The Absolute Worst of New York: The Village Voice

The Absolute Worst of New York: The Village Voice

The Village Voice The Voice was launched by Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, and Norman Mailer on October 26th 1955 in a 2 bedroom apartment in Grenwich Village. Early on The Voice was extremely derogatory to the gay community calling the stonewall Riots the Great Faggot Rebellion. Two early Voice reporters Smith and Truscott regularly used the words fag and dyke before they were commonly used in the gay community. The Gay Liberation Front was not allowed to mention the word gay or homosexual in the advertisements for gay dances because the words were considered derogatory. The newspaper changed their policy after the GLF petitioned the Voice

The Village Voice was once a paper that expressed progressive and enlightened spiritual and social revolution of the 1960's. It evolved a bit in the 1970s and then went down the tubes in the 1980s.

Now The Voice is a corporate rag. Dan Savage's articles are brilliant, health minded and informative. There are some occasional good reviews and political exposes, but the rest of the paper has devolved into a piece of crap! And Michael Musto! He's The Voice's screaming but unfunny gossip monger. He replaced Arthur Bell to exorcise The Voice of it's early, brutal mistreatment of GBLT people.

In their recent "Best of New York" they praised "Morning Joe: Joe Scarborough: the conservative douche bag with a former dead intern, his icy side kick Mika Brzezinski's boots and another fellow "Morning Joe" douche hole. Is this the best that The Voice can vomit up?

Secondly Michael Musto, the all time freakifier is what? Some "Expert" on Nightlife in New York just because he was alive in the 1970's? Please!!!! Musto is musty and an anachronism.

To his credit, in his archives, he raised political awareness of 80s Aids and homophobia in music such as with Buju Banton and other nightmares. Michael Musto is more lucky than actually talented. Musto's luckiest break was in 1984 when Arther Bell of "Bell Tells" The former gossip columnist for The Voice died of Aids and Musty replaced him. Musty was known in the club and performance scene. Supposedly, rumor has it, Musty wanted to make it as a singer and was known to be quite good, according to my resources. However those that do, do and those that cannot do write! So ya'll I'm writing:)

There's so many other wittier, wiser and infinitely more talented gay writers who really know what's happening in the New York and beyond. Musto is tired! He is the poor and uneducated man's Truman Capote minus any real gift for writing. He is a pop-trash-dribbler and really Perez Hilton can do this much better. Musty's "humor" is like some grade D Joan Rivers impersonator. He extended his early 80's 15 minutes by gloming onto the 90's club kids and appearing like a bad rash on Joan Rivers and other shows popping up again and again like New York's new bed bug infestation. His snark comes from the now frowned upon, nasty queen, mentalities straight out of " The Boys in the Band"

In his "Best of Clubs in NYC 2009" is full of names of Musty's posse: the same recycled celebu-nobodies and dated personalities all of which are now in their late 40s, 50s and beyond. These club "personalities" are actually a bunch of obnoxious and pretentious fools, fops and freaks. They are by no means cutting edge and have all been around since the year of the flood. They are all a reaffirmation that an endorsement of Michael Musto guarantees that in 20 years you will be in the exact place: No where else but back in his column and in some shit hole club acting 20-30 years younger than your actual age!

He occasionally he pulls up some new face but is an anti gay person's safe choice and reason to keep dehumanizing GBLT people. Musty always blathers on about some actual TV-Movie-Music celebrity to give his column supposed gossip legitimacy, then he names another one of his ancient, loser club personalities. He is banal plain and simple.

Most younger GBLTs are trying to find credibility and political strength by abandoning antiquated stereotypes. We do not believe in eating our own through back biting. Camp at our own expense is Dead! We lead by example, have normal lives and want our equal rights. Once upon a time "Better Blatant than Latent" worked, but in our evolution we now lead by example and maybe for some people sane is boring. But, if we want credibility we must get beyond being caricatured as circus freaks, sexually compulsive hedonists and pathetic creatures with no ability to be community leaders, responsible parents or committed married people.

We realize that acting the fool, the sleaze or the freak does nothing to further marriage equality and parental rights. We have gratefully evolved beyond acting freaky because we had no other options. Once upon a time GBLT people were victims of greater oppressions but the time has come to grow up. While some of us are more colorful and nonconformist than others, Most of us assimilate. Many straight men have gay male buddies and straight women have gay women friends and so on. People do not see us as frightening or all that different, but as human beings deserving our rights to be happy and have exactly what everyone else has.

There are some GBLT people who need to be terminally unique, "too special" to fit in. But many younger GBLT people assimilate. We do not have to lives lives in bars, smothering our unhappy oppression in drugs, sex and booze. We have been afforded this right by people who were as daring as they had to be. Now we deserve more and we no longer have to only exist under a ghetto mindset. Nowadays we are as indistinguishable as any other person in our community.

In years passed, gay men like Michael Musto had no other recourse than to become parodies of themselves as lonely men, tortured by age and lack of love. Such men were resigned to bitter humor known as camp. Those days are over, GBLT people will not settle for miserable lives whose emptiness can only be filled with style and superficial frivolities. Young GBLT people want substance, not placation!

The transgender people Musty writes about are always the plastic surgery disasters and Ho's which further galvanizes the myth that all transsexuals are nothing more than freaky hos deserving to be nothing more than punchlines. Old school fags and dykes like Musty see trannys as delusional gay men who just can't accept being men. They do not acknowledge tg people's actual gender identity. Not all the men and women who love trannys are gay or delusional, it's way more complex than that.

Musty dismisses the fact that gender identity and sexual preference are two different issues. So Musty keeps the ignorant readers ignorant. He keeps trannys in their designated place: the shittiest rung of the queer hierarchy. and we all know how prostitution serves biological women. It serves them with abuse, STDs and slow suicide. So trannys wake up, Musty is Not your Friend!

Mustie does serve a purpose: He keeps the GBLT communities seem scary and not fit to be members of actual communities.The Voice has made and continues to make a fortune off of tons of weekly transsexual prostitution ads. Perhaps freakifying trannys has paid Musty's salary and the salaries of many Voice writers, the proof is in their back pages. Also Mustie reinforces stereotypes about gay men and lesbians, the freakier and more lurid the better. One can be profound without writing at the expense of the entire GBLT population. We have political leaders and this column keeps the confused folk filled with unsavory misconceptions of who we all are.

The dizzy, vapid and fagonoxious Michael Musto typifies the bitter, old gay man who passes off bitchiness as humor. He certainly was never a gorgeous gay man so the next best thing is to be as acidic as possible since any attention is better than no attention at all. Gossip has been called a polite form of assassination.

I love my boy Keith Olbermann but I'm over seeing Musty's rubber, homely, schmuck face being all lame assed on Countdown. Musty's just not funny, he's pathetic. The poor cow has had his day it's time for The Voice to dig a ditch and bury the bitch! The actual Best of The Voice is that it makes a wonderful lining of my cat litter pan!

Peace Ya'll Ms Rae