January 31, 2011
Sir Elton John
As I entered puberty, Elton John was unquestionably the world’s hugest pop star”as big as Elvis in the 50s, The Beatles in the 60s, and Michael Jackson in the 80s. In the early to mid-70s, Elton’s popularity rocketed deep into outer space while no one else so much as dented the clouds. Even The Beatles never had an album that entered the charts at #1, much less two albums in a row. The moment that Captain Fantastic was released, my ostensibly homophobic douchebag Italo-Catholic working-class next-door neighbors snapped it up and had it spinning on their turntable.
With his giant spangled boots and rhinestone glasses and peacock feathers and undeniably fey mannerisms, we all assumed that Elton John was, in the local argot, a “gaybird.” It mattered not that he sang about “holdin” hands and skimmin” stones” with a girl named Suzie or how he begged Kiki Dee not to go breakin” his heart”it was a foregone conclusion that he was a born fairy.
And none of us cared that he was fruitier than Carmen Miranda’s headpiece. That wasn”t the issue. We liked his music. His flamboyance (code for “gayness”) probably made him all the more exotically entertaining to us.
Although way back in the 1950s the USA was supposedly buried up to its asshole in homophobia, that didn”t prevent Liberace from becoming the world’s highest-paid entertainer all the way through to the 1970s. And if you couldn”t tell that Liberace was gay, you shouldn”t even be entitled to a driver’s license.
Likewise, Elton John’s unabashed Mummer’s Parade level of, ehh, “theatricality” didn”t stop Americans from embracing him openly in the 1970s…until the fateful 1976 Rolling Stone interview where he for the first time admitted he was, at the very least, bisexual. (It wasn”t until a failed marriage to a German woman many years later that Elton finally conceded he was “comfortable” being all-gay, all the time.)
After Elton outed himself, his popularity in America instantly and palpably weakened. It seemed as if people had no problem knowing he was gay, but they got skeeved the moment it became an issue. It’s the familiar complaint of “Don”t shove your long, hard, throbbing, veiny, juicy agenda down our throats.”
I find the magazine cover of Elton and David posing as if they were Ozzie and Harriet Nelson with their little pink designer-handbag infant to be even more distasteful and disturbing than when Elton was dressing up as Donald Duck. It seemed normal for Elton to be weird; what seems so weird are his half-cocked and possibly senile attempts to be normal.
There was nothing normal about their son’s birth. Elton and David, with the scientific aid of the Center for Surrogate Parenting in Encino, CA, claim they mixed their semen together, which was then injected into Woman #1’s vagina. Once one of their sperm fertilized Woman #1’s egg, it was surgically removed and then planted into Woman #2’s vagina. Neither woman’s identity has been revealed, as they were presumably paid handsomely to keep quiet. And it’s safe to assume that little Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John’s inevitable quest for identity will be anything but normal.
To date, Elton John has not publicly commented on the Arkansas magazine-shielding scandal, but otherwise he can”t keep his mouth shut about how he continues to suffer for being a homosexual. Despite his massive wealth, undoubted legions of paid minions, and widespread reputation as a tantrum-throwing diva, Elton recently wailed that he’s “fed-up” with being treated like a “second-class citizen” in America.
For once in your life, Elton, quit acting like such a fag and show some taste and restraint. I”ve crunched the numbers. Your estimated net worth is more than the yearly income of every resident of Mountain Home, Arkansas combined. Let’s be clear about who the “second-class citizens” are in this equation, OK, luvvie? Let’s be honest about whose back the major media is protecting, m”kay? I don”t see any of these Ozark hillbillies barging into the Castro District and demanding that everyone wave Rebel flags. So let them have their own culture. Obviously, Arkansas ain”t the kind of place to raise your kid. In fact (in the winter at least), it’s cold as hell. You”ve quit those days and your redneck ways, so better let the honky cats get back to the woods, darling. Isn”t that what diversity and tolerance are all about?
Sir Elton John”if I may call you that”you have most of the rest of the world in which to mince freely as if you were Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. So be a good sport and let them have the Ozarks. Have you ever even been to the Ozarks? Why has your insatiable lust for Lebensraum expanded so greatly that you suddenly need to flap your angel wings in the Ozarks, too? Give the Ozarks back to the Ozarkers and quit trying to pass for normal. Or do I have to shove you back in the closet before you start making good music again?
