Diane Carman is a narrow minded bigot
She is all aflutter about Brokeback Mountain. That is fine. That is why Baskin Robbins makes so many flavors of ice cream. I don't plan to see it, in fact I plan to intentionally avoid seeing it. For that she accuses me of being everything from a closet homophobe to a cretan.
It's the scariest movie since "Fatal Attraction" turned millions of American men into born-again husbands.
No, it's scarier. At least most heterosexual men could summon the courage to see "Fatal Attraction."
I saw Fatal Attraction and didn't think is was scary nor was it, IMO, all that good.
"I'm very traditional when it comes to Westerns," said an otherwise open-minded man, a high school teacher who resorted to the movie-genre-purist cop-out.
"I just don't like relationship movies," said a lawyer, seizing the manly anti-chick-flick defense.
An editor waved me off, saying hell no he won't go, but he'll try to work up the nerve to see it on DVD.
The closest thing to a direct response to why not to see the movie came from a guy who likes his bourbon straight and his women blond and gorgeous. "I just don't want to see two guys humping," he said, adding, "not that there's anything wrong with that."
I was flabbergasted. I know these guys. Every one of them would take serious offense to being called homophobic. And yet talking about "Brokeback Mountain" gives them sweaty palms, shifty eyes and all manner of twitchy body language.
I am not that big on Westerns, but when I choose to watch one I want it pretty traditional. I generally don't like relationship movies. I like my bourbon on the rocks and my woman is a brunette. I watch most of my movies on DVD or HBO because very few movies these days are really worth the money to see in the theater. I have a 65 inch wide screen high def TV and it is rare that a good movie comes out for which the theater experience is going to be sufficiently better than that for the difference between $4.50 and $20. Sue me, but none of that makes me homophobic. Cheap maybe, but not homophobic.
So here is my test to prove that the lack of desire to see this movie on the part of most men has nothing to do with homophobia. If you said to your husband/boyfriend/male friend "I am going to go see a new movie that is out. It is a western romance movie. The main characters are a married male cowboy and a single female cowgirl who ride the range together. They get close, fall in love and decide they need to spend the rest of their lives together. The man goes home to tell his wife he is leaving his family because he is in love with the cowgirl and they ride into the sunset. Want to come with?" What will he say?
I would be surprised if you got anything as polite as "I like my westerns traditional." Mine would be something more like "What have you been smoking and why aren't you sharing?"
It's a chick flick that happens to star to gay guys instead of a straight couple. That is supposed to make it more appealing to me? There is nothing wrong with chick flicks. There is nothing wrong with somebody deciding to put out a chick flick with two gay guys. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the film. There is also nothing wrong with a good blood and guts action war movie with car chases and big explosions and jet fighters and no romance. My wife won't go to see that latter. Does that make her a man hater? No. There is something wrong with the blanket accusation that just because our tastes are different I am somehow inferior to you.
I work in the computer industry and have for 17 years. There is an unusually high number of gay men in that field. It has never bothered me. I have never been accused of being homophobic. I have been accused of being extremely heterosexual at a Christmas (sorry that must have been Holiday) party one year after the Champagne had been flowing for a while. But I have never had a problem working with or partying with openly gay men or women and I have never been accused of being homophobic by anyone who actually knew me.
Ergo, Diane Carman is a narrow minded bigot whose little brain cannot grasp the fact that we are actually a diverse nation. Some men like other men. Some men like tall women. Some men like short women. We don't all like the same kinds of movies or music or cars. And that is a good thing, not a bad thing, although gansta rap probably should be illegal and the world would undoubtedly have been a better place if Disco never happened.
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