aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, February 01, 2008

Barack’s gay Hollywood money machine

I’m still hearing that Hillary’s in Hollywood’s pocket, even as Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg long ago abandoned her, the Huffington Post continues its rah-rah gaga Beatlemania oozing over Obama and from the entertainment page of the LATimes we learn that Hollywood is ready to give Barack the part:

Memo to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: We think you’re aces. Really. And we love your husband. But we’re running off with Sen. Barack Obama. Hope you understand. It’s all about being part of history. We’ll do lunch after the inauguration.

Now this week in an LA Weekly story on Obama’s gay gold mine-"Their names are Bernard and Gifford"-we find that at a Human Rights Campaign mixer that invited celebrities to pitch their favorite candidates, no star showed up to back Hillary Clinton.

Jeremy Bernard and Rufus Gifford pooh-pooh that event as “an insulting and embarrassing reminder of the old guard, or Old Gay, approach to politics”

This is more their style:

Jeremy Bernard [left in photo]...was sitting shoulder to shoulder with U.S. Senator Barack Obama in the back of a black SUV, speeding through West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard, talking about the fine points of gay and lesbian federal legislation. An hour later, the Democratic presidential candidate was hitting every detail they had discussed in the car, but this time on network television. For Bernard, it was mind-blowing. The key fund-raiser for the Obama campaign was seeing his issues dramatically migrate from a personal chat to the national stage.

Bernard, too, was once a Clinton backer. This time around he and his lover and business partner, Gifford, are hired guns for the Obama campaign. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign offered them a job too, and for more money.) They promise to make the most of it:

Once the checks are rolling in, Bernard and Gifford then have the full attention of a congressional or presidential candidate, giving them the chance, behind the scenes, to promote their own political issues. It’s a level of access gays once only dreamed of, but they are living it.

“Being gay makes you inherently political,” says Gifford, comfortable with using his proximity to power to influence the candidate. “You see what’s right and what’s wrong, and you need to do something about it.”

Bernard and Gifford have very little, if anything, in common with the Old Gay approach typified by the Human Rights Campaign’s need for straight actresses to peddle an agenda. They are the new guard, or New Gays, who are more politically savvy. The New Gays cultivate, work with and fund gay political candidates. They withhold their talents and money from straight politicians who don’t follow through on their promises, while supporting those with what they view as a progay track record.

And they never seek the straight world’s approval for their own gay existence. The New Gays understand their power in today’s political system, and they use it. And in this winter’s slog of primaries, they just might use it to propel a candidate toward the White House.

You know, I have lots of complaints about money in politics. But money is power and we got it, so I guess let’s flaunt it. Of course with that I’m just not seeing a whole world of difference between the way Hillary and Barack are playing the game.