TORGEN EXTRA

Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Being gay is not a western invention, it's a human reality"

2011-12-09T20:00:00.001+01:00

Transkript der Rede von Hillary Rodham Clinton
6.Dezember 2011, Palais des Nations, Genève

Good evening, and let me express my deep honor and pleasure at being here. I want to thank Director General Tokayev and Ms. Wyden along with other ministers, ambassadors, excellencies, and UN partners. This weekend, we will celebrate Human Rights Day, the anniversary of one of the great accomplishments of the last century.

Beginning in 1947, delegates from six continents devoted themselves to drafting a declaration that would enshrine the fundamental rights and freedoms of people everywhere. In the aftermath of World War II, many nations pressed for a statement of this kind to help ensure that we would prevent future atrocities and protect the inherent humanity and dignity of all people. And so the delegates went to work. They discussed, they wrote, they revisited, revised, rewrote, for thousands of hours. And they incorporated suggestions and revisions from governments, organizations, and individuals around the world.

At three o'clock in the morning on December 10th, 1948, after nearly two years of drafting and one last long night of debate, the president of the UN General Assembly called for a vote on the final text. Forty-eight nations voted in favor; eight abstained; none dissented. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It proclaims a simple, powerful idea: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. And with the declaration, it was made clear that rights are not conferred by government; they are the birthright of all people. It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.
In the 63 years since the declaration was adopted, many nations have made great progress in making human rights a human reality. Step by step, barriers that once prevented people from enjoying the full measure of liberty, the full experience of dignity, and the full benefits of humanity have fallen away. In many places, racist laws have been repealed, legal and social practices that relegated women to second-class status have been abolished, the ability of religious minorities to practice their faith freely has been secured.
In most cases, this progress was not easily won. People fought and organized and campaigned in public squares and private spaces to change not only laws, but hearts and minds. And thanks to that work of generations, for millions of individuals whose lives were once narrowed by injustice, they are now able to live more freely and to participate more fully in the political, economic, and social lives of their communities.

Now, there is still, as you all know, much more to be done to secure that commitment, that reality, and progress for all people. Today, I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people whose human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today. In many ways, they are an invisible minority. They are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed. Many are treated with contempt and violence by their fellow citizens while authorities empowered to protect them look the other way or, too often, even join in the abuse. They are denied opportunities to work and learn, driven from their homes and countries, and forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm.

I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity, who have a right to claim that, which is now one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time. I speak about this subject knowing that my own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.

Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs. So I come here before you with respect, understanding, and humility. Even though progress on this front is not easy, we cannot delay acting. So in that spirit, I want to talk about the difficult and important issues we must address together to reach a global consensus that recognizes the human rights of LGBT citizens everywhere.

The first issue goes to the heart of the matter. Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.
It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

The second issue is a question of whether homosexuality arises from a particular part of the world. Some seem to believe it is a Western phenomenon, and therefore people outside the West have grounds to reject it. Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors.

Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality. And protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do. South Africa’s constitution, written in the aftermath of Apartheid, protects the equality of all citizens, including gay people. In Colombia and Argentina, the rights of gays are also legally protected. In Nepal, the supreme court has ruled that equal rights apply to LGBT citizens. The Government of Mongolia has committed to pursue new legislation that will tackle anti-gay discrimination.
Now, some worry that protecting the human rights of the LGBT community is a luxury that only wealthy nations can afford. But in fact, in all countries, there are costs to not protecting these rights, in both gay and straight lives lost to disease and violence, and the silencing of voices and views that would strengthen communities, in ideas never pursued by entrepreneurs who happen to be gay. Costs are incurred whenever any group is treated as lesser or the other, whether they are women, racial, or religious minorities, or the LGBT. Former President Mogae of Botswana pointed out recently that for as long as LGBT people are kept in the shadows, there cannot be an effective public health program to tackle HIV and AIDS. Well, that holds true for other challenges as well.

The third, and perhaps most challenging, issue arises when people cite religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or not to protect the human rights of LGBT citizens. This is not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation. Some people still defend those practices as part of a cultural tradition. But violence toward women isn't cultural; it's criminal. Likewise with slavery, what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.
In each of these cases, we came to learn that no practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us. And this holds true for inflicting violence on LGBT people, criminalizing their status or behavior, expelling them from their families and communities, or tacitly or explicitly accepting their killing.

Of course, it bears noting that rarely are cultural and religious traditions and teachings actually in conflict with the protection of human rights. Indeed, our religion and our culture are sources of compassion and inspiration toward our fellow human beings. It was not only those who’ve justified slavery who leaned on religion, it was also those who sought to abolish it. And let us keep in mind that our commitments to protect the freedom of religion and to defend the dignity of LGBT people emanate from a common source. For many of us, religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who we are as people. And likewise, for most of us, the bonds of love and family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity. And caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human. It is because the human experience is universal that human rights are universal and cut across all religions and cultures.
The fourth issue is what history teaches us about how we make progress towards rights for all. Progress starts with honest discussion. Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can be caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true. They are also unlikely to disappear if those who promote or accept them are dismissed out of hand rather than invited to share their fears and concerns. No one has ever abandoned a belief because he was forced to do so.
Universal human rights include freedom of expression and freedom of belief, even if our words or beliefs denigrate the humanity of others. Yet, while we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose, not in a world where we protect the human rights of all.
Reaching understanding of these issues takes more than speech. It does take a conversation. In fact, it takes a constellation of conversations in places big and small. And it takes a willingness to see stark differences in belief as a reason to begin the conversation, not to avoid it.

