Word: commonnesses
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...gays were outlaws. The new movie begins with newsreel clips of men hiding their faces from the paparazzi's flashbulbs as police remove them from some furtive gay bar of the 1960s - the decade when practically every underclass of society but theirs got liberated. Vicious assaults of gays were common, and the law rarely pursued the perpetrators. If, as you watch Mad Men, you wonder why the gay art director is so timid about declaring his sexual needs to his colleagues, prospective lovers or, for that matter, himself, it's because he'd like to keep...
...reading, "You get the first bullet the minute you stand at the microphone." Black frames the film as a monologue delivered into a tape recorder by Harvey, who's as sure of his impending death as he is of his gay-liberation creed. In the '70s, paranoia was simply common sense; the preceding 10 years had seen the murders of King and Robert Kennedy and assassination attempts on Gerald Ford and George Wallace. The movie is faithful to that grungy time, but it downplays the riots that followed its hero's assassination; Black and Van Sant don't want Milk...
...election of Barack Obama does not represent a "new liberal order" so much as the latest desire to establish responsibility in the congressional playpen. For decades, Americans have voted in politicians with the hope that they would work together for the common good. And for decades, most of these politicians have acted like spoiled, self-interested toddlers. "Change we can believe in"? Our needs are much simpler than that. At this point, we would settle for someone who can persuade Congress to act like adults--and maybe even share. If not, we will be interviewing for a new day-care...
...taking on taboos, like Los Van Van's early critique of rampant prostitution in a 1996 song about papayas: go ahead, they sang, touch it; it's a national product. During the economic crisis following the Soviet collapse, music was the one thing that held the island together, a common passion for both revolutionaries and reactionaries. The government understood its power; that's why supergroup La Charanga Habanera was banned for months in the '90s after using a military helicopter to drop the group onstage for a stripteasing, innuendo-filled concert on national TV. It was, someone clearly decided...
...Platt Amendment, which helped carve the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo out of Cuban territory. But Cuban outrage never extinguished the lure of the north for ordinary Cubans. And given the state of Cuba's economy, bedazzlement with the outside world is as strong as ever. A common joke: A little boy is asked in Havana what he wants to be when he grows up. He thinks for a moment before answering, I want to be a foreigner...