JFK and Alleged Oral Sex

When I read things like this I just groan. It’s one of the darker sides of publishing. That’s party because I am a published author and I know how authors of “tell-all” books like this think…like scum…and partly because I fail to see why we should be so shocked about it if, in fact, it did happen. Privacy is an interesting word, especially with regard to something that may or may not have happened almost a century ago. 

In his new book Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream, author Jerry Oppenheimer attributes the oral sex claim to writer Lawrence J. Quirk who worked with Billings on Kennedy’s first congressional campaign in 1946.

The book claims that Quirk confided to Quirk that the two men had ‘a friendship that included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end.’

Quirk had said that Billings ‘believed that this arrangement enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that straight men who received oral sex from other males were really only straights looking for sexual release.’

As you can see from the quote above there are a few mistakes in the article itself, not to mention the fact that this is all hearsay about hearsay.

You can check the rest out here. 

Matt Bomer’s Nudity

I think one of the things Matt Bomer is a genius at is becoming a character to the point where you don’t always recognize him at first. It takes a moment. When he did the nude scenes in American Horror I had to look twice just to make sure it was him.

‘I think you see more of me in the fist episode than in the entire first two Magic Mikes,’ Bomer told Ellen DeGeneres on her daytime talk show Thursday (8 October).

Bomer explained that while viewers saw a lot of him, they did not see his ‘junk’ because of a flesh-colored sock that he says stays in place with the help of an adjustable plastic band.

There’s more here. Obviously, there’s no full frontal nudity…yet.

Ben Whishaw on Straight Actors Playing Gay

This debate continues in the entertainment industry almost to the point of mimicking what happens in the m/m romance community with straight women writing gay novels, and in some extreme cases posing as gay men in order to sell books.

Ben Whishaw is “baffled” because he doesn’t understand why there is a debate about straight actors playing gay roles.

Here’s what Whishaw thinks:

‘I do not understand what the problem is. Actors play all sorts of things. I’ve played murderers, journalists and kings – I’m not any of them. The whole thing is a fiction, it’s about imagination, it’s play. I am baffled to why it’s such a big thing.

‘And also, I’m baffled because it feels like we’re in a time where there are lots of gay people, not just actors but in all walks of life, and let’s be where we are. We’re human beings and I don’t understand why it’s really a discussion now.’

Whishaw also addressed Matt Damon’s controversial comments on gay actors.

Should we tell him?

First, when you compare gay characters to murderers you’ve lost me from the start. 

As usual I didn’t read the comments before I commented in the post. You can check them out here. 

I’ll tell you what I don’t understand. Right or wrong, I don’t understand why gay people…all LGBT+ people…aren’t taken seriously enough for men like Ben Wishaw to allow us the opportunity to debate the issue. Why is he so eager to just dismiss us and our concerns? I think it will continue as a debate, especially since the Stonewall movie garnered such outrage from the LGBT+ community. I think many of us are just beginning to grow tired of being dismissed, exploited, and appropriated.

Here’s an example of what I think might be a sign of the times. The film Stonewall was a box office disaster.

With terrible reviews, the very community that might have embraced it viewing the picture as the enemy, and a general moviegoing populace either seeing the wide releases (The Intern, Hotel Transylvania 2, Everest) or checking out the more acclaimed platform plays (Sicario, Grandma, etc.), this was a movie made for absolutely no one. Stonewall was never going to be a big hit, but at least a version of the film that didn’t relegate important historical figures to supporting characters in their own story would have earned it a token place in cinematic history.