many of the nation’s most prominent financial firms…

“That is the height of irresponsibility,” Mr. Obama said angrily. “It is shameful, and part of what we’re going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.

via Obama Harshly Criticizes Wall St. Bonuses – NYTimes.com

Time Out: Free Bird!

Billy Powell, the former roadie who became a rock star for his keyboard work with the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, died early Wednesday morning apparently of heart problems at his home in Orange Park, Fla., police said. He was 56.

via Billy Powell dies at 56; Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboard player – Los Angeles Times.

Why do we think gay men are wealthy?

This column was interesting. It uses a pointless cheap photo from Getty, but the guy is pretty. Anyway, it touches on why we think gay men are wealthy, and how coming out is easier when you have means.

I suspect this stereotype has something to do with the fact that, in the recent past, only gays who had earned fame and fortune — especially in artistic circles — could afford to come out. So the world began to believe that “rich” went hand-in-hand with “homosexual.” And even now, the gay men we tend to read about in magazines or see on TV are rich ones. On “Will and Grace,” Will must have been earning seven figures to pay for his lifestyle (and Jack’s). The “Queer Eye” guys made expensive tastes seem genetically hard-wired in gay men. I’m not saying that the idealization of wealth is solely a gay thing — but it has especially affected gay men, who see fewer representations of themselves in popular culture.

via Style: The Wealth Myth.

Time Out: Bear Super Pop

Time for some silliness…

Problem with Gus van Sant’s “Milk”

While I loved “Milk,” I’ve felt like there was some things missing from the story. Harvey was more radical sexually and socially. And the riots that took place after his killer was given a light sentence would have added to the history in the film. I think leaving things out may have been necessary in order to boil the final years of Harvey’s life into a single-film biopic, but the film’s castration of our hero does relieve present-day film goers dusgust from understanding Milk’s sexual radicalism and the reality gay male relationships.

So why did it happen? Why is the closet-busting film about Harvey Milk so fearful when it comes to its subject’s own sex life? Well, partly because even gay saints need to be shown exercising some sexual restraint. But the main reason undoubtedly is that bundling themselves back into the closet is exactly what today’s US gay-rights campaigners are doing in their campaign for gay marriage. In order to try and persuade an unconvinced American public to support gay marriage under the rubric of equality, gay male relationships are being presented, rather disingenuously, as “just the same” as male-female ones.

via There’s one problem with Gus van Sant’s Milk: it castrates its hero | Film | guardian.co.uk

Obama says what many of us from snow areas think

Those of us from snowy areas (I grew up at the southern tip of the Ohio “snow belt”) are amazed how DC closes down at  the hint of inclement weather.

The president, joking with reporters before a meeting he’s having right now with business leaders at the White House, said he was amazed this morning to hear that his daughters’ school (the private Sidwell Friends) is closed today because of icy streets and sidewalks in the nation’s capital.

“My children’s school was canceled today, because of what … some ice?”

via Obama is amused that his daughters’ school closed today – The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency.

Updates at WaPhoJo

A black woman in the crowd and a white man on a port-a-pottie wave in the sea of people during the “We Are One” inauguration concert for Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial, Sunday, January 18, 2009.

I’ve been updating the templates at Washington Photo Journal and have come up with a layout that allows me to add new posts, links, and photos much easier than in the past. I’m also now able to create web galleries within the journal itself, so it should be a much better experience for visitors.

Though I’ve been trying to be more general in my photography, I realize I will do better to stick with LGBT themed photography as my primary focus. After all, this year marks the 20th year I’ve been taking photos of the gay community (I started at Gay Pride Cleveland in 1989), and my body of work is primarily related to LGBT issues. I’ll continue to cover anything newsworthy, but I plan to focus mostly on LGBT themes.

Other photographers for different beats (sports, dc politics, music, city news) are still needed on WaPhoJo. Let me know if you’re interested.

Time Out: History of the Internet

Time Out: The Love Doctor Gives us TMI

Remember Terri…

If you fist bump a friend, you’re at the Inauguration.
If you fist a friend, you’re at Mid-Atlantic Leather.

