I'm a total spermologer.

But one day I hope to be a bookwrite.

18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style

Lorem ipsum

Ever since latin class in the 9th grade, I have been searching for the origins and meaning of the typographical placeholder text known as lorem ipsum. It appears I was not alone in the quest, as every source I went to cited their own exhaustive and fruitless searches.

Thanks to www.lipsum.com, I now have the definitive etymology.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

For the translation, which is truthfully pretty interesting, click through to the site.

If you like bacon, see also.

and one in the oven

Carolyn had to post a note for her family on the oven when it broke.


I felt the need to editorialize.

book 'em

Well, the Captain at the SFPD Park Station isn't so much "booking" them as "newslettering" us.  If you haven't read any of the Park Station Newsletters, you rally should. They are both informative of the nature of crime in the neighborhood, and ridiculously delightful to read.

For example, on the blotter for this week:

10:20 AM Danvers & Corbett Hooch Hoister
Officer Machado cited a brazen boozehound for possession of an open container of hooch.

10:55 AM Haight & Shrader Fugitive from Justice Apprehended
Sgt. Meyer observed a remorseless rogue gulping down quantities of John Barleycorn. Further investigation revealed the rummy to be a fugitive from justice with nineteen active warrants out for his arrest.

Captain Corrales may be overly fond of alliteration, but so am I. These newsletters are a bright spot in a crime world, and I'm impressed he can find a spirit of whimsy considering the crap they put up with in the Park.

The newletter was featured recently on the SFist following the stonerclusterfuckfest that was April 20 in the Haight (on which I commented earlier and again), and for the generally amusing and creative spin the Captain puts on an otherwise boring "stuff the cops did this week" newsletter.

From this publicity, I imagine, there came some backlash from the homeless advocates who took issue with the playful, colorful, and perhaps cavalier manner in which the homeless lawbreakers were described (scofflaws! Nincompoops!). Frankly, these knicker-twisters need to put a sock in it and fight some real battles if they actually care about change.

From today's introduction:

Last week I had a meeting with members of several homeless advocacy organizations who expressed a num- ber of concerns. Despite the fact that generally they felt we should stop citing the homeless and I informed them that we will continue to cite violations of the law, I believe that it was a very productive meeting. Al- though we will have to agree to disagree on many issues, it was important for me to get their input and I am very glad that they are zealous advocates.

Inevitably, this newsletter was a cause for complaint. I explained that I feel my responsibility is to assure that the officers from Park Station who encounter the homeless conduct themselves with professionalism. They are mandated to treat everyone with dignity and compassion. We have four Homeless Outreach Offi- cers at Park Station who make thousands of contacts with the homeless every month. The fact that I have not received any public complaints of verbal or physical abuse, or even rudeness to the homeless by Park Station Officers, in the eleven months that I have been in command demonstrates our success.

I pointed out that the police treatment of the homeless is what is important, not my occasionally politically incorrect description of them in a silly newsletter. I informed them that the terms that I have used in the newsletter were descriptive and accurate, not denigrating. It was however, pointed out to me that hobos ride trains. Point taken.

The Captain and his force are doing good work, and have a lot to deal with procedurally and politically when dealing with the homeless and the casual drug culture of the Haight.

Please note this on the Captain's Remarks on 04/25:

I would like to offer my apology for the unacceptable event which took place at Sharon Meadow Saturday. As the commanding officer of the Park Police District, I bear the sole responsibility for any and all crime issues which take place in my district. I can assure you that I personally found the event as distasteful as anyone.

Despite my zero tolerance philosophy for marijuana crimes, I have the responsibility to prioritize the use of my resources. I vowed that the violence which took place at last year's event, and on Haight Street at the conclusion of last year's event, would not be repeated this year. There was virtually no violence as a result of Saturday's pagan gathering. We did manage to arrest seven criminals for selling drugs to undercover officers and over thirty traffic citations were issued. My staff and I are already working on improving our efforts for next year's event. We will work very hard to improve the situation.

a capital idea

The AP and the MLA style guides used to require that Internet and Web be capitalized as they were considered places names and therefore proper nouns .  So even a now-common phrase such as "available via their Web site" required a capital Web.  That has always bugged me.  I do not know if their style guides have changed now that the cyberspace vernacular has become commonplace, but I am making the decision not to do it any more.