But progress comes from changes in laws. In many places, including my own country, legal protections have preceded, not followed, broader recognition of rights. Laws have a teaching effect. Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination. Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. And practically speaking, it is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.

Many in my country thought that President Truman was making a grave error when he ordered the racial desegregation of our military. They argued that it would undermine unit cohesion. And it wasn't until he went ahead and did it that we saw how it strengthened our social fabric in ways even the supporters of the policy could not foresee. Likewise, some worried in my country that the repeal of “Don't Ask, Don’t Tell” would have a negative effect on our armed forces. Now, the Marine Corps Commandant, who was one of the strongest voices against the repeal, says that his concerns were unfounded and that the Marines have embraced the change.

Finally, progress comes from being willing to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. We need to ask ourselves, "How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love? How would it feel to be discriminated against for something about myself that I cannot change?" This challenge applies to all of us as we reflect upon deeply held beliefs, as we work to embrace tolerance and respect for the dignity of all persons, and as we engage humbly with those with whom we disagree in the hope of creating greater understanding.

A fifth and final question is how we do our part to bring the world to embrace human rights for all people including LGBT people. Yes, LGBT people must help lead this effort, as so many of you are. Their knowledge and experiences are invaluable and their courage inspirational. We know the names of brave LGBT activists who have literally given their lives for this cause, and there are many more whose names we will never know. But often those who are denied rights are least empowered to bring about the changes they seek. Acting alone, minorities can never achieve the majorities necessary for political change.

So when any part of humanity is sidelined, the rest of us cannot sit on the sidelines. Every time a barrier to progress has fallen, it has taken a cooperative effort from those on both sides of the barrier. In the fight for women’s rights, the support of men remains crucial. The fight for racial equality has relied on contributions from people of all races. Combating Islamaphobia or anti-Semitism is a task for people of all faiths. And the same is true with this struggle for equality.
Conversely, when we see denials and abuses of human rights and fail to act, that sends the message to those deniers and abusers that they won’t suffer any consequences for their actions, and so they carry on. But when we do act, we send a powerful moral message. Right here in Geneva, the international community acted this year to strengthen a global consensus around the human rights of LGBT people. At the Human Rights Council in March, 85 countries from all regions supported a statement calling for an end to criminalization and violence against people because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

At the following session of the Council in June, South Africa took the lead on a resolution about violence against LGBT people. The delegation from South Africa spoke eloquently about their own experience and struggle for human equality and its indivisibility. When the measure passed, it became the first-ever UN resolution recognizing the human rights of gay people worldwide. In the Organization of American States this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights created a unit on the rights of LGBT people, a step toward what we hope will be the creation of a special rapporteur.

Now, we must go further and work here and in every region of the world to galvanize more support for the human rights of the LGBT community. To the leaders of those countries where people are jailed, beaten, or executed for being gay, I ask you to consider this: Leadership, by definition, means being out in front of your people when it is called for. It means standing up for the dignity of all your citizens and persuading your people to do the same. It also means ensuring that all citizens are treated as equals under your laws, because let me be clear – I am not saying that gay people can’t or don’t commit crimes. They can and they do, just like straight people. And when they do, they should be held accountable, but it should never be a crime to be gay.
And to people of all nations, I say supporting human rights is your responsibility too. The lives of gay people are shaped not only by laws, but by the treatment they receive every day from their families, from their neighbors. Eleanor Roosevelt, who did so much to advance human rights worldwide, said that these rights begin in the small places close to home – the streets where people live, the schools they attend, the factories, farms, and offices where they work. These places are your domain. The actions you take, the ideals that you advocate, can determine whether human rights flourish where you are.

And finally, to LGBT men and women worldwide, let me say this: Wherever you live and whatever the circumstances of your life, whether you are connected to a network of support or feel isolated and vulnerable, please know that you are not alone. People around the globe are working hard to support you and to bring an end to the injustices and dangers you face. That is certainly true for my country. And you have an ally in the United States of America and you have millions of friends among the American people.
The Obama Administration defends the human rights of LGBT people as part of our comprehensive human rights policy and as a priority of our foreign policy. In our embassies, our diplomats are raising concerns about specific cases and laws, and working with a range of partners to strengthen human rights protections for all. In Washington, we have created a task force at the State Department to support and coordinate this work. And in the coming months, we will provide every embassy with a toolkit to help improve their efforts. And we have created a program that offers emergency support to defenders of human rights for LGBT people.
This morning, back in Washington, President Obama put into place the first U.S. Government strategy dedicated to combating human rights abuses against LGBT persons abroad. Building on efforts already underway at the State Department and across the government, the President has directed all U.S. Government agencies engaged overseas to combat the criminalization of LGBT status and conduct, to enhance efforts to protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, to ensure that our foreign assistance promotes the protection of LGBT rights, to enlist international organizations in the fight against discrimination, and to respond swiftly to abuses against LGBT persons.
I am also pleased to announce that we are launching a new Global Equality Fund that will support the work of civil society organizations working on these issues around the world. This fund will help them record facts so they can target their advocacy, learn how to use the law as a tool, manage their budgets, train their staffs, and forge partnerships with women’s organizations and other human rights groups. We have committed more than $3 million to start this fund, and we have hope that others will join us in supporting it.

