Archive for the ‘Stereotypes’ Category

In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Mom, It’s Me, Your Gay Son, Finally By PETE MacDONALD and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 22, 2008 A YEAR after my partner Alan left me, and on the day before my estranged mother would have turned […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Nicholas Kristof/Obama and Race The Short Version: Obama gave a great speech the other day. In his words: “Much of the time, blacks have a pretty good sense of what whites think, but whites are oblivious to common black perspectives.” Score: B- (Boring) […]


In which The Gay Recluse posts an incisive reader comment. This was left in the comments but we thought it merited a full post because it brings to light several important and interesting issues that are not unrelated to our obituary of Arthur C. Clarke, which — ahem — did not please everyone. Vikram — […]


In which The Gay Recluse kills two birds with one stone. Today we received a certain amount of shit for “trashing” Arthur C. Clarke as a major closet-case only milliseconds after he died. Fair enough, we trashed him a little. But our purpose in doing so — besides being an internet traffic whore, of course […]


In which The Gay Recluse considers the reigning state of stupidity, even in nice countries like Canada. Our friend Jeff Weinstein wrote earlier this week with this piece of news, which would be hilarious if it were in a movie, but instead must be viewed as sadly incredible. According to the article, by Tiffany Crawford […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Maureen Dowd: Black, White & Gray The Short Version: Obama’s “race speech” rawked! In her words: “A little disenchantment with Obama could turn out to be a good thing. Too much idealism can blind a leader to reality as surely as too much […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate obituary for Arthur C. Clarke than the one that just appeared in The Times. (For the AP version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By GERALD JONAS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke, a writer […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate version of Arthur C. Clarke’s obituary than the one that was just released by AP. (For The Times version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Filed at 6:41 p.m. […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. (Note: For Kayla’s response, please click here.) By KAYLA RACHLIN SMALL and THE GAY RECLUSE THE rules forbade me from being within three feet of her. I knew those rules; she knew them. Sharing a drink meant […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Gail Collins/Unwelcome Surprises The Short Version: Who knew? In her words: “Memo to future disgraced politicians: The nation has discussed this at length, and we do not want to see any more stricken spouses at the press conference. ” Score: B (Boring) We […]


In which The Gay Recluse weighs in on a “controversy.” Obviously, when we endorsed Geraldine Ferraro for president, it was with the expectation that she would hover benovolently in the past and not say unthinking things like: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Marueen Dowd/Ways of the Wayward The Short Version: Elliot, Geraldine — yikes — problems! In her words: “It makes you wonder how sharp Eliot Spitzer’s pencil was on the state’s fiscal discipline.” Score: B (Blurry) Dowd starts out making fun of Spitzer in […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: A Signal in the Sky Said: Marry Her Subject: A goofball straight […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides an alternative to this week’s more tedious and stereotypical Modern Love offering in The Times. By Ben Karlin and The Gay Recluse THE problem was Paolo. I met him at an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he was a devastatingly cute waiter and I a frequent […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders New York Magazine’s “Best of New York” Special Double Ish. Recently, through a series of startling but ultimately mundane machinations we’d rather not get into because it involves that most hideous of modern chimeras (i.e., frequent flier miles), we happened to receive in the mail (we know, gross) a […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Gail Collins/Hillary’s Edge The Short Version: Pennsylvania is the new Ohio. In her words: “Then comes the kind of convention political reporters have dreamed about since we were little nerds in the third grade writing essays on the electoral college.” Score: A-(Amusing) We […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Maureen Dowd/Duel of Historical Guilts The Short Version: Let’s not get so caught up in identity politics. In his words: “As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history.” Score: A- (Astute) Dowd writes with conviction and […]


In which The Gay Recluse reviews a film that needs to come out of the closet. The “director’s cut” of The Big Blue clocks in at 168 minutes, but don’t be too deterred: you can easily fast-forward through the dull parts and watch it in something closer to 90 minutes or so without losing anything […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: Me, My Daughter and Them Subject: A lawyer who sounds seriously bitchy […]


In which The Gay Recluse takes a field trip to Harlem and makes the case that the city should rezone the shit out of 125th Street. Lately there has been a lot of press — from Curbed, The Times and others — about the city’s proposal to rezone 125th Street in Harlem. Much of this […]