Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Resistor of the Week – Joe Namath @1:00:43

Find out why former football star Joe Namath is the Resistor of the Week!

Listen in at 4:00PM EST and again at 4:00 PST (7 PM EST) on SiriusXM! Or listen whenever you want on the SiriusXM App!

And be sure to give your ears the gift of THE WOW REPORT on Radio Andy SiriusXM EVERY Friday.

Do something this weekend that makes YOU go WOW!!!

Get ready to be GAGGED, hennies!

Clear those schedules right now because you’re about to get your wigs snatched next Friday , October 20th at 8 PM on VH1. We’re revealing the RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 OFFICIAL cast in an extra special, extra incredible, extra HUGE one-hour RuVeal!

Seriously, RuPaul interviews Chaka freakin’ Khan in it!!! CHAKA KHAN!!!!!

You may THINK you know who the cast is, but all will be revealed next Friday during the special.

“Millions of fans have their favorite queens that they THINK should be on All Stars 3. But the final decision is mine to make. Prepare to be gagged.”

Trust us, you’re GONNA be gagged, your wigs will be snatched, and you’ll be screaming until All Stars 3 makes it’s way to your TV.

Check out the trailer for the special below, and set those DVRs now because you do NOT want to miss the special.

EVERYONE is going to be talking about who is on this cast, so do you REALLY want to be that person yelling about SPOILER ALERTS?!??! Of course not.

Be sure to watch the RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 casting special on VH1 in one week from today on Friday, Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. ET!

Photograph: PacificCoastNews.com

October 14, 1961– Isaac Mizrahi:

“Remember this: No one is looking at your imperfections; they’re all too busy worrying about their own.”

I would love to have my own line of fashion and lifestyle designs products, QVC show, spots as a guest on television shows, plus a gorgeous apartment, culled from 3 individual units, in Greenwich Village. Isaac Mizrahi has been at it for 30 years.

Mizrahi’s style is smart, timeless and very cosmopolitan. He has won the Council Of Fashion Designers Of America Award, plus a special one for his groundbreaking documentary Unzipped (1996).

He has dressed most of the notable women on our pretty blue spinning orb including Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama.

Talented Mizrahi was born in Brooklyn, the son of a children’s fashion designer. He attended NYC’s High School Of Performing Arts and Parsons School Of Design. After graduating, he was asked to be on the faculty of Parson’s.

Mizrahi had a role in the musical film Fame (1980), set in the world of his high school alma mater. He then had an apprenticeship with designer Perry Ellis who served as his mentor. Mizrahi was recognized as The Outstanding Student Designer at Parsons with Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Oscar de la Renta as the panel of judges. After graduation he went to work at Ellis.

In 1987, he launched Isaac Mizrahi New York with a store in Soho. The next year Audrey Hepburn wore Isaac Mizrahi for a Revlon lipstick ad. In 1990, he was given The Perry Ellis Award For Emerging Talent, presented to him by Liza Minnelli, the same season when one of his creations was featured on the cover of Vogue. Mizrahi introduced his menswear line in spring 1990 and he won his second CFDA Design Award.

Unzipped, the funny behind-the-scenes documentary that revolves around Mizrahi’s Fall 1994 collection where he combined a self-described Hollywood-Eskimo-Mary Tyler Moore Show look with Ouija board derived advice like “dominatrix mixed with Hitchcock” into a well-received collection. It opens with Mizrahi at his local newsstand. He reads reviews of the previous night’s showing of his Spring 1994 collection. The critical feedback, read in voice-over by Mizrahi, is tough:

“Was this collection half full or half empty? That was the obvious question after Isaac Mizrahi’s show Thursday night. What he dubbed a mix was more of a mess…”

Mizrahi is devastated by the assessment:

“I don’t take criticism very well.”

Unzipped shows him making his was out of an intense depression, meticulously planning a comeback as he scrounges for inspiration, finding it in a classic Hollywood film, and then his process of selecting materials, fumbling the execution of his vision, and then going back to the drawing board, again, again and again. It is an entertaining, yet powerful film.

Pretty Natalie Portman became the face of his low price clothing line Isaac in 1996. That project faltered, but he bounced back with that Mizrahi indefatigable spirit with a Mizrahi collection for Target that proved a big hit.

A decade ago, his own personality was on full display with the Style Network’s The Issac Show where he interviewed guests and gave fashion advice. Like me, Mizrahi is a real attention whore. He appeared as himself on HBO’s Sex And The City and Showtime’s The Big C, and he played a demented fashion reporter on the much missed Ugly Betty. He even appeared with the Rapey Von Tinyfingers on the first season of Celebrity Apprentice raising money for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. I wonder why Mizrahi didn’t help you-know-who with his extra-long ties and ill-fitting suits.

His book How To Have Style (2008) provided funding for a certain young Presidential candidate, a junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

Mizrahi is Creative Director for his Isaac Mizrahi New York brand and is hands-on with the design for all brands under his name. His collection offers women’s wear, shoes, handbags, accessories, men’s tailored clothing and men’s furnishings. Mizrahi has a lifestyle collection, Isaac Mizrahi Live! offered on QVC. That’s right, kids. You can wash with Mizrahi soap, towel off with Mizrahi plush bath towels and slip into your Mizrahi robe and slippers to watch him on Project Runway All Stars on Lifetime or The Fashion Show for Bravo.