The women and men who advocate for human rights for the LGBT community in hostile places, some of whom are here today with us, are brave and dedicated, and deserve all the help we can give them. We know the road ahead will not be easy. A great deal of work lies before us. But many of us have seen firsthand how quickly change can come. In our lifetimes, attitudes toward gay people in many places have been transformed. Many people, including myself, have experienced a deepening of our own convictions on this topic over the years, as we have devoted more thought to it, engaged in dialogues and debates, and established personal and professional relationships with people who are gay.
This evolution is evident in many places. To highlight one example, the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality in India two years ago, writing, and I quote, “If there is one tenet that can be said to be an underlying theme of the Indian constitution, it is inclusiveness.” There is little doubt in my mind that support for LGBT human rights will continue to climb. Because for many young people, this is simple: All people deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.

There is a phrase that people in the United States invoke when urging others to support human rights: “Be on the right side of history.” The story of the United States is the story of a nation that has repeatedly grappled with intolerance and inequality. We fought a brutal civil war over slavery. People from coast to coast joined in campaigns to recognize the rights of women, indigenous peoples, racial minorities, children, people with disabilities, immigrants, workers, and on and on. And the march toward equality and justice has continued. Those who advocate for expanding the circle of human rights were and are on the right side of history, and history honors them. Those who tried to constrict human rights were wrong, and history reflects that as well.

I know that the thoughts I’ve shared today involve questions on which opinions are still evolving. As it has happened so many times before, opinion will converge once again with the truth, the immutable truth, that all persons are created free and equal in dignity and rights. We are called once more to make real the words of the Universal Declaration. Let us answer that call. Let us be on the right side of history, for our people, our nations, and future generations, whose lives will be shaped by the work we do today. I come before you with great hope and confidence that no matter how long the road ahead, we will travel it successfully together. Thank you very much.

Thelma & Louise 20 Years Later

2011-08-29T02:19:00.002+02:00

Photo © MGM/the Everett Collection.

What do actresses Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Jodie Foster, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn have in common? They were all considered for the roles of Thelma or Louise in the now classic film released 20 years ago this May. Vanity Fair’s Sheila Weller takes a look back at the making of the landmark movie that defined the careers of Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, and introduced a young actor named Brad Pitt.
Two actors were slated for the role of J.D. before Pitt was cast, Weller reports. “Ridley [Scott] had been one of my favorites since I sneaked into Alien as an underaged teen,” Pitt tells her. He auditioned “with high hopes,” but the part went to Billy Baldwin. When he dropped out to take a role in Backdraft—another film that Pitt tried for and didn’t get—the part went to a television actor. When that J.D. left to go back to his series, Pitt got another chance to read for the part, this time with Geena Davis. “I did fine with the first few guys,” Davis tells Weller, “but the last one was so cute I kept messing up my lines. I’m dying because I’m thinking, He’s great, and I’m ruining his audition. I kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry!’ But he’s so chill: ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all good.’” Weller reports that as Scott and the casting director were weighing the pros and cons of every guy but Pitt, Davis couldn’t resist jumping in: “The blond one. Duh!” she exclaimed.
“That scene, right there, is the beginning of Brad Pitt! Bingo!,” Scott tells Weller, of the moment when J.D. holds Thelma’s hair dryer like a gun and delivers his bank robber speech. Pitt is modest when he recalls the scene to Weller. “I flatlined that day,” he says. “It was Geena’s performance that made mine. Her ability to be carefree and comfortable in each take led the way for me.” Davis tells Weller that Scott knew their sex scene was Pitt’s big star-making moment. “He kept saying, ‘Muss his hair up a bit. Wet it down. Just a second—give me some spray,’” she tells Weller. “And he personallysprayed Evian on Brad’s abs! I’m ‘Uh, Ridley, I’m the girl in the scene, O.K.?
Geena Davis gives Weller some insights into how she and Sarandon were able to stay cool during the roadhouse scene. “We asked the prop guy, ‘Do you have any real tequila? Because it’s easier to act if we taste alcohol,” she says. “So we pounded back quite a few, and we’re laughing between takes and both feeling, We’re so drunk! This is great!” Michael Madsen, who played Jimmy, reveals that Pitt had his own ways to chill. “I walked out of the motel in the morning, and Brad would be out smoking a joint,” he tells Weller. “We got stoned together a couple of times. Every actor finds his way to make it work; that was his thing.”
According to Weller, when screenwriter Callie Khouri set out to make what she thought would be a low-budget indie, she imagined Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand in the leads. Once Ridley Scott got involved (initially as producer only) Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer became attached, then he set out to find a director. Mimi Gitlin, Scott’s producing partner, names three of the four considered: Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld), and Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon). Scott recalls how one of the directors dismissed the film saying: “Listen, dude, it’s two bitches in a car,” another said, “Oh, it’s small,” to which Scott replied, “No! It’s epic!”
By the time Scott—at Michelle Pfeiffer’s urging, Weller reports—had made the decision to direct the movie himself, his two stars had moved on to other jobs; Foster to Silence of the Lambs. “Meryl and Goldie called me and said, ‘Can we come in and meet?’” says Alan Ladd, Jr., then chairman and C.E.O. of Pathé Entertainment. “They read the script; they loved it, thought the parts were great. Meryl thought that, at the end, one of them—Thelma or Louise—should live. Of course, we didn’t particularly agree with that.” Scott tells Weller: “I had a long chat with Meryl, who would have played Louise, and I found her absolutely wonderful.” But Meryl had a movie conflict. As for Hawn: “I’m very fond of Goldie,” Ladd says, “and she was a big star at the time. But I didn’t think she was right for the part.”
All the while, Geena Davis was gunning for the part of Louise. “Geena was pursuing me like crazy,” Scott tells Weller. “That’s right!” Davis says, “I had my agent call Ridley every week for almost a year.” Davis recalls finally meeting Scott. “We had an hour’s worth of notes on why I should play Louise,” she tells Weller. “I launched into a passionate monologue, and at the end of this long discussion Ridley says, ‘So-o-o, you wouldn’t play Thelma?’” Davis says. “I realized that it actually isn’t Louise I should play; it’s Thelma,’ and I launched into that spiel.” Scott wouldn’t make up his mind until he found the other woman and until he did, Davis continued to think of herself as Louise, Weller reports.
“I live in New York,” Susan Saradon says, explaining why she wasn’t aware of what was, in the late ‘80s, the hottest script in Hollywood. That is, until Scott sent it to her. “Susan had the authority, the sensibility. She was Louise,” he tells Weller. When Scott and Sarandon met with Davis, movie history was made. “Pretty much the second Susan walked in the room, I was, Are you kidding that I could play Louise?” Davis says. “Susan was so self-possessed, so centered and together.”