Enjoy this web log.  

So there.

Update:
It has been brought to my attention that the revised Chicago Manual of Style prefers "website" as a single word, lowercase. "Internet" remains capitalized.  

branching out

I just had a conversation at work about grammar rules governing the non-splitting of infinitives (i.e. acceptable cases). The conversation turned to the rule regarding not ending a sentence with a preposition. That's not really the rule, rather every preposition must have an object, and usually if the preposition falls at the end of the sentence, it is superfluous and object-less. "Where are you at?" is wrong because the "at" is redundant and object-less. "Certain things I will not put up with." while poorly constructed, is okay as "things" is the object of "with." I recalled getting into it with a boss who was a grammar moron who insisted I include a terribly constructed sentence in a formal communication. I had to diagram the sentence out for her to make my case.

At which point the older people in the room said, "Ah...diagraming..." And the younger ones said "Huh?"

I recall in seventh and eighth grade thinking I would never use the knowledge of how to diagram a sentence in real life. I wish someone had told me, "someday you will enjoy using it to show someone they are wrong."

And of course, "it will make you speak and write gooder."

font and bleu

I love that some of my friends are type nerds.  One sent me this.

I couldn't resist the edit:

"Franklin Gothic Condensed."

Literary Reading: The Farallon Review

TONIGHT!

There is a launch party for the third issue of the Farallon Review literary journal tonight at 7:00 at the Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission Street (between 21st and 22nd).

Flyer below:

grammar gripe

Seen at a tourist sort of "mall:"



Why is upstairs written as two words and in quotation marks? Why!?

Some days I feel like walking through the world with a red pen.

for someone who likes to take a red pen

to graffiti, I think this is hilarious.

"Anarchy Rules!"
"No. By definition, it doesn't."

Via The Daily What and World of Wonder.

why yes, actually. I would like to join a vigilante punctuation posse

Via Passive Aggressive Notes, two great signs that look great together. Now while I am one of the many grammarians who react violently to the rogue apostrophe, it's the typographic sign that resonates even deeper. I suppose I really am a designer more than I am an editor.



Can we now talk about the gratuitous use of exclamation points? Nothing makes a "thank you" feel more sincere than it being shouted.

stuff we all get

I've started seeing this online more and more and it is irking Mister Language Person (well, just me, as proxy for Mister Language Person). Please take note: "Schwag" is not a word. It's not like it's from Yiddish or anything. The word for stuff is SWAG. Actually, it's the word for free stuff. It's an acronym for Stuff We All Get.

If you are handing out gift bags or freebies, it's swag, not schwag. Stuff for sale is not really swag either, it's stuff for sale.

SWAG: Stuff We All Get.

Remember that.

Whale of a tale

Shilpa brought in a paper copy of the SF Weekly to work this week and gasped aloud at the self-important “Bouncer” column. As experienced San Franciscan bar-goers, we know our local booze and local bars, and were both so completely offended and enraged by the ignorance in this piece that we were apoplectic.

I don’t know who “Katy St. Clair” is, but she writes like a smug college intern who is new to the City and the mature bar crawl. The immaturity of her stream of consciousness column makes her come off as an early 20-something Marina Chick. If she’s over 30, she needs to just give it up and sit at home and drink with a dozen cats. I can’t imagine her being good company in any bar.

While her writing skills are just plain poor, her opinions are a painful combination of ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity. Ignorance can be remedied by education, but as Ron White is so fond of saying: you can’t fix stupid.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but there is just too much to say in response to this monstrosity.

Read the original at the SF Weekly site, then come back here for the rant. If you are similarly inclined, I encourage you to add your comments to the Weekly's page.

After the Whale
Bouncer hunts for good tunes at Moby Dick
By Katy St. Clair
Wednesday, Jun 23 2010

I know scientists are working diligently to isolate the so-called "gay gene," but while they are at it, I hope that they can also pinpoint the part of a gay man's brain that likes shitty dance music.

Holy shit. Are you serious? Gay men have always defined dance music. Gay men are the dance DJs in the City. And LA. And NYC. Go to dancemusic.about.com and it’s DJ Ron, gay Master of the Tables in Nashville and weekend DJ at Splash (SBNY) in New York. If you’re into stereotyping, straight white girls are and always have been the antithesis of arbiters of “good dance music.”