An underachiever, Mizrahi can also act, sing and dance. He has a well-received cabaret act. He is a favorite of Woody Allen, appearing in his films Small Time Crooks (2000), Hollywood Ending (2002) and Celebrity (1998).

Mizrahi designed costumes for Broadway revivals of The Women (2001), winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, Barefoot In the Park (2006), and The Threepenny Opera (2006). For the Metropolitan Opera‘s production of Orfeo Ed Euridice (2008), directed by openly gay Mark Morris, he designed the sets and costumes. Mizrahi directed a well-received production of Stephen Sondheim‘s classic A Little Night Music, plus designed and directed Mozart‘s The Magic Flute for The Metropolitan Opera.

His favorite show is, of course, World Of Wonder’s RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“People say, ‘You’re so good at selling’, but I’m offended by that. I don’t see it as salesmanship, which is when people try to sell you something you don’t want, you don’t need, or isn’t any good. If you have a great product that you actually are involved with creating, there’s no salesmanship involved.”

Mizrahi currently is a judge on Project Runway All-Stars. I think that he makes a fine role model for baby gays, especially those kids looking for careers in fashion design or who just need attention. He lives in that simple, elegant, apartment in The Village with his husband, Arnold Germer. I am a bit jealous.

Photograph from ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries

October 14, 1979– The National March On Washington For Lesbian And Gay Rights

Harvey Milk dreamed of a gay march on the nation’s Capital and he spoke of it many times before he was murdered in 1978. He believed that gay visibility would lead to the end of discrimination. Inspired by Milk, the first large march was held on this day in 1979.

The man who would become my husband and I had just started our romance in October 1979 and we were still cautious of being “too out” to the world. A Democrat in the White House, demands for sweeping civil rights protections, religious opponents working to undo a string of state based victories; this was the backdrop in 1979 when Gay Rights activists staged that first national march in Washington DC.

The National March On Washington For Lesbian And Gay Rights was the name given to the first such march on the nation’s capital. It drew 200,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, queers and straight allies to demand Equal Rights and to urge the passage of protective Civil Rights legislation.

The march served to nationalize the Gay Rights Movement, which before, had been focused on local struggles with a few victories. This spirit is invoked in the closing paragraph of the program for the march:

“Today in the capital of America, we are all here, the almost liberated and the slightly repressed; the butch and femme and everything in-between; the androgynous; the monogamous and the promiscuous; the masturbators and the fellators and the tribadists; men in dresses and women in neckties; those who bite and those who cuddle, celibates, diesel dykes and nelly queens; amazons and size queens, Yellow, Black, Brown, White, and Red; the short-haired and the long, the fat and the thin; the nude and the prude, the beauties and the beasts, the studs and the duds, the communes, the couples, and the singles; pubescent and the octogenarians. Yes, we are all here! We are everywhere! Welcome to The March On Washington For Lesbian And Gay Rights!”

The march began at the National Mall, turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue and proceeded northwest towards The White House. It ended in a rally between The Washington Monument and The Reflecting Pool. It was led by the Salsa Soul Sisters, who carried the official march banner. Speakers at the main rally included: San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, writer Allen Ginsberg and his boyfriend Peter Orlovsky, Civil Rights activist Florynce Kennedy, gay Peace activist Morris Kight, out Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, Feminist Kate Millett, Reverend Troy Perry, NOW president Eleanor Smeal, and Congressman Ted Weiss. DC Mayor Marion Barry gave a welcome to the marchers on behalf of the city.

Photograph from ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries

In addition to the march itself, the organizers offered three days of workshops, artistic events, strategy sessions, focus groups on specific issues for women and minorities within the LGBTQ community, consciousness raising, local organization, religion and other issues. The Monday after the march was organized as a Constituent Lobbying Day, with over 500 participants attempted to contact every member of Congress to express support for Gay Rights legislation. The participants successfully met with 50 senators and 150 house members.

38 years later, with work still to be done, the country does have full Marriage Equality, plenty of talented out and proud celebrities, fully realized gay characters on television series and World Of Wonder’s always entertaining RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Yet while we have been reading his Tweets, our current POTUS has been quietly nominating Anti-LGBTQ judges. It’s perhaps the most successful aspect of his presidency, easily surpassing Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at this point in the first year of their presidencies in terms of the sheer number of judges nominated.

Trump has nominated 17 Federal Circuit Court judges and 39 District Court judges, all of them with strong Anti-LGBTQ sentiments and histories. This is far more than Obama’s 10 Circuit Court nominees and eight District Court nominees by this point in his first year of office. Bush had nominated 14 Circuit judges and 32 District judges by this point.

Trump and his stooge, Mike Pence, have also got more court seats to fill. POTUS inherited 108 court vacancies when he was inaugurated, double the number of vacancies Obama inherited when he took office. We can blame the GOP’s long strategy of denying votes to Obama’s court picks to keep those seats empty for a future GOP president to fill.

If Trump’s current judicial nominees are a preview of the kinds of judges he plans to nominate in the coming years, get ready for a significant attempt to roll-back the rights of the LGBTQ community.