Madonna's erstes Vanity Fair Cover (1986)

2011-08-16T15:07:00.001+02:00

Im Dezember 1986 war Madonna zum ersten Mal auf dem Cover der Vanity Fair. Die Photos stammen von Herb Ritts.

Sweep away the high tack of the Desperately Sought Susan and Madonna is revealed as a startling beauty of almost eighteenth-century purity. The skin, the eyes, the hair. Michael Gross chronicles her change of face.

All make-overs should be like this. The gooey girl has become a glamour queen. The slept-on hair is now soigné and platinum white. The swelling belly is flat as a board. The tarty look has softened to a cinematic siren’s. The teenage-rebellion clothes are suddenly svelte. And there is a message in all this shiny newness. Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn is proclaiming herself the rightful inheritor to the long-vacant throne of blonde ambition.

In the flesh she’s lissome, compact, alert. Wearing all black—shirt, Capri pants, porkpie hat, flat dance shoes — she’s lost that slightly pubescent quality of puppy fat. Backstage at Lincoln Center, while everyone else gobbles cake on her birthday, she nibbles rice cake. She’s as rigorous with herself as that other former dancer Joan Crawford. She runs five miles or works out every day, sometimes as early as six A.M. The skin is translucently beautiful, gleaming with all the limelight it has soaked up, luminous white beside the pristinely bleached hair. Even as a child she disciplined herself to stop sitting in the sun. “And I don’t eat any flesh,” she adds with distaste. “Vegetarians are paler.”

The little mole on her upper lip is like an eighteenth-century monarch’s mouche. The unbleached eyebrows seem to arch more commandingly over the blue-green eyes.

“Foley, get over here,” she directs the director on the set of her latest video. Two years of superstardom, one year of marriage, and the wanton has become a willful woman.

The video empress’s new clothes show how much she’s grown up since she snaked to the top of the charts. Back then, she was a parody of what she might actually have been — a dirty little Catholic girl, quite unlike her blessed namesake. Singing with torqued tongue about being like a virgin, she flaunted a raggedy-girl mixture of crucifixes and visible brassieres, tulle and studded leather, bared midriff and lace gloves. Three multimillion-selling albums, ten consecutive hit singles, sellout tours, came with the adoration of numberless nine-year-olds. It was the invasion of the wannabes.

America’s stores, streets, and schoolyards swarmed with mimic Madonnas. The look even filtered into the “mad” fashion fantasies of couture copycats in Paris, notably Christian Lacroix at the house of Patou and Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld.

The style was also pivotal to Madonna’s first proper film, Desperately Seeking Susan, which kick-started her second career (and don’t think Shanghai Surprise or Goose and Tomtom will stop it). Another wanna-be, this time a spoiled suburban housewife, tried to gain some sort of magical freedom by shrugging herself into Madonna’s totemized jacket. The movie went from sleeper to sizzler so fast it made Hollywood heads spin. Not least that of lovely Rosanna Arquette, who, poor child, thought she was its star.

Image burnout is the video performer’s plague—look what happened to Madonna’s postmodern peer group, Boy George and Cyndi Lauper. According to Jamie Foley (the director of one Sean Penn movie, three Madonna videos, and now her second comedy, Stammer), after Susan, Madonna “had 1985 written all over her.” But she was not about to be left behind like last year’s fingerless gloves. Maripol, the Frenchwoman who’d designed Madonna’s piled-on costume jewelry and a line of Madonna-signature accessories, went bankrupt this fall, her lawyer says, since the singer “changed her image.”

The Madonna style had become a straitjacket, and that straitjacket was going out of style.

“I wanted to change my clothes,” she tells me determinedly. “You wait for things to cool off. You wait for your image not to be plastered up everywhere. It goes in cycles. If you’ve got a product, you promote it.” And then again: “Obviously, if you spend a couple of years wearing lots of layers of clothes and tons of jewelry and it just takes you forever to get dressed and your hair is long and crazy, then you get the urge to take it all off and strip yourself down and cut your hair all off just for a relief. Everybody does that, you know?”

Everybody doesn’t have to go as far as she does, however, in her bid to become Myth America. A product promoted that strongly can only be replaced with something equally powerful. Threatened with self-image immolation, Madonna conjured one of the icons that had fascinated her pre-teen years in the Midwest, the one that shared her beauty mark and her bleach job, the most potent image of stardom in the post-Warhol world. Marilyn. (Others had already invoked Monroe — Debbie Harry, for instance, and that weird English boy who called himself Marilyn.) Madonna’s re-enactment in her “Material Girl” video of the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” production number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was knowing, defiant, and successful.