And whoever claimed that Moby’s was playing dance music? They play DVDs from Europe of popular synth/electronic/pop. Was it the no dancing or the no dance floor that made you think this was supposed be the gays’ taste in dance music?

It's hard to say which came first, like the chicken or the egg: Do gay men in San Francisco like to drink along with Britney B-sides, or do all the bars in the Castro have some sinister plot to program their video jukeboxes to the aural equivalent of Star Magazine?

Um, Britney is rarely played in the Castro actually. And it was against our collective will that we ultimately liked the Circus album, but it did produce some really good dance tracks. And none of the bars in the Castro have video jukeboxes. There are only two bars with digital jukeboxes, The Mix and Twin Peaks, both of which have impressively diverse and downright awesome esoteric selections.

Old-school gay men also like shitty music,

Most old-school gay men are dead. We honor the survivors and they can like and play whatever they damn well please. They, and we, have lived through Hell. Do you really think that you have any authority as a prissy little straight girl to judge their musical tastes? Call me after everyone you know has died slowly, painfully, alone, and stripped of all dignity and I’ll be sure to tell you to turn off the torch songs.

like Barbra Streisand,

Hey, I am not a big fan of Babs either, but face it: she’s got a set of pipes. She has won two Academy Awards, nine Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute Award, and a Peabody Award—hardly the record of an artist who produces “shitty music.” Nine Grammys. Nine.

Erasure,

Oh shut the fuck up. Sure, Erasure is the go-to cliché for popular gay music, as is Pet Shop Boys, but they still rock and still manage to fill the back room of the Cat Club on a Thursday with dancers and club kids who bring it. Erasure has sold over 25 million albums. Again, not so shitty.

show tunes,

Showtunes have their time and place. If you don’t get it, then get out. Not that there are any bars in SF that play showtunes, other than open mic bars where the patrons--usually straight girls--come to sing them.

And what’s the freaking number-one show in America? That’s right: Glee. While personally I believe that showtunes should be relegated to theme parties/nights, they are the original “dance music” and are due their respect. Hardly “shitty” and hardly the preference of just the gays.

and Liza Minnelli.

Oh no. Honestly? This is the gay-icon cliché you reach for? You’ve already invoked Streisand. Too young for a Judy reference? Oh please. When was the last time anyone played anything by Liza outside of a drag show? Aside from that, Liza is only one of 12 people to ever achieve an EGOT, earning Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys. She’s considered an example of “shitty music?” My GOD you suck.

Of course, I know a few gay men who like different music, so before you fire up that e-mail, let me say that I get it, and I know I am generalizing, big time.

Too late you fucktard. What? Your keyboard doesn’t have a delete key?  If you know you’re full of shit, shut your mouth. Does the SF Weakly not have editors?

But mama always told me that there is truth behind stereotyping.

Don’t get me started on yo’ mama.

So, all together now: S.F. gay men's music taste sucks.

Says the little white straight girl. One of the best lines from Glee this season: “I’m gay; Mercedes is black. We make culture.” And what are you basing this on? One trip to a gay bar? I follow the local urban Americana scene. My friends are into country, pop, rock and indie. I had a date last week with the front man of a local hard-core punk band. Any track from their collective catalogs could kick your I-think-I’m-cool-because-I’ve-shopped-at-Amoeba’s ass.

I cemented this theory last week when I went to Moby Dick for the first time.

Holy crap. You reached a definitive conclusion based on an uninformed single data point? How the hell do you have your own column?

It's a quaint little tavern on 18th Street.

That’s your takeaway?

From the outside it has an air of distinction, with gilded lettering and stately blue paint.

It’s blue with some faux marbling. Hardly Wayne Manor.

Of course, it is named after one of the greatest works of American fiction — one man's quest for a large, white beast that haunts him. He lives only in the hope that he may some day overtake it and penetrate it with his giant harpoon. What this has to do with gayness is beyond me.

Perhaps it would be clearer if the bar were named “Dixie Normous” or “Homosexuals Like Puns About Really Big Penises.” Really? A Moby Dick joke? If you are going to use the aquatic reference, at least mention the enormous salt water fish tank above the bar.

Is this column a bar review or a tirade on dance music. Where the hell are you supposed to be going with this? You’ve trashed all gay men’s taste in music. Are you now going to bag on a neighborhood gay pub?

