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Hollywood’s Opening Closet
Since Merv Griffin’s death over last weekend, I have been shocked by the number of friends mentioning in embarrassed whispers how they never knew Merv Griffin was gay.
Well, duh. Merv didn’t want you to know because he wanted a career.
The Hollywood Reporter has a nice editorial by Ray Richmond that deals with Merv’s well-known secret. He starts off the piece with this powerful paragraph:
Merv Griffin was gay.
Why should that be so uncomfortable to read? Why is it so difficult to write? Why are we still so jittery even about raising the issue in purportedly liberal-minded Hollywood in 2007? We can refer to it casually in conversation, but the mainstream media somehow remains trapped in the Dark Ages when it comes to labeling a person as gay.
He’s right. While most of America has come to marginally accept gay culture as easily as the rest of the world embraces it, Hollywood seems almost frozen in time from fifty years ago. Her stars remain petrified of coming out, from older stars like John Travolta or Jodie Foster, to younger stars like Hayden Christensen and Clay Aiken.
While celebrity bloggers like Perez Hilton obsess over the sexual preferences of the Hollywood elite, I think the entire issue is a non-issue. The only people who really care where Zac Ephron sticks his wiener are the legion of girls that want it inside of their burgeoning vaginas.
However, the Merv Griffin issue makes it more important than it initially appears. Imagine how life might have been happier and more fulfilling if Merv could have expressed his sexuality and love life in its natural form; by extension, how healthy such expression would be for homosexuals the world over.
Instead, Merv remained hidden behind a curtain of innuendos and falsified “dates” with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Despite being fabulously wealthy, Merv could never live the way he truly desired.
While one may not agree with the gay lifestyle for themselves, I think we can all agree that suppressing and/or hiding a drive as powerful and as intrinsic as sexuality is damaging. Such repression leads to shadowy and anonymous encounters that have ravaged the gay community with loneliness and disease.
It’s a sad price to pay for the opinions of others.
Things are slowly changing, although too late to help Merv; Hollywood - the largest employer of gay workers - continues to fight its own ridiculous prejudices. The soap opera One Life To Live this week featured the first kiss by two male actors on a daytime program.
Chris and KC, stop puking.
Eric, stop masturbating.
Last 5 posts by Ray
- Why STAR TREK Fails - November 17th, 2008
- Useless Tube - November 17th, 2008
- Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dicker - November 14th, 2008
- What The Deficit Means To You - November 13th, 2008
- Stealing Movies - November 12th, 2008
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3 Responses to “Hollywood’s Opening Closet”
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Hell, without homosexuals Hollywood probably wouldn’t exist. It seems like all the real creativity and talent comes from Teh Ghey Peepul.
GROSS!!!!!
[...] As we discussed last month, a bizarre state of denial continues to permeate Hollywood, the world’s largest employer of homosexuals. And while gay-oriented entertainment has made inroads in the mainstream, the stars and behind-the-scenes creators of this entertainment remain hidden. [...]