The subsequent transformation must have been self-inspired; no one manipulates Madonna. “It was Madonna’s idea,” confirms “Material Girl” producer Simon Fields. “She loves Marilyn.” So much so, apparently, that the National Enquirer ran a story about Madonna (b. 1958) believing she was a reincarnation of Marilyn (d. 1962). Madonna calls that the best lie she’s ever read about herself. Whatever, throughout our conversations, each time Monroe came up, defensive blue-green eyes challenged me to dare again to state the obvious.

“This gal has control over her own destiny that Marilyn never did,” says Arnold Newman, an acquaintance and photographer of Monroe. “She reminds me more of Streisand in her determination.” The Barbra comparison may come out of left field, but the point about Madonna’s self-determination rings true.

“I think she does a lot of homework,” says Kevin Dornan, who did her costumes for the Lincoln Center workshop of David Rabe’s Goose and Tomtom. “She’s consciously trying to evoke her idols, but she’s enough of a star to fit each style and make it her own. She goes about it very methodically.”

Ever since “Material Girl,” Madonna has been shuffling looks like playing cards, a Judy Holliday – Lana Turner gangster’s moll in Goose and Tomtom, a Deborah Kerr – Veronica Lake missionary sinking in the swamp of Shanghai Surprise, a knocked-up blue-collar Italian Jean Seberg in the “Papa Don’t Preach” video. She had a gown previously worn by Sophia Loren flown in specially from the West Coast for the Vanity Fair photo session. But she wouldn’t try on Catherine Deneuve’s 1964 Chanel suit that the-stylist had discovered. “It’s not me,” she said.

Observes Bill Travilla, who designed Marilyn’s costumes in eleven films, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, “She’s searching for herself.”

Madonna thinks she’s found herself. “I’m aware of the messages I’m sending out,” she says. “People are more aware that I have a brain in my head and a head on my shoulders and I am in control of myself and I have a sense of humor.”

She’ll need the latter for the one role that’s giving her the most difficulty, that of Mrs. Sean Penn. If she’s intent on making herself into one of those mythic beauties, he’s dead set on something in the James Dean – Ernest Hemingway mold—truculent, brooding, hard-drinking. She says she was first attracted to the baddest young dude in Tinseltown because he seemed “reckless, adventurous.” They shared the same juvenile-lead cockiness. Now, as she grows up, cynical observers have already started to question his usefulness and versatility as a style accessory. When he took to spitting on photographers, each expectoration splashed his wife’s once only tactically tarnished image. Of their recent joint ventures, Shanghai Surprise continued his string of bombs. And when the press was banned from Goose and Tomtom, word nonetheless leaked: only Madonna was mesmerizing. A star is born?

Director Foley denies that the rolemodeling is calculated. “There’s nothing behind her other than instinct and impulsiveness. She’s unlocked enormous pent-up yearnings for a glamorous image,” he says. “She’s hooked onto a moonbeam.”

She’s been compared to almost every female from Cinderella to Barbarella. And, though she now discourages all that as actively as her husband discourages paparazzi, she still rattles off the names of her idols easily enough — all except one, Marilyn. Bardot, Grace Kelly, and Ann-Margret were her favorite childhood stars, she says. Later heroines were Martha Graham and Georgia O’Keeffe. Dietrich and Garbo too: “Strong beauties,” she says. “I like to think of myself that way.” Instinctively, she positions herself. Beautiful, but strong. A feminist’s Marilyn.

She learned, early in life, to manipulate fashion signals. She turned her parochial-school uniforms into instruments of rebellion, pulling them over her desktop so boys could peek up her skirts. “I’ve been provoking people since I was a little girl. I was very interested in being alluring.”

Poignant details of a banal Catholic girlhood follow. She sought to escape her Michigan hometown from “the moment I was old enough to know I was depressed,” she recalls — about the time her mother died, when she was six. “What fuels my ambition is the desire to be heard. And to find my mother, I suppose, – Another echo of Marilyn.

She’d sneak out of the house, the clothes she wasn’t supposed to wear hidden underneath her overcoat. At wealthier friends’ houses, she’d try on their fancy clothes. Mooning over movie stars, she “longed to be able to wear tight sweaters and pointy bras.”

Freedom came at fifteen when a friend took her to ballet classes outside Detroit. “I met a dance teacher. He gave me a sense of culture and style. He was the first homosexual I’d ever known. He opened a door.” She danced through. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve found it.’ “

Surrounded by dancing gay boys, she cocooned herself in androgyny, her first metamorphosis. “I was evolving into something else.” There were still problems with uniforms. “Ballet becomes very regimented too. I didn’t want my hair back in a bun. I didn’t want to wear pink tights and a black leotard. I may be doing the same steps,” she says, “but I’m not like anyone else. I want to be different.”

The next style step was also thanks to a man. She was in New York in 1978, living like a gypsy, innocently modeling for art classes (the nude skeletons that rattled out of her closet and into Penthouse and Playboy), picking through glad rags at thrift shops. “I was very much a waif.” At an audition she met a Continental rock star named Patrick Hernandez. “I’m sure you’ve read this,” she moans. The media myth of her rise is of a trampled staircase of men. She heads off any discussion at the pass. “I’m so sick of saying it. I got lucky. I went to Paris. It was an education.” They gave her money to buy flashy disco clothes. “I wasn’t into it.” She bought black boots, black jeans, and a black leather jacket. “I had my ears pierced and put safety pins in.”