I walked in expecting to see older gay men tapping their toes to some jazzy background music,

Why? Were you walking in during 1927?

but was disappointed to see that I could just as easily have been walking into Badlands.

For FUCK’S sake those bars are NOTHING alike. Moby’s is a neighborhood pub with 40-year-olds up front and a pool table in back. Badlands is a disco video dance bar full of twinks. And the music could not be more different. I have never seen a video or heard a song at Moby’s that would be played at Sadlands.

There was the video screen playing some stupid dance song, with women soaping up cars at a carwash while a man stared at their tits from behind the windshield. To be sure, there were older men there, which made me all the more puzzled at the music.

Because older gay men influence modern pop music so much so that production companies have stopped showing women in skimpy clothes in music videos. Or that the old gays have any control over the DVD player behind the bar.

Moby Dick consists of one main room with a bar with stools, and ledges along the walls for more seating. This is how every other bar in the Castro is designed. There is a pool table in the back. There was also a very large fish tank over the bar; the little guys swimming in it looked quite content.

What I didn't expect to see, but did, was a middle-aged blond woman with her breasts hoisted up in a low-cut, form-fitting top who was buying drinks for just about everyone. "What'll you have?" she slurred. I am always put off by people who offer to buy me drinks, because I feel I will owe them something, like conversation, and I don't always want to do that.

Poor baby. Meeting a woman who loves drinking in a bar, and is happy to share the wealth. Your popularity must be such a burden.

I politely demurred.

How “writerly” of you.

She ordered herself a mai tai and asked for extra rum, and I wondered whether the bartender was going to cut her off, but she didn't. The server, Mary, was very nice and took my order quickly. The video changed to a song by Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, and I went and sat on a ledge.

There is something to be said about dance music being played while you are slowly getting drunk. As your buzz increases, the music sounds better and better, the guy you are talking to looks better and better, and the idea of smoking crystal and banging all night moves to the forefront of your brain. How else to describe the Castro in the late '70s, when disco ruled?

WTF? (1) While I am happy to hook up with someone at Moby’s, it is neither a cruisy or meth-centric bar, (2) Is this a continuation of your musical tastes assault? (3) There was no crystal in the ‘70s; and (4) Most urban gay club communities were all about liberation, sexual freedom, disco/dancing and some serious party drugs in the late ‘70s, but it hardly describes the Castro then (which did not have any large discos) or now, much less Moby’s, and much less the entire gay community and or their taste in music.

I seriously think that whatever beats we like are hardwired into our DNA. Dave Chappelle did a skit about how Latinos respond to certain rhythms, black people respond to different beats, and white people hear a guitar solo and suddenly feel the urge to shotgun a beer.

Nice use of someone else’s bit. At least you gave it credit. Is there a point? Is “shitty” gay music homos’ right as it is hard wired next to the man-sex gene? Should I forgive your poor taste as it is hard coded to the stupid-straight-white-girl gene?

The blond lady moved up to the pool table and seemed to be enjoying herself, although she was having difficulty chalking her cue.

Reports are to the contrary. Friends who were there have commented to me that she won that round, and then followed her new friends to the Lookout for drag trivia night. But how nice for a self-professed bar-hopper like you to mock a bar gal for drinking and playing pool in a bar.

I looked around at the art on the walls. That's another characteristic of bars in this area: There is always some penis-centered art. Sometimes it is quite good, but often it is hella stoop.

“Hella stoop.” Seriously? You get paid for this?

Case in point: the drawing of an erect phallus with a bite taken out of the tip, complete with chomp marks, as though it were a chocolate Easter bunny.

Yes, penis-centric art is asinine, but hardly pervasive. It’s part of the repressed-gay-tourist kitsch. Some poor guy is trying to sell his art on the wall of a dark bar with a mirror over the urinal trough. It’s not the Louvre. Dick art is oddly in keeping with the scene. We glance at it, roll our eyes, and continue to drink. BFD.

The men around me were having a great time. It was happy hour, and Moby Dick has a long one with great prices.

Actually, Moby’s has the shortest happy hour in the Castro, and arguably the least favorable discounts (bargains only on well and certain drafts). Only the Lookout is similar. Twin Peaks has no happy hour to speak of at all. Everywhere else: bring on the drunk with two-for-one top shelf cocktails and cheap shots.

