Wednesday, August 8, 2007 | by nathan

Get The Party Started

So yesterday I was flipping through a bunch of people’s MySpace pages - gay people’s MySpace pages, to be more exact, and I realized that - what? Gay people like Shirley Bassey? Huh?

I’ve noticed I have a few regular readers in the UK, and to them my surprise at gay love for Dame Shirley might seem idiotic, like, "Yes, Nathan, and they like Cher, too, and Judy Garland." But here’s the thing: until yesterday, if I ever mentioned Dame Shirley to a gay man, the reaction was always, "Who?" DAME SHIRLEY, MORONS! "Big Spender!" "Goldfinger!" The woman whom most drag queens are imitating, whether they know it or not. It’s like not knowing who Joan Crawford is.

So I’m glad to see that the homos are rediscovering one of the major gay icons. That makes me excited, but in that way when your FIFTH GRADER finally learns how to read, like, "You shoulda been there already." There’s so much more, so much better, so much more wonderful and challenging and thrilling gay culture than just the thumpa-thumpa or Ashlee/Britney/Lindsay/Paris/whoeverthefuck. There are the Scissor Sisters, and Rufus Wainwright, or the Dresden Dolls. Icons? Divas? There’s Dame Shirley. Joan Crawford. Cyndi Lauper.

Let me not even get started on how much I hate Perez Hilton. You want gay wit? David Sedaris. Oscar Wilde. Truman freaking Capote. It makes me want to spit nails to think all this wonderful stuff is out there and gay men are ignoring it because they’d rather read US Weekly, watch Sex and the City and wait for the country to grant them the same rights as straight people.

Yeah, but do you think the civil rights movement would’ve been the same if black people hadn’t invented jazz, blues and rock and roll? Get off your asses, people, and get creative, and stop looking at Lindsay and Paris, because they’re not going away until you do. Look at Dame Shirley instead.