Soon she was back in New York, discovering downtown. “Up until then I had no idea it existed.” She got a record deal and started hanging out in the Latin clubs where her records first became popular in 1983. Her new friends were graffiti artists like Futura 2000 — she once got evicted from an East Village apartment when one daubed his name on the walls. “You have to put your name everywhere,” she says, “and everybody had their name on a belt buckle.” Hers read “Boy Toy.” “I was a flirt. I toyed with boys.” The Latinos also wore studded bracelets. Madonna got some of those and “Adidas sneakers with different-color laces, nylon tracksuits in all bright colors, belts, leather caps, and gloves with the fingers cut off. Eventually, when I started becoming an image in pictures, it was the combination of the dance and the ragamuffin and the New Wave and this Puerto Rican street style.”

And Catholic Church style — for there were the rosaries too. “Beautiful and mysterious,” she says, “something that looked like suffering.” Beautiful suffering. Innocence and provocation. Madonna and Magdalene. “You know where it comes from,” she says. “Catholic upbringing. I was exorcising the extremes my upbringing dwelt on. Putting them up on the wall and throwing darts at them.”

Enough of the past. She’s only been wearing it to get to the future. “I know what’s out there and I know what I have.” She told the world that in no uncertain terms at the start of the “Material Girl” video, which, remember, was her idea. Scene One: a screening room. “She’s fantastic,” raves a cigar-smoking mogul, studying the rushes of, of course, Madonna. “I knew she’d be a star.”

“She could be,” replies a lackey carefully. “She could be great. She could be a major star.”

“She is a star, George,” the mogul states.

“The biggest star in the universe,” George agrees quickly, “right now as we speak.”

Barack Obama deklariert den Juni zum Gay Pride Month

2011-06-11T13:21:00.000+02:00

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

May 31, 2011

Presidential Proclamation--Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month

-------
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

The story of America's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community is the story of our fathers and sons, our mothers and daughters, and our friends and neighbors who continue the task of making our country a more perfect Union. It is a story about the struggle to realize the great American promise that all people can live with dignity and fairness under the law. Each June, we commemorate the courageous individuals who have fought to achieve this promise for LGBT Americans, and we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Since taking office, my Administration has made significant progress towards achieving equality for LGBT Americans. Last December, I was proud to sign the repeal of the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. With this repeal, gay and lesbian Americans will be able to serve openly in our Armed Forces for the first time in our Nation's history. Our national security will be strengthened and the heroic contributions these Americans make to our military, and have made throughout our history, will be fully recognized.

My Administration has also taken steps to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans in Federal housing programs and to give LGBT Americans the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital. We have made clear through executive branch nondiscrimination policies that discrimination on the basis of gender identity in the Federal workplace will not be tolerated. I have continued to nominate and appoint highly qualified, openly LGBT individuals to executive branch and judicial positions. Because we recognize that LGBT rights are human rights, my Administration stands with advocates of equality around the world in leading the fight against pernicious laws targeting LGBT persons and malicious attempts to exclude LGBT organizations from full participation in the international system.

We led a global campaign to ensure "sexual orientation" was included in the United Nations resolution on extrajudicial execution -- the only United Nations resolution that specifically mentions LGBT people -- to send the unequivocal message that no matter where it occurs, state-sanctioned killing of gays and lesbians is indefensible. No one should be harmed because of who they are or who they love, and my Administration has mobilized unprecedented public commitments from countries around the world to join in the fight against hate and homophobia.

At home, we are working to address and eliminate violence against LGBT individuals through our enforcement and implementation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. We are also working to reduce the threat of bullying against young people, including LGBT youth. My Administration is actively engaged with educators and community leaders across America to reduce violence and discrimination in schools. To help dispel the myth that bullying is a harmless or inevitable part of growing up, the First Lady and I hosted the first White House Conference on Bullying Prevention in March. Many senior Administration officials have also joined me in reaching out to LGBT youth who have been bullied by recording "It Gets Better" video messages to assure them they are not alone.

This month also marks the 30th anniversary of the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has had a profound impact on the LGBT community. Though we have made strides in combating this devastating disease, more work remains to be done, and I am committed to expanding access to HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Last year, I announced the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States. This strategy focuses on combinations of evidence-based approaches to decrease new HIV infections in high risk communities, improve care for people living with HIV/AIDS, and reduce health disparities. My Administration also increased domestic HIV/AIDS funding to support the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and HIV prevention, and to invest in HIV/AIDS-related research.

However, government cannot take on this disease alone. This landmark anniversary is an opportunity for the LGBT community and allies to recommit to raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and continuing the fight against this deadly pandemic.

Every generation of Americans has brought our Nation closer to fulfilling its promise of equality. While progress has taken time, our achievements in advancing the rights of LGBT Americans remind us that history is on our side, and that the American people will never stop striving toward liberty and justice for all.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2011 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.

BARACK OBAMA

30 Jahre AIDS - The Man Who Had HIV and Now Does Not

2011-06-06T21:03:00.000+02:00

Four years ago, Timothy Brown underwent an innovative procedure. Since then, test after test has found absolutely no trace of the virus in his body. The bigger miracle, though, is how his case has experts again believing they just might find a cure for AIDS.

