Song of the Day 10/4: Boy George, “The Crying Game”
Some celebrities don’t know when to shut up. Author J.K. Rowling isn’t the first billionaire superstar to destroy her reputation by airing views odious to the mainstream – hey there, Ye! – but she sure seems determined to make sure everyone knows she’s an asshole.
You don’t have to be a Harry Potter fan to know that Rowling has been waging war against trans women (she doesn’t seem to have any beef with trans men) for several years now. Her campaign has alienated millions of fans, along with the actors who helped add millions to her bank account.
One of them, Emma Watson, when asked recently about her relationship with Rowling, answered as tactfully as possible, saying she disagreed with the author but loved her anyway. Rowling responded with a 700-word screed that insulted the actress as having “so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is,” and added a mocking video to pour some salt in the wound.
Watson hasn’t said anything since, but she doesn’t have to. She’s got Boy George on her side. “Who cares what JK Boring thinks about anything,” he wrote. “She is the dullest of the dull. My real life pisses on her fiction. I stand with Emma Watson.”
Leaving aside the validity of Rowling’s arguments, it’s her graceless jeremiad, issued when no response was called or asked for, that makes her an asshole, so George’s willingness to joust with her via dueling tweets seems like a gallant gesture.
George, who is gay, not trans, pointed out that he started wearing makeup when he was 14 and has known many trans people over the years. His androgynous presentation was far from unknown in the pop music world when Culture Club formed in 1981 – David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character had scaled that barrier almost a decade earlier, and disco had been blurring gender lines for several years. But cross-dressing and transsexuality were still considered shocking even in 1992, when the movie “The Crying Game” used a gender reveal as its main plot twist.
Despite the film’s shoestring budget, producers tapped Boy George to cover the 1964 hit single that gave the movie its name. The record was produced by the Pet Shop Boys, and it gave Boy George his only solo Top 40 hit in the U.S., where it reached No. 15 on the Hot 100.
Good for Boy George and Emma Watson. I wish they could just ignore the stupid, petty jerks though.
I suppose there was a time before social media when a topic such as “transgender” came up and a “celebrity” could say “Not my cup of tea, but whatever” and would pretty much be that. (Unless you were Anita Bryant and really worked at being noticed as a fist class asshole). But now everyone is building a fortune $0.003 cents at a time and at that rate you need a lot of hits to climb to the top of that mountain.
It is the unkindness and lack of compassion, charity and empathy that marks the likes of J.K.Rowling and her behavior towards Emma Watson and the transgender community. Her views about gender and identity are her own and she is welcome to them, but she is not welcome to cause pain and suffering to others with them. How other humans see themselves and choose to present themselves is a personal decision and to presume to comment on it is both vulgar and boorish. Ms. Rowling needs to confine her comments to topics about which she has some expertise and training. She is not, to my knowledge a medical professional with education in these areas. Pontificatiing on these topics and chiding others about them is both pompous and arrogant in the extreme, ignorant and stupid obviously. Yes, a few quack doctors agree with her but mainstream medicine considers her an idiot.