Here's little follow-up (from a gay perspective) on the Simon firing incident and his subsequent hiring by right wing publications. From Bay Windows:
"But he's baa-aack - and so, no doubt, is his bigotry. Simon has found a new job at Bloomberg.com, and a monthly column at (where else?) the archconservative Weekly Standard. And while these gigs may be far less visible than his perch at New York, the Weekly Standard appointment, at least, tears away the thin veneer of apolitical objectivity that Simon once pretended to. At the Standard, he'll be the latest hood ornament on the engine of the neocon culture war - a kind of Sean Hannity who can quote Herodotus - and his contempt for all things homo will be a selling point rather than some embarrassing emotional gap.
No doubt he's eager to return to his vicious old form; ironically enough, Simon had become somewhat closeted in recent years, as he was at the start of his career in the mid-sixties, when he clothed his homophobia in an erudite aesthetic disdain. (The multi-lingual Simon is a Harvard grad.) An early target was then-closeted playwright Edward Albee, who blithely replied to one blistering review, "Mr. Simon's disapproval of my plays has been a source of comfort to me over the years, and his dislike . . . gives me courage to go on."
By the late seventies, however, Simon had begun to flirt with an open, if slightly ironic, homophobia and even anti-Semitism, calling the now-forgotten Show Me Where the Good Times Are "a faggoty Jewish musical". Joseph Papp, the Artistic Director of the New York Shakespeare Festival, had been protesting his rants for years, but soon his voice was joined by many others; in 1980 an ad appeared in Variety (with some 300 signatures) calling for Simon's removal, and describing his writing as vicious and racist. Still, the critic carried on, reaching something of a career low in 1985, when he called P.J. Barry's Octette Bridge Club, an AIDS drama produced at the height of the epidemic, "faggot nonsense" in the pages of New York. The bigotry was amplified when gay entertainment columnist Liz Smith revealed in her column she had overhead him on the show's opening night carping, "I can't wait until they all get it and die; then I won't have to see any more of these plays."
The response was swift. A delegation from the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights met with New York editor Ed Kosner, who in a bizarre fit of misplaced loyalty, stood by Simon. But the homophobe was chastened, still on occasion grumbling about "the homosexual play" (on television, to gay New York Times critic Ben Brantley, no less!), but also being careful to fawn on a few gay-themed successes (such as The Laramie Project). He must have been all too aware the tide was rising against him; Tony winners began acknowledging - and even kissing - their partners on stage in the 90s, and the lead critic for the Times was now an openly gay man. A larger question had begun to loom: how was it possible for a homophobe to remain a viable critic, when the leading playwrights of the day were Tony Kushner and Edward Albee (both of whom Simon routinely savaged)? The coup de grace occurred when New York hired the very-out Adam Moss as its editor. Finally, Simon found himself reporting to a faggot. Clearly, the lavender writing was on the wall - and just last week, it was announced Simon would be replaced by Jeremy McCarter, another Harvard boy, and late of the New York Sun.
Still, those who only a few days ago were happily doing the cha-cha on Simon's professional grave are now settling in for yet another long, insulting haul. No doubt the juvenile taunts - aimed largely at actresses who don't appeal to him sexually - will return en masse. Intriguingly, even these zingers have often been aimed at divas beloved by gay men. Liza Minnelli, for example, was "deserving of first prize - in the beagle category," and Barbra Streisand was "the kind of thing that started pogroms."
What a riot. Meanwhile the haughty hetero rarely critiqued the male body quite the same way; would he have said of Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman what he did of Diana Rigg - that she was "built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses"? Perhaps he'd have liked to, but feared physical assault - although even his female targets sometimes struck back. After one vicious review, actress Sylvia Miles famously dumped a plate of food over his head (the entrée in question has been variously reported as spaghetti, goulash, and steak tartare).
But ready-to-wear tartare was hardly enough to slow down la Simon. Perhaps nothing is; even the consensus that his critical acumen is all but lost seems lost on the old dinosaur (recent reviews included doubts on the otherwise acclaimed drama The Pillowman, but a rave for the family musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). Clearly Bloomberg and the Standard aren't buying his insight; they are, instead paying for his prejudice. It's perhaps fitting that a career dedicated to humiliating others should end in humiliation itself."
Simon Article in Bay Windows
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 6/11/05 at 02:37 PM
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