By Tina Rosenberg
Published May 29, 2011

AIDS is a disease of staggering numbers, of tragically recursive devastation. Since the first diagnosis, 30 years ago this June 5, HIV has infected more than 60 million people, around 30 million of whom have died. For another 5 million, anti-retroviral therapy has made their infection a manageable though still chronic condition. Until four years ago, Timothy Brown was one of those people.
Brown is a 45-year-old translator of German who lives in San Francisco. He is of medium height and very skinny, with thinning brown hair. He found out he had HIV in 1995. He had not been tested for the virus in half a decade, but that year a former partner turned up positive. “You’ve probably got only two years to live,” the former partner told him when Brown got his results.
His partner was wrong—lifesaving anti-retrovirals were about to arrive—and Brown spent the next ten years living in Berlin, pursuing his career and enjoying the city by night. He was gregarious, a fast talker; when he went out, he’d always wind up the center of a group. “I used to be quite a flirt,” he tells me. “I would see someone in a café, bar, or disco and knew how to get what I wanted.” In 2006, Brown was living in Berlin with his boyfriend, a man named Michael from the former East Germany. That year, on a trip to New York for a wedding, he began to feel miserable. He chalked it up to jet lag, but it didn’t go away. Back in Berlin, his bike ride to work took so long that he got chewed out by his boss for lateness. Michael called his doctor, who saw Brown the next day.
The results came back: leukemia. A new, unrelated disease was now threatening his life. Michael cried. Brown was referred to Charité Medical University, where he was treated by Gero Hütter, a 37-year-old specialist in blood cancers.
After chemo, the leukemia came back. Brown’s last chance was a stem-cell transplant from a bone-marrow donor. Hütter had an idea. He knew little about HIV, but he remembered that people with a certain natural genetic mutation are very resistant to the virus. The mutation, called delta 32, disables CCR5, a receptor on the surface of immune-system cells that, in the vast majority of cases, is HIV’s path inside. People with copies from both parents are almost completely protected from getting HIV, and they are relatively common in northern Europe—among Germans, the rate is about one in a hundred. Hütter resolved to see if he could use a stem-cell donor with the delta-32 mutation to cure not just Brown’s leukemia but also his HIV.
Hütter found 232 donors worldwide who were matches for Brown. If probabilities held, two would have double delta 32. Hütter persuaded the people at the registry to test the donors for the mutation; his laboratory paid, at a cost of about $40 per sample. They worked through the list. Donor 61 was a hit.
His colleagues and the chief of his unit were dubious. “The main problem was that I was just a normal physician—I had no leading position. It was not always easy to get what we needed,” Hütter recalls. Brown himself was not pushing the idea. “At that point, I wasn’t that concerned about HIV, because I could keep taking medication,” he says.
Before Hütter asked the donor registry to begin testing, he’d searched the literature and contacted AIDS experts. It dawned on him that no one had ever done this before. “My first thought was, I’m wrong. There must be something I was missing.” In a sense, that was true. Gero Hütter did not know what most AIDS researchers and clinicians had taken as accepted wisdom: A cure was impossible.
The 1996 International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver brought the stunning announcement that a combination of three anti-retroviral drugs could keep HIV in check. David Ho, director of New York’s Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, went further. In the closing session, Ho said that it might be possible to eradicate the disease from the body with 18 to 36 months of therapy. Time magazine named Ho “Man of the Year.”
But Ho was too optimistic. Treatment with the drugs, no matter how early it’s begun, cannot eradicate HIV, because the virus hides, lurking in the brain or liver or gut without replicating, invisible to the immune system. It is waiting to come roaring back if therapy is stopped. Disillusioned, some cure researchers transferred their finite resources and energy to improving AIDS treatment or working on a vaccine. Money for cure research dried up. Some scientists took to calling it “the C-word” or “cure” with air quotes.

