Burgery A ubiquitous poster in Helsinki sponsored by Burger King featured that company’s own mascot kissing Ronald McDonald with a caption proclaiming “everyone’s right to be just the way they are.” And while this pairing isn’t exactly a porn fantasy, the message is well taken. Still, a PDA between two male mascots in liberal Finland isn’t what’s surprising here. Um, aren’t Burger King and McDonald’s supposed to be archrivals who occupy opposite corners of the fast-food universe—or at least of the busy intersection—in capitalist Finland? If the Finnish people have any reason to be alarmed about the embrace, it isn’t because of the sexual boundaries being crossed but instead the laws governing collusion between competitors in the marketplace!
IOC, Drug Pusher The International Olympics Committee has ruled that track athlete Caster Semenya must submit to hormone therapy to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete in next year’s Olympics. The South African sprinter, a cisgender woman, has elevated levels of testosterone because she was born with an intersex condition and raised as female. Surely the irony of this situation cannot be lost on these officials, whose job it is to stop all use of hormones by both male and female athletes. It also underscores the extent to which the Olympics, and sports in general, remain committed to a strictly binary model of gender. Virtually all sports maintain a wall of separation between male and female teams or events, even when they play the same sport (such as basketball). The possibility of mingling male and female athletes was the stuff of hoopla in the Billie Jean King–Bobby Riggs tennis showdown of 1973, but that seems to have ended the discussion. Let this decision to enforce gender binarism artificially, even when the anomaly has occurred naturally—and contrary to the IOC’s own anti-drug credo—serve as a cultural marker for what is to be done.
From Bro to ’Mo Hailed as a major event in the world of superhero comics, two favorites at Marvel Comics, Wiccan and Hulkling, are to be married on the final page of Empyre #4. While describing this as an “incredible moment,” one report (at pinknews.co.uk) noted that “their marriage won’t come as a major surprise to fans,” since their evolution as the ultimate gay power couple has been in progress since 2005. Indeed this blasé response is not surprising on a deeper level. There are solo superheroes like Superman himself, and then there are duos like Batman and Robin, and the minute you encounter the latter you’re already getting into “bromance” territory where two men are out on escapades and finding themselves in tight situations, often quite literally. The fact that Wiccan and Hunkling are getting married only confirms what Leslie Fiedler put forth way back in 1960 in Love and Death in the American Novel: that all the great male pair bonds—Huck Finn and Jim, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, Ishmael and Queequeg, et al.—are deeply homoerotic at their core.
The Fall For anyone who missed the Jerry Falwell Jr. show as he resigned as president of Liberty University in late August under a giant shadow of scandal both financial and sexual, here goes. Part 1 was covered here last year (July-August 2019) and concerned a “pool boy” named Giancarlo Granda who had received $1.8 million to destroy some highly incriminating photos of himself, Falwell, and Falwell’s wife Becki, which apparently he did upon receiving this sum—ostensibly as a loan to help Granda launch a hotel business—courtesy of Liberty U. Part 2 involves one Benjamin Crosswhite, and this time the photos have not been destroyed. There’s a financial side that’s remarkably similar to the Granda scenario; what’s new are the prurient details. As described by Crosswhite, who was a personal trainer at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach when Mrs. Falwell approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse: “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room. He enjoyed watching us in person and also remotely through video cameras.” No doubt these revelations played a role in Liberty’s decision to oust Falwell, but it was the business deal that tripped him up—the $2 million that he siphoned from Liberty to Crosswhite’s sports club, and its subsequent collapse. Then there was the time that Falwell accidentally sent a photo of his wife in a French maid’s outfit to several people, including some Liberty employees. All this did not prevent the university from handing Falwell $10.5 million on his way out the door—enough to finance another five or six pool boys at the current rate.
He Had a Million of ’Em The U.S. Postal Service has issued a block of stamps to honor Bugs Bunny, including two of Bugs in drag. This of course was the Wascally Wabbit’s favorite mode of disguise for eluding Elmer Fudd. Deciding which of Bugs’ many ensembles to feature must have been a tough call. In the end the PO went with a blonde mermaid that’s more Mae West than Hans Christian Andersen, with deep red lipstick and hourglass hips; and, for you opera fans, a buxom sendup of Brünnhilde from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle that appeared in the 1957 cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” The stamps were touted as the PO’s first ever foray into drag, which immediately set the mind reeling for possible exceptions to this claim. Amelia Earhart? Mae West herself? J. Edgar Hoover? Nominations are welcome.
