RIP Meshach Taylor

Designing Women star, Meshach Taylor, who played Anthony Bouvier from the late 80’s into the early 90’s recently passed away. He died of cancer, at his LA home with his wife and family, at the age of 67.

DW has always been a huge hit with the gay male segment of the LGBTI community and I always thought a lot of that had to do with the character dynamics between Taylor and Delta Burke. There’s even an interesting little note in this article that mentions how one DW show was developed after a real life incident with Burke and Taylor.

“We were doing some promotional work in Lubbock, Texas, and somehow Delta Burke and I got booked into the same hotel suite,” he said. They alerted their respective significant others to the mix-up, then muddled through with the shared accommodations.

“When we got back I told Linda, and she put it into a show: We got stranded at a motel during a blizzard and ended up in the same bed!”

Interesting side note: The article doesn’t mention this, but back in the 80’s Designing Women’s rival on TV was The Golden Girls (also a huge hit with gay men). I believe it was the pilot episode of The Golden Girls where Meshach Taylor made a brief appearance as a police officer. It lasted all of a few seconds. I think this was before Designing Women aired. Syndicated reruns of both television shows are still airing today, and both still have a huge following. In DW, Taylor’s role as “Anthony” often revolved around racial issues during a time when these racial issues weren’t always discussed aloud. It was way ahead of its time.

You can read more here about Taylor’s other credits.  

Hillary Clinton Rape Culture

As it sometimes happens with blog posts, this one seems to be following a pattern today. There’s a slight connection to the late Meshach Taylor and Hillary Clinton through the creators of the TV show Designing Women, Linda Bloodworth- Thomason and Harry Thomason. The husband and wife team were well known for several television productions in the 1980’s, and were very close friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton at the time. There are even several rather self-indulgent episodes of Designing Women where Bill Clinton is mentioned…one of which is when he was Governor of Arkansas and no one in the US really even knew his name. In a way, Bloodworth-Thomason did with Bill Clinton what Oprah Winfrey did with President Obama. They used their fame and high profile platforms to help introduce men who would become the next presidents of the United States.

In any event, I had to search a little for the link to this next article about Hillary Clinton and rape culture. I wanted to find an article that didn’t have a slant. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Every piece is slanted in one way or the other. Most of the articles on this topic are from conservative sources that can’t wait to expose the information, and the one I’m linking to right now is from a more liberal source that thinks conservatives are making too much out of this. Typical mainstream journalism for today.

Tapes have surfaced that allegedly discuss when Hillary Clinton defended an alleged child rapist in the 1970’s. According to this article, Clinton defended the alleged rapist even though she thought he was guilty at the time. And she won.

Not one single article mentioned rape culture or its association to society as a whole. Of course Clinton’s job as an attorney was to represent and defend her client to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, this makes us all wonder about her integrity, especially with respect to women’s rights.

This article said something that floored me:

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable,’’ Clinton wrote in the affidavit, “with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing.” The document, filed with the Washington County, Arkansas court on July 28, 1975, argued for a psychiatric evaluation for the victim.

“I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body,’’ Clinton wrote. “Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

You can read more here.

Here’s more about rape culture:

Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, or refusing to acknowledge the harm of certain forms of sexual violence that do not conform to certain stereotypes of stranger or violent rape.

New York to End AIDS

At Gay Pride, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, announced a new initiative to end AIDS…or control the spread of HIV. It’s an interesting concept, with an odd name…”Bending the Curve.” I swear there’s no pun intended.

In any event, here are a few points to cover:

The proposition has three parts: 1) identifying those with HIV who are still undiagnosed and connecting them with healthcare, 2) making certain those who are diagnosed have access to anti-HIV therapy, and 3) ‘providing access to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for high-risk persons to keep them HIV negative.’

I have to read more about this. I’m not fond of #3. And, how will they go about getting all this personal information? More government intervention?

Does this mean that because I’m a gay man I’ll be required to take Truvada? Truvada is the prophylaxis they’re talking about. It’s used as an HIV prevention drug in some cases now.  I posted about that before.

Here’s a quote from my post:

Unfortunately, I discovered that taking Truvada gave me too many new things to feel. Whatever short-term side effects I could get, I did. Less than a week out, I started to feel a deep sense of fatigue every day around 6 p.m. It was something I could power through and eventually shake, but it made me feel like dropping to the floor and passing out instead of going to the gym or attending movie screenings. I had perpetual muscle soreness, especially in my legs, as if I had squatted way more than I should have the day before. My skin got worse. I developed a disgusting, raised rash on my torso that my dermatologist told me was the result of a nickel allergy (I had been wearing the culprit belt for years). I was gassy.
You can read more here about New York’s quest to end AIDS, and my post is here.