Shortly after Sen. Robert Torricelli withdrew from the New Jersey Senate campaign, I caught Aaron Brown on CNN interviewing Craig Crawford, from the political Web site The Hotline. They were talking about the possibility of the Supreme Court getting involved in the Jersey race; Republicans were about to bring their case to the high court in an attempt to stop Democrats from putting Frank Lautenberg on the ballot. Just before the interview wound down, Crawford cracked that "this is Florida 2000 meets The Sopranos." Brown seemed to squirm for a split second. Then he nervously smiled, thanked Crawford for coming on and muttered, "I knew you had a punchline. I didn't know where it was coming from."
Some of us who were watching certainly had an idea of where it was coming from. It's possible that Crawford thought the line was funny solely because the soap opera-style Senate race is taking place in New Jersey and The Sopranos is a soap opera of sorts set in that state. But something tells me he wouldn't have used the same analogy if Torricelli's name were, say, Smith or Johnson. Torricelli is sleazy, but his allegedly taking cash and gifts from a campaign contributor is on a par with what a slew of other past and present politicians of every stripe have been caught doing.
I thought about that crack in the past two weeks as stereotypes reared their heads in a couple of political brouhahas. In Montana, Republican candidate Mike Taylor pulled out of the U.S. Senate race, charging he was gay-baited by his Democratic opponent, the incumbent Max Baucus, in a TV ad ( more on that later ) ; bizarrely, he jumped back in the race, vowing to fight on. And in New York, a wacky series of events led Mayor Bloomberg to refuse to march in the Columbus Day parade because organizers didn't want him to bring his new pals, Sopranos stars Lorraine Bracco and Dominic Chianese.
I love The Sopranos. The show is as much about Italian culture and suburban culture as it is about mob culture, though the mob aspect can't be divorced from it. It's similar in that way to Queer as Folk, which is as much about being gay as it is about participating in a 24/7 sexual Olympics, even though the show doesn't represent most gay people. The one big difference, however, is that The Sopranos is a great show.
My mother and father and many other Italian-Americans who live on Staten Island love The Sopranos too. They thought the parade organizers were complete boobs. And yet, my parents and many of their friends give money to the very Italian-American organizations that condemn the show and that supported the parade organizers. Their logic is this: As much as The Sopranos is only a TV show, people like the Hotline guy will make analogies and tasteless jokes that tar folks, so it's good that a group is there to set things straight, even if that group sometimes goes too far. It's the same reason, I suppose, that many gay people support the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation even as they wince when it borders on calling for censorship.
Which brings me to that ad in the Montana Senate race. Taylor, a married man with two children, was already trailing in the polls when the Baucus campaign began running an ad. It focused on Taylor's formerly having run a hair care school, and his having abused a student loan program. The footage was taken from a segment Taylor did in the early '80s on a Denver station. He's wearing a tight suit, open shirt and gold chains, and he's putting lotion on a man's face. All of this is set to a tacky '70s disco tune.
The fallout of the ad and of Taylor's pulling out of the race exposed some pretty bald hypocrisy all around. There was of course the embarrassment of a Democratic Party that has often attacked Republicans for gay-baiting now having to defend itself against such charges; the state Democratic Party and Baucus campaign have refused to apologize. There was Taylor's own excessive indignation, which betrayed as much--if not more--homophobia as he charged of his opponent.
There were also the conservative, usually antigay, pundits who suddenly found reason to rail against homophobia. Peter Cassels in New England's Bay Windows notes that Boston right-wing talk show host Jay Severin "gave listeners the phone number of Baucus's Washington office and urged them to phone and ask if the senator is homophobic." But, Cassels reports, "Earlier in the same broadcast [ Severin ] called Connecticut Republican Congressman and gay ally Chris Shays a 'fairy.'"
And there were the gay conservative pundits who went on the usual scorched-earth campaign attacking gay Democrats and liberals for allegedly not speaking out against the Democratic Party about the ad. Andrew Sullivan, as usual, was most prominent among them. But just a few weeks ago, when Jeb Bush made homophobic comments in a meeting with legislators in Florida, Sullivan and his gang treated it tepidly and didn't demand that the Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Party, let alone Bush himself, denounce the remarks.
Actually, both the National Stonewall Democrats and the Human Rights Campaign condemned the ad. And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a strong statement. Some pundits whose opinions I respect and often agree with defended the ad, some saying that it didn't cross the line. Their argument is that Taylor did wear those clothes and was truly in the footage himself, and that he was in fact involved in the student loan scam.
But that's too easy. When it comes to images, it's all about context. In the 1970s into the early '80s, when "unisex" was the buzzword, straight men were wearing heels and were undergoing all kinds of beauty treatments. Seeing a man rubbing another man's face had a slightly different connotation than it does in a time in which gays are way out of the closet and are battling Christian conservatives for control of school boards in places like Montana.
Thinking back to Torricelli, it would perhaps be similar to showing footage of him getting out of black shiny cars or huddling with gangster-looking types, all while the soundtrack of Goodfellas played--in an ad claiming to be about his ethics violations. It's way too soon, particularly in a media age in which images are paramount, for any of us to think we've gotten past stereotypes or their power.
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