Maybe I am just jealous of the gay men in this town — they are obviously enjoying themselves more than I am.

Then leave us be and shut up with the bringing us down.

They don't show up to my Neil Young tribute drinkathon and shit all over it, so why should I disparage their entertainment choices?

I don’t know, but you dedicated an entire column to doing so.

I am certainly guilty of liking The Golden Girls, so at least we have that in common.

And BAM! Another out-of-date cliché! Nevermind editors, does the SF Weakly have any gay people over there?

Here's another thing that makes me jealous of gay men: They make it look so easy. Meeting another man, flirting, and getting it on seems to be a cinch. There has to be a bar in S.F. for single straight people where it is just as easy, but I haven't found it yet.

They are everywhere. It’s just you. Trust me.

Straight men have to deal with straight women, and we are a difficult lot. We tend to put ourselves in two categories: sluts and nonsluts, and a fella has no way of knowing which one we are until it may very well be too late.

Most straight women I know do not in fact classify themselves as sluts and nonsluts. But when it comes to a straight man’s ability to spot a girl that’s good to go, Honey, they can tell. That’s why you’re not getting any. It’s not the slut-versus-tease perception you have to worry about. It's the cool-versus-tool contest you're losing.

I made it through about eight songs, and then I had had enough. This was not my world, and although I love to go to the Midnight Sun to watch Project Runway, I can't abide hanging out with men who like men, just because there is a killer drink special.

Then DON’T. If this is how you are, we don’t want you at the Midnight Sun, or anywhere else around us. Your coming to the Midnight Sun to watch Bravo’s Gay Programming for Straight White America is not doing us any favors. We are not here to amuse you, and we don’t need your validation. You’re not only crashing the party, you are being a shitty guest.

Call me old-fashioned. Or, better yet, call me Ishmael. What the heck.

I’m calling you a cab.


Go be smugly superior with the other hipsters annoying locals in the Mission.

dizzy spell check

I often rely on that red underline to highlight my typos. But never let that take the place of good editing and a final proofread.

I almost recommended that honorees be presented with flowers and a plague.





(and never mind the frequent typos on the blog. I throw these posts out on the fly :)

bad grammar makes me [sic]

It be National Grammar Day!

What are your grammar pet peeves? The older of my brothers (the eldest child) hates the use of "verbal" for "oral" when it comes to legal matters. As in "We had a verbal agreement." To which Jay would like to say, "I'm sure you did, but was it oral or written?" Unless you mimed the contract, it was verbal.

Of course, I have several grammar pet peeves, beyond the typical erroneous expressions such as "irregardless" and "I could care less."

My top two:
(1) Confusion of fewer and less. The former is quantifiable, the latter is not. You may have less time and therefore fewer meetings. Less is also appropriate for sand, water, and other items you can't count.

Steven has two quarts of water. Bill has six quarts of water. Steven has less water than Bill. Steven also has fewer quarts of water than Bill.

Sally needs less sand to build fewer sandcastles.

(2) The erroneously held prohibition against ending sentences with a preposition. Ending a sentence with a preposition is not and has never been grammatically incorrect. In some cases, it is grammatically necessary. It is not that, grammatically, sentences cannot end with a preposition. It is that prepositions may not be used without an object. Typically, objectless prepositions are tacked on to the end of sentences, and the easiest way to avoid the error is to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. However, ending a sentence with a preposition in and of itself is not grammatically incorrect.

And don't get me started on the whole splitting infinitives thing.

My biggest peeve:

Wrong verb choice in If I was/If that was and like expressions.

Expressions of condition and condition in the past require the subjunctive. That calls for were. I cringe and yell at the screen when popular television mangles this, which is nearly all the time.

word up

I love new words. I have a pretty varied vocabulary, and other than jargon I rarely get to stumble upon new words. Or rather, old words that are unfamiliar.

This came across in a professional letter recently: farrago.

I'm loving this word, but have yet to have opportunity to use it in context.

From the New Oxford American Dictionary:

farrago |fəˈrägō; -ˈrā-|
noun ( pl. -goes)
a confused mixture : a farrago of fact and myth about Abraham Lincoln. See note at JUMBLE .

DERIVATIVES
farraginous |fəˈrajənəs| |fəˈrødʒənəs| |fəˈrɑːdʒɪnəs| |-ˈreɪdʒ-| adjective

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin, literally ‘mixed fodder,’ from far ‘corn.’