Meanwhile, advances in treatment have further shifted attention from the hunt for a cure. A study released in May found that early anti-retroviral therapy decreases patients’ infectiousness by a striking 96 percent. Today, most people on anti-retroviral drugs achieve an undetectable viral load—there is virtually no HIV circulating in their blood. An idea has taken hold: We can live with this.
But we cannot. Doctors will tell you that many patients still fail treatment and die. As people age with the disease, we are seeing that even those successfully treated can lose years of life. A massive multicountry study published in The Lancet in 2008 reported that someone starting therapy at age 20 could expect to live to only 63. The following year, another study found that a group of HIV-positive patients with a median age of 56 had immune systems comparable to those of healthy 88-year-olds. The latent reservoir of HIV seems to be most to blame, producing inflammation that degrades the immune system, increasing susceptibility to age-related diseases. What’s more, research has shown that the drugs themselves can lead to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.
The cost of treatment is also unsustainable. In the United States, second-line drugs—for people who don’t improve on standard medications—can total $30,000 a year. Cash-strapped states are trimming programs that pay for these medicines; there are now more than 8,300 people in America on waiting lists for anti-retroviral drugs. In developing countries, drugs are much cheaper—some generic regimens cost only $67 annually—but wealthy nations are wearying of picking up the bill. According to UNAIDS, 10 million people in the Third World who need treatment are not getting it at all. The math of the epidemic is unrelenting: For every three people who start treatment, five new people are infected.
A vaccine for AIDS is “probably decades away,” says Daria Hazuda, a vice-president at Merck. “There’s still an enormous amount of hope, but people now realize it’s going to be extremely complicated.” We know now that we will neither treat nor vaccinate our way out of this epidemic. But there could be another way for it to end.
In February 2007, Brown had his stem-cell transplant from Donor 61. Right before the procedure, he stopped taking his anti-retrovirals. He survived the operation—no small feat, since stem-cell transplants from unrelated donors kill a hefty minority of the people who undergo them. His initial recovery was encouraging. “I went back to work, started working out at a gym and riding my bicycle again,” he says.
Then Brown relapsed. In February 2008, Hütter did another transplant from Donor 61. (Going back to the same donor is standard; the patient is now accustomed to that immune system.) This time, the cancer seems to have stayed away. More striking: More than four years after he stopped taking anti-retroviral therapy, there is also no sign of HIV in his body. Brown is now surely one of the most biopsied humans on Earth. Samples from his blood, his brain, his liver, his rectum, have been tested over and over. People in whom the disease is controlled with anti-retroviral therapy will still have hidden HIV—perhaps a million copies. But with Brown, even the most sensitive tests detect no virus at all. Even if trace amounts remain (it is impossible to test every cell), it no longer matters. Absent the CCR5 receptors, any HIV still present cannot take root. He is cured.
A stem-cell transplant from an unrelated donor can cost $250,000 and is a reasonable risk only in the face of imminent death. What cured Timothy Brown is obviously not a cure for the rest of the world. But it is proof of concept, and it has jolted AIDS-cure research back to life. Sometimes science follows sentiment; the abandonment of cure research after the disillusion of the nineties is now playing out in reverse.
For Brown’s cure to be relevant on a wide scale, it would have to be possible to create the delta 32 mutation without a donor and without a transplant—preferably in the form of a single injection. As it happens, progress toward that goal has already begun, in the laboratory of Paula Cannon at the University of Southern California. Instead of a donor, Cannon is using a new form of gene editing known as zinc finger nucleases, developed by the California company Sangamo BioSciences. Zinc finger nucleases are synthetic proteins that act as genetic scissors. They can target and snip a specific part of the genetic blueprint: They can, for instance, cut out the code that produces the CCR5 receptor, yielding a cell with HIV resistance.
Cannon works with mice given human immune systems, since normal mice cannot get HIV. In one study, she took human stem cells, treated them to have the CCR5 mutation, and injected them into a group of mice, with another set of animals given untreated stem cells as a control. Then she infected both groups with HIV. The result, as published in Nature Biotechnology in July 2010: The control group got sick and died. The mice given the mutation fought off the virus and remained healthy.

Great leaps are still required to find ways to inject the zinc finger nucleases directly into a patient’s body. But an important leap has already been made. Gene therapy is allowing us to imagine a world of Timothy Browns, without everything he had to endure.
News of the Berlin Patient’s cure—Brown stepped forward to identify himself by name only late last year—made its debut at the February 2008 annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston. Hütter had submitted a paper to The New England Journal of Medicine and to the conference organizers as well, asking to present Brown’s results—no HIV a year after stopping treatment. The journal rejected his submission, and CROI only allotted Hütter space to put up a poster, the platform offered to present research considered of lesser importance.
Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a doctor at San Francisco General Hospital’s Positive Health Program—the newest name for the old Ward 86, the first-ever outpatient AIDS clinic—was among the few to appreciate the significance of Hütter’s display. “I said, ‘Wow, this is interesting. Why doesn’t anyone seem to care?’ ” Another was Jeffrey Laurence, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Virus Research at Weill Cornell Medical College and a senior scientific consultant for AMFAR. “I thought it was the most exciting thing I’d heard about since the discovery of the virus,” he says. “I couldn’t believe people didn’t take notice.” Laurence wrote an editorial about the Berlin Patient in The AIDS Reader. He received two letters. “It basically got ignored.”
Laurence asked Hütter to present his findings to a small meeting of top AIDS researchers at M.I.T. in September 2008. He also asked him to provide Brown’s samples to send to laboratories in the United States and Canada, which could run more sensitive tests. Again, all the samples were negative. Mark Schoofs, a Wall Street Journal reporter who’d been invited to attend the session, wrote an article about the Berlin Patient. The New England Journal of Medicine reconsidered its rejection of Hütter’s paper, publishing his results in February 2009.
The case caught the attention of a small activist organization called the AIDS Policy Project, which was trying to rehabilitate the idea of a cure. One of the things the group does is track the money going to cure research, as a way to highlight the need for more of it. Its founder and leader, Kate Krauss, is an organizer and publicist but not a fund-raiser—the group’s annual budget is roughly the price of a used car. She often travels to scientific conferences by bus.
The Project, together with officials from San Francisco, presented an award to Hütter in June 2010. Stephen LeBlanc, a patent attorney in Oakland active with the group, drove Hütter to the ceremony. He was startled when Hütter told him that this was the first such honor he had received. LeBlanc replied that he’d read that the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper had named Hütter a “Berliner of the Year.” Hütter smiled. “I came in ninth,” he said.
The AIDS Establishment, like many Establishments, tends to be suspicious of outsiders. Here comes a young doctor, not even prominent at his own hospital, who by his own admission knew next to nothing about AIDS, doing something never done before. As more of the research community became aware of Hütter’s claims, the prevailing view was: Who is this guy?
Robert Gallo, a co-discoverer of HIV, devoted his opening address at a major conference in December 2009 to an attack on Hütter’s results. Gallo simply didn’t believe them and warned that only a pathologist could declare the patient cured—once the patient was dead. Hütter, scheduled to speak at the same event, quickly amended his presentation. As he defended his results to a panel of skeptics, he showed the new slide: “Do we have to cut this patient into slices?” it asked.
When Kevin Robert Frost, the CEO of AMFAR, began to cite Hütter’s work in fund-raising pitches, he found that potential donors sought different proof. “They said if the Berlin Patient were true,” he says, “it would be on the front page of the New York Times.”
In fact, the