Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Photograph from Jon Ossoff For Congress

In Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, Republican candidate Karen Handel, after softening her anti-LGBTQ positions a tiny bit earlier this spring, has gone full-tilt Anita Bryant in the past few weeks.

Last week, Handel told a reporter that allowing same-sex couples to adopt “is not in the best interest of the child”. When a woman approached Handel and explained that, although she is a Conservative Republican, that as the mother of a gay daughter, she wants her daughter to be able to adopt a kid. Handel responded bluntly:

“I have to be honest, my faith calls me to a different place on that issue.”

She also opposes Marriage Equality and even civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. Handel has boasted that she voted no on domestic partner benefits when she was the chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

Many people expected Handel to moderate her anti-LGBTQ positions to appeal to centrist voters in a district not known for hardline social conservatism. But Handel has clung to her hardline stands, hoping to draw a stark contrast with her Democratic rival Jon Ossoff.

Osoff is a true friend to the LGBTQ community. At the Atlanta Equality March, he stated:

“You will be able to count on me to stand up for you every day. I will never shy away from standing with the LGBT community publicly, forcefully, with everything I’ve got. There can be no compromise on civil rights; there can be no compromise on human rights.”

If you don’t know by now, 30-year-old Ossoff is the documentary filmmaker and former political aide who received 48.1% of the vote in the nonpartisan election on April 18. Handel received 18.1%. Since no candidate received 51% of the vote, the top two vote-getters, Ossoff and Handel, face a runoff election tomorrow, June 20.

As Georgia’s Secretary of State, Handel has a long history of suppressing votes. She’s purged voter rolls, blocked Democratic candidates from running, and supported strict voter-ID laws. She is a real sweetheart. She is friends with Mike Pence, although she cannot be alone with him, of course. POTUS has tweeted support for her.

While in high school, Ossoff interned for the great Civil Rights leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis. He graduated from Georgetown University with bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service. One of his professors was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 2013, Ossoff earned a Master’s degree from London School of Economics where he wrote his thesis on USA-China relations.

Ossoff worked as a national security advisor and aide to Georgia Representative Hank Johnson (one of only three Buddhists serving in Congress). He had top-secret clearance for five months. For the past four years, he has been CEO of Insight TWI, which produces investigations targeting corrupt officials and organized crime for international news organizations. In 2016, Ossoff served as executive producer for a documentary film for the BBC that exposes the atrocities committed by ISIL/ISIS in Iraq.

The election tomorrow is to replace the spot held by Tom Price, currently Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price won his race to serve Georgia’s Sixth in 2016 with 61.6% of the vote. It might seem like an uphill climb, but Ossoff has made the most his status as a symbol of the Resistance and has smartly used social media to make himself a national political star. The question is, are enough suburban Atlanta voters sufficiently dismayed, disgusted, or even freaked out enough by our POTUS to vote for a Democrat? It seems to matter a lot to both sides; the race is the most expensive election of its kind, topping over $50 million in overall spending.

Ossoff is charming, smart and cute. His campaign supporters wear t-shirts with the slogan “Vote your Ossoff!” And, he staunchly supports LGBTQ people:

“I oppose any legislation or policy that allows discrimination against LGBTQ Americans, and I oppose any religious freedom executive order, which undermines the intent of Congress in order to allow more money into our political system. Same-sex couples should have the same rights as every couple in every context. There’s no excuse for discrimination in federal law or state law, and it’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Washington that we’re still having these debates.”

Can Handel handle losing? I hope so. Let’s wish Ossoff the best. His win would send an important message. He is our Monday Mancrush.

The post #ManCrushMonday: Georgia Democrat, Jon Ossoff appeared first on The WOW Report.

Photograph by Alison Shaw

June 20, 1905– Lillian Hellman

“Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.”

Lillian Hellman has been gone for 33 years and she still is making headlines. When the super-talented, elegant gay actor Cynthia Nixon won a Tony Award for the current Broadway revival of Hellman’s The Little Foxes on Sunday, June 20^th, she said in her acceptance speech:

“It is a privilege to appear in Lillian Hellman’s eerily prescient play, at this specific moment in history. 80 years ago, she wrote, ‘There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it, and other people who just stand around and watch them do it.’ My love, my gratitude and my undying respect go out to all the people in 2017 who are refusing to just stand and watch them do it. Thank you.”

I am a fan of the writing and the life of Hellman. I find her great play The Little Foxes to have a top place in the cannon of the Best American Plays.