Okay, now how much am I loving farraginous?

Ode to the Copy Editor

And internal letter at the Washington Post, extolling the importance of copy editors.

No surprise: it's well written.

And worth reading.

grammargasm

and patriotic too.

Diagram of the Preamble.

focusN on me!

The very loveable Cousin Barry sent me a copy of this month's Nfocus magaine from Nashville. It's been a long, busy morning and the UPS guy just delivered it to my desk and it has made my day.

I know I still have not gotten around to writing down all the tales from the Nashville trip, but one of the highlights was meeting the sweet Sinclair Kelly, who also happens to be an Associate Editor and Photographer for the magazine.

Sinclair covered the Hunt Ball for the magazine, and as she spent a lot of time with the Hardastle family that night (because we are the super-happy-fun-time people), we were featured in the coverage.

You may recall the whote "dyed my hair blond thinking it would grow out during surgery recovery and no one would see it but then teh surgery was canceled " bit. I had a haircut before going home, but that just left me with blond tips, which in no way pleased my mother.

The week before the "Oh God! Oh God! Dear God stop the burning!" heat wave in Nashville, it was like seven degrees. On Easter. It was crazy, and all the flora got severly frost-burned. And all the new recently tender-green growth was frozen to a light brown.

When I got off the plane and my mother grimaced, paused, sighed heavily, touched my hair and said, "Well... you look like the boxwoods."

I, of course, thought she was crazy. And you know, my mother being crazy wasn't exactly a news flash. Until I got home and saw this:



That night at Tribe I got some comments on the hair and I mentioned what my mother had said. Jon Glassmeyer did a spit take he laughed so hard. Gotta hand it to Fran-- she gave me the best line of the week. Even though I had originally had no idea what she was talking about, every one in Nashville knew exactly what she meant.

I told the story at the Hunt Ball and it became a pull quote in the feature. I have gotten more e-mails on this than you would believe.

The photos from the Hunt Ball are great (but not on the Nfocus Web site). And it's so nice to be featured/remembered in the social pages even though I am so far removed.

Gotta keep that face fresh in the scene you know.



So--

Love to Sinclair for being such fun and throwing my story out there; and
Love to Barry for sending me a copy!

Larry Kramer and the LA Times

Larry Kramer wrote an open letter to be published by the LA Times.

Scan the Wikipedia entry and get your context from Towleroad:

As a follow-up to his speech at New York's Gay & Lesbian Center and last week's Times Square ACT-UP Army protest, Larry Kramer writes an open letter to heterosexuals in today's L.A. Times, asking them why many stand silently as the hate parade goes by.

The letter was originally entitled "A Letter to America's Heterosexuals" which was changed by the LA Times to read "Why do straights hate gays?"

Adding insult to injury, and providing a case in point to Mr. Kramer's letter, the LA Times added an undermining subheading: "An aging 72-year-old gay man isn't hopeful about the future."

Larry Kramer is a significant gay political figure, founded ACT UP, forced the nation and its politicians to focus on AIDS, and is a notable author as well. Discounting him as "an aging 72-year-old-man" is insulting. (And one commentor on Towleroad noted that referring to him as "aging" is also asinine as everyone who is living is aging.)



My letter to the LA Times--

To Whom It May Concern:

Regarding Larry Kramer's "A Letter to America's Heterosexuals" (March 20, 2007), I do not understand why you felt the need to change the title to "Why do straights hate gays?" which does not accurately convey the message of the letter.

Furthermore, it is grossly offensive and reprehensible that you would take a significant and historic leader in the gay rights movement, and the man largely responsible for bringing attention to the AIDS crisis when it began, and trivialize him in your sub-title into "An aging 72-year-old gay man [who] isn't hopeful about the future."

If Rosa Parks sent an open letter about race relations, would you discount her opinion with the headline "A 93-year-old aging black woman is worried about white folk."?

I am usually a major supporter of the un-sung and underappreciated Copy Editor, but if this was a copy editing mistake, your editors need a history lesson, or at least need to be sent back to run fact-checking. If this was not merely a sloppy copy mistake, then this speaks to a much more sinister problem at the Times.

Why do you hate gays?

Sincerely,

Wilson Hardcastle