Jonah the Whale Goldberg is so very, very concerned with the plight of the gay, forced to fight in Bush's eeeeeeevil wars that Obama is continuing, wanting silly social norms like marriage and family, and living like, well, ordinary Americans. Where, Jonah demands, is the fabulous?
Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love." And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.
As a sexual lifestyle experiment, that failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have reembraced bourgeois notions of marriage as an essential part of life. Sadly, it's the have-nots who are now struggling as marriage is increasingly seen as an unaffordable luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.
Of course, the lunacy of the bohemian free love shtick should have been obvious from the get-go. When Michael Lerner, a member of the anti- Vietnam War "Seattle Seven," did marry, in 1971, the couple exchanged rings made from the fuselage of a U.S. aircraft downed over Vietnam and cut into a cake inscribed in icing with a Weatherman catchphrase, "Smash Monogamy."
Today Lerner is a (divorced and remarried) somewhat preposterous, prosperous progressive rabbi who officiates at all kinds of marriages — gay and straight; and, like pretty much the entire left, a big supporter of repealing "don't ask, don't tell."
Goldberg has perfected his own special class of self-parody where he sets out to debunk notions that conservatives are bad people by showing that every conceivable evil ever throughout time had to have been invented by liberals, and then backs up like a garbage truck right into the same stereotypical Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirling jackassery that he tries to disprove he's any party to. This time he manages to do that all in the space of just the title of the article, "As gays become bourgeois." Talk about economy of douchebaggery.
His superpower is that somehow he's made a career out of this particular brand of douchebag column, where in this case his efforts to prove that conservatives are the open-minded ones leads him to declare that the liberal gay counter-culture movement of the last 25 years sold out to get wedding cakes with two grooms on them and to have the right to fight and die for The Man in some god-forsaken hellhole, so that really the gays are going to sell out the liberals before the liberals sell out the gays, or something.
Which is funny, because most people would call that "Hey, I want to be treated just like every other miserable asshole in this country" which last time I checked was called "equality", a rather open minded concept. Only Goldberg would apply his cynical "aha, there must be some ulterior motive here, let me get my Sherlock Holmes bubble pipe so that I can blow bubbles here and display my detective skills!" conclusion to something as simple as The Right To Be An Average Miserable American Bastard, but there's a market for that kind of thing in the Village. The whole thing is basically Goldberg concern-trolling gays, liberals, the military, ABC's sitcom lineup and you. Did you know liberals like "Dexter"? They could be next door, you know.
He then ends with "Well, I'm not a bigot, but I think it's sweet that you guys want your little family units and Home Depot gift cards and taking kids to soccer practice" kind of crap in the voice elderly white women in 1965 usually reserved for saying "It's so wonderful that you people can do that now!"
Thus, the circle of self-parody is completed, and Goldberg gets another paycheck, complete with cartoon sound effects.
Our fourth estate needs a wrecking ball.
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