But mostly, I was crazy, not about her works for the theatre, but her three volumes of memoirs: An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir (1969), Pentimento (1973), and Scoundrel Time (1976). The Academy Award winning film Julia (1977) is based on a section of Pentimento, with Jane Fonda playing Hellman. Hellman had a 30 year romance with writer Dashiell Hammett (played perfectly by Jason Robards in Julia, for which he won an Oscar), and it is said that she was the inspiration for his character Nora Charles in The Thin Man. Hellman was also a lifelong friend and the literary executor of famed wit Dorothy Parker. Hellman is nicely portrayed by the great Judy Davis in the swell film Dash And Lilly (1999), directed by actor Kathy Bates.

1939, Photograph by Corbis

Hellman was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950. At the time, HUAC knew that Hammett had once been a member of the Communist Party. Asked to name names of any acquaintances with Communist affiliations, Hellman delivered a prepared statement, which read in part:

“To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person & could have no comfortable place in any political group.”

As a result of her appearance before the committee, Hellman was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studios for many years.

She became a writer during an era when writers were big celebrities and audaciousness was considered an enviable personality trait. In popularity, Hellman was an equal to F. ScottFitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and even to her beloved Hammett. She was a real tough cookie. She tossed off swear words with ease and she slept around. She smoked cigarettes and marijuana. She was a boozer. Hellman lived a social and political life as out loud as her talent. Her plays are a constant challenge to prejudice, small-thinking and oppression. Her memoirs are personal accounts of the intriguing and turbulent life behind her plays.

Hellman didn’t need a man. She was self-supporting. She felt no need to apologize for demanding to be paid what she thought she was worth. She even haggled over the royalties of her plays for use by high school drama departments and community theatres. Hellman took on the tough political battles of her time, actively supporting the Spanish Loyalists against the fascists, working against the Nazis, and standing up to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his gang.

Hellman was the most famous American female playwright of the 20th century. She is a feminist icon. She was not pretty and was rather butch, but still had lots of lovers and lived a life filled with sex and scandal. Hellman had to constantly push back against sexism and anti-Semitism. She had many detractors. Writer Mary McCarthy, a former friend who had a decades-long feud with Hellman, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1979 and famously stated about her:

“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

Ryan Murphy, maybe season three can be Feud: Lily And Mary?

The two writers sued each other and the litigation went on for years, only ending when Hellman left this world in 1979. Their war of words is the basis of Nora Ephron‘s nifty little play Imaginary Friends (2002). Her story that became the basis for the film Julia is considered by many people to be fiction, but she always defended the tale, making Hellman a perfect celebrity for our own age. Can you just imagine her Tweets?

At the 1977 Academy Awards, Hellman presented the Oscar for Best Documentary. She was greeted by a standing ovation. She told the crowd of show biz types:

“I was once upon a time a respectable member of this community. Respectable didn’t necessarily mean more than I took a daily bath when I was sober, didn’t spit except when I meant to, and mispronounced a few words of fancy French. Then suddenly, even before Senator Joe McCarthy reached for that rusty, poisoned ax, I and many others were no longer acceptable to the owners of this industry. They confronted the wild charges of Joe McCarthy with a force and courage of a bowl of mashed potatoes. I have no regrets for that period. Maybe you never do when you survive, but I have a mischievous pleasure in being restored to respectability, understanding full well that the younger generation who asked me here tonight meant more by that invitation than my name or my history.”

I once stood next to Hellman in line at Zabar’s on the Upper West Side of the island of Manhattan on an autumn Sunday morning in 1976. She was in her 70s then. She was smoking a cigarette and was wrapped in a large mink coat. I had recently read and had been absorbed by Pentimento. I excused myself for bothering her and then gushed about how much I admired her work, especially the memoir and how gobsmacked I felt to be standing next to her at a delicatessen.

Stephen: “… so you see, Miss Hellman, you simply must understand how much your work and your life have impressed and inspired me.”

Hellman: “Of course they have. Now, be a dear and pay for my Danish. That’s being a sweetie.”

Off she went. That scene could be perfectly reenacted by Nicole Kidman (also born this day), with a prosthetic nose, wrapped-up in a fake mink as Hellman, and a shirtless Zachary Quinto as me circa mid-1970s. Why a shirtless hero at Zabar’s? Because, it’s showbiz, kids.

Gay Icon? I like to think so. I would certainly enjoy seeing some queens do Lillian Hellman drag.

Hellman turns 112-years-old today and she looks much the same as she did when our paths crossed.