Last week I spent a lot of time working on a piece about the shift in attitude towards Tyler Perry and what that represents about the Left's change in attitude toward the black community. It won't be published.
I'm not interested in journalism and I wouldn't be satisfied making a long-form case for my opinions without doing a lot of work to back them up. There are plenty of people who are doing great work in that respect; I couldn't really add much to the discussion, except that my perspective comes from the world of entertainment rather than politics.
Still, I'll summarize. My impression is that, as Steve Sailer pointed out, gays are becoming our Most Favored Oppressed Minority, supplanting the black community. I looked at this through a piece at The AV Club detailing the backlash to Tyler Perry's Temptation. That film ends with the revelation that the female lead contracted HIV in the process of having an affair. Though the article doesn't explicitly mention homosexuality, rejection of the idea that AIDS is a punishment for moral transgression is the seed for the contemporary gay rights movement and is sacrosanct in that community.
I feel that Tyler Perry is generally supporting traditional morality in his films, sexual fidelity, centering on the family and all-around moral uprightness. The introduction of HIV to his latest film was an opportunity for progressive libertines to start attacking his message after thirteen successful films in seven years.
Up until then, as the article points out, Perry was only given left-handed praise, lauding his success as a black filmmaker while always emphasizing that his movies were poorly made. In our contemporary media, we can only attack from the left, so his race and prominence protected him from the full force of the Cathedral's semantic division. That is, unless a more favored group could be found in conflict.
Criticizing the black community for not supporting the gay community is a new development. I wanted to explore how black leadership has created problems for the ruling Left and created an opportunity for gay rights to become the Most Important Issue of Our Time.
In the piece, I discussed that the Great Racial Incidents of the last ten years have been humiliating failures. The Jena Six, the Duke lacrosse team rape accusation and, finally, the George Zimmerman case have all been proven to be smoke and mirrors. In addition, the outrage from the Left and the black community has become more rote and perfunctory with each progressive incident. The holes in these stories are easy targets for the opposition and have resulted in the Left being the subject of mockery, which they absolutely hate.
Gays, in the media-approved stereotype, are pleasant, fun, hard-working, put-together and support a message of sexual liberation. Not to mention that this stereotype is white, with the same cultural touchstones and education, less likely to go on television and accuse the police of systematic murder of young thugs or calling folks "devils."
My point was that the backlash of Temptation was a siren call that it was time to call black leadership on the carpet for taking too much and not giving enough back. (I stress "black leadership" because the evidence online shows that the black community is growing more diverse in thought each day. The self-appointed leadership is as monolithic as ever.) After fifty years of granting black demands--and getting a black president--it's time for blacks to start carrying the Left's water and get with the whole program, not just their interests.
As I was writing, I realized that I was defending Perry without, you know, having watched his films. I've been following his career and caught a few scenes here and there, but I hadn't sat through a single one. I was interested in his right to send a traditionalist message but hadn't listened to what his message actually was.
So, as a matter of due diligence, I watched a few. I loved them. More in Part Two...
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