Gay Marriage Equality Summit

One of the things we hear a lot at Queerty is, “Who are these self-professed leaders? We didn’t elect them!” Well, here’s the plain truth: They are whoever shows up.

via More Questions Than Answers at Gay Marriage Equality Summit / Queerty.

Sean Penn wins Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role in Screen Actors Guild Awards

via Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role | Screen Actors Guild Awards.

‘1969′

“What intrigued me was the pattern of how the dial of the ’60s got turned up in 1969,” (author Rob) Kirkpatrick says. “The revolution was no longer just in the city streets but had made its way to the suburbs. It was in Iowa and Indiana. It was even in Zap, N.D.” (Kids who had gathered there over spring break destroyed much of the town.)

Kirkpatrick says he was surprised when sections of his book began to emerge “organically.” Nixon and the covert war in Cambodia in winter. The rise of the sexual revolution in spring. The innocence of Woodstock in the summer. The tragic Altamont concert in California (one homicide and three accidental deaths) on Dec. 6, where the Rolling Stones played before an unruly crowd as the Hells Angels acted as police.

“The year played out in an arc,” Kirkpatrick says. “It had a definite and dark climax.

“People still point to Woodstock as the apex of ’60s counterculture but call Altamont, which happened just four months later, the ‘death’ of ’60s counterculture. It’s a fascinating concept: the heights and depths of a generational movement, all in one four-month period.”

That same dichotomy held true, he says, for technology. Man walked on the moon, while back on Earth pollution was so bad that Ohio’s Cuyahoga River went up in flames.

And then there was the soundtrack. Some pop culture experts say 1969 is all about the music. Led Zeppelin introduced heavy metal, The Who gave us the rock opera Tommy, the Rolling Stones were in top form. It was also the year The Beatles broke up.

“There were truly seismic shifts in music and popular culture” in the late ’60s, says Joe Levy, editor of the music magazine Blender.

Levy, 44, says “the reason we remember 1969 is because of the twin poles of Woodstock and Altamont. The community of peace and love and the nightmare of chaos and disorder…”

Jeremy Wallach, a cultural anthropologist with the department of pop culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, calls 1969 “the apotheosis and decline of the counterculture.” He, too, says the music of the day tells the story.

“After (1969) you see the rise of disco, punk, alternative, indie rock, heavy metal,” says Wallach, 38. “What’s interesting is this was the beginning of all these styles. You see what was to come. Pop music got a lot darker.”

Another telling sign of the times was that concertgoers wanted to be “part of the show.” “You can see it in footage from Woodstock. They were rushing the stage,” Kirkpatrick says.

Karal Ann Marling, 65, professor emerita of history and American studies at the University of Minnesota, says 1969 was much more than just Woodstock. “The whole late ’60s are a period,” she says. “I’m not sure we had a lot of hope, but we were bound and determined to have change.”

via ‘1969′: The year, and a book, that defined an era – USATODAY.com

No Gay Divorce in Texas

A Dallas man has filed for divorce from his husband but the state of Texas is refusing to hear the case.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said that since Texas law prohibits same-sex marriages and civil unions, the men could not be divorced in Texas since their union is not recognized to exist in Texas.

The men, who have asked that their names remain private, were married in Cambridge, Mass., in 2006.

via Texas Blocks Gay Divorce – News- msnbc.com.

NBC Story on the endless drug war

Prohibition is pointless and it has failed. Weed is part of our culture. Why do we spend countless dollars and waste countless lives fighting it? It’s time to end the war on marijuana.

Actor Ryan Kelley Joining Dayton Parents for Premiere of “Prayers for Bobby”

Ryan Kelley in "Prayers for Bobby"

Actor Ryan Kelley, star of the new Lifetime Television film Prayers for Bobby, will join the Dayton chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) on Sunday, January 25 in an event to celebrate the film’s release and talk about his own experience bringing the acclaimed novel to the screen.

