April 10, 2017

Here’s a fight I can’t win.

In fact, the Syrian and the Iranian Air Forces will put a Texas-sized ass whupping on the Sons of the Desert Flying Circus and do barrel rolls over the Wailing Wall before I squeeze out a tie.

I told the clerk at the Post Office that I did not want any stamps with Harvey Milk on them. [I turned down the Eid Muslim stamp in Texas a few years back. De gustibus, I suppose.]

Plan B was the Indiana commemorative. Westbound into Indiana on IS 80 is a pleasant relief from deadly dull Ohio That was OK with me because I have 2 cousins, both Benedictine monks, buried at Saint Meinrad’s Abbey in Vincennes, Indiana.

I turned it down for 2 reasons:

#1 – When Milk was murdered the man he was standing next to, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, was shot and killed also. Milk isn’t any more dead than Moscone. They were shot and killed by the same man. Why does one get a stamp while the other gets kicked to the curb?

#2 – Harvey Milk was an accused paedophile who was never bought to trial. The victim, of course, of course, the alleged victim, the under aged catcher on the wrump wrangling pitching team killed himself before the trial could begin.

I used the Duke Lacrosse team lacrosse case and the University of Virginia fraternity rape case as my template. Shape the narrative to whatever is available. Never let facts interfere with an argument. The charge is more important than the disposition.  The racial, social, economic, and cultural status of the participants is more important than facts. Rich White guys are bad and presumptively guilty unless their name is Kennedy.

The Milk/Moscone trial ended in a “not guilty” verdict thanks to a brilliant use of the heretofore unused “Twinkie” defense. Look it up. Maybe the lawyer should get a stamp.

Since Harvey Milk has a stamp how about one for Bill Cosby? How about one for Big Bill Tilden? Errol Flynn was acquitted of a rape charge. How about a lick both sides, “In Like Flynn” special delivery stamp for him? Does Rock Hudson have a stamp? How about Clifton Webb? Is Harvey Fierstein still alive? I know that Barney Frank is

I have fears of being branded a gay bashing homophobe with a Scarlet H to prove it. I am searching for a safe spot, a sanctuary closet if you will, where my thoughts will not infect the body politick. Or maybe not.

I am still searching for those elusive Mohammed cartoons. I want the ones that show him cavorting and gamboling with prepubescent girls and boys and middle age bovines. 

I guess it’s OK to say such things because the United States government taxes its citizens to subsidize the traveling company of “Corpus Cristi”. It is a play that posits that Christ was crucified because of a lovers’ quarrel with his boy-toy Judas Iscariot. Judas dropped a dime on him and the rest, as they say, is History. Strange indeed that the anniversary of the events is fast upon us. It’s too late for a high noon rollout of a stamp featuring Judas, the King of the Christ Killers but

“Free men speak with free tongues:”

Kevin Smith

PS – On of my favorite unknown movies is “Guns of Batasi”. Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, and Mia Farrow share the leads.  Simple enough story about a new African country tossing out the old boss for a new boss who turns out to be like the old boss. What sets it apart is the dialogue with shades of Kipling and Wellington going over the top. Attenborough is particularly fine as RSM Lauderdale. Bosley Crowther, the famed cinematic critic of the New York Times, kind of liked it save for the fact that 1964 was not the time to have White men criticizing Black men, particularly if the Black men were in the egg-breaking process of African nation building. Does James Baldwin have a stamp?