“We are extraordinarily excited to welcome Kelley to Ohio for this special PFLAG event,” said Jan Couchman, the chapter’s president. “Prayers is a unique opportunity to show the role PFLAG plays in so many parents’ lives, and Kelley’s visit underscores the priority that both PFLAG and the film’s cast have placed on changing hearts in the heartland. Though Prayers is a Hollywood production, its impact will be felt most in places like Dayton, where families turn to PFLAG as they learn to embrace and celebrate their lesbian and gay children.”

via Actor Ryan Kelley to Join Dayton Parents to Celebrate the Premiere of New Film Prayers for Bobby.

Leroy Aarons: Author of “Prayers for Bobby”

Leroy Aarons

If Leroy Aarons were still alive, he’d probably feel very proud to see his book “Prayers for Bobby” finally turned into a film for Lifetime TV. Aarons, who is listed as one of the film’s co-producers, accomplished much before his death in 2004, but he took special pride in his 1995 book about the real-life tragedy of a boy from Walnut Creek who wasn’t allowed to be himself.

Who was Roy Aarons? First, a consummate journalist who started his career at the New Haven (Conn.) Journal-Courier and went on to the Washington Post, where he stayed for 14 years during the very heady times of the 1960s and early ’70s…

But there came a time when work became personal. In 1990, Aarons, then a senior vice president of the Tribune, headed up a survey of gays and lesbians working in the media for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which found that those journalists often encountered hostility in the newsroom and that media coverage of gay and lesbian issues was “at best, mediocre.”

Aarons delivered the study’s findings at an ASNE meeting in Washington, D.C., and then added a personal note: “I, as an editor and a gay man, am proud of ASNE.”

Recalling the dramatic coming-out moment in a column for the Tribune, Aarons wrote that his voice may have been shaky as he uttered that sentence, “but it was not from anxiety or fear. It was the welling up of emotion. It said, ‘Here I am, world, at last. All of me.’ ”

Within four months, Aarons and other gay and lesbian reporters met to found the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, which continues his legacy today in newsrooms across the country.

via Leroy Aarons: consummate journalist

Bobby Griffith story “Prayers for Bobby” earning Sigourney Weaver Emmy Buzz

There is a lot of Emmy buzz swirling around “Prayers for Bobby.”

“Well, I don’t read reviews. I just hope people tune in. I’m delighted that I’ll be able to come into the living rooms of so many families because I think this is a very timely story and a very moving one,” she said.

…Weaver’s character doesn’t give up her faith or religion, but changes the way she looks at it. The storyline develops with Mary’s journey after her son’s death – and Weaver gives an amazing performance.

According to Weaver, meeting the real Mary and her family helped her to encapsulate the character.

“It was very important to me. You know, the reason — I mean, the family wanted this story told. They wanted to share it with as many families as possible so that other families, devout families, don’t make the same mistakes that they did,” she said…

via Sigourney Weaver’s Emmy Buzz, Three-Time Oscar Nominee Discusses Her Emotional Performance In “Prayers For Bobby” – CBS News.

Time Out: Duke Ellington

66 Years ago today Duke Ellington played at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time. Here’s a video from that time period.

Shepard Fairey Obama Portrait unveiled and installed in the National Portrait Gallery — Washington Photo Journal

Washington Photo Journal – Shepard Fairey Obama Portrait “Hope” unveiled and installed in the National Portrait Gallery

Mid-Atlantic Leather’s 25th

At this year’s Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather contest, the eventual winner, Kip Holler, was asked to cite his qualities if called on to serve as President Barack Obama’s new puppy.

”I have short hair, I don’t shed and I’m hypo-allergenic — it’s leather, not latex,” he said off the cuff to the judges’ intentionally farcical question. Dressed in full leather, with a bright-yellow tie, he was sure to call attention to what he said should be the first pup’s first order of business. ”As my first duty, I’d piss on you, George W. Bush.”

Leather Laurels: Celebrating Mid-Atlantic Leather’s quarter century in style: Feature Story at Metro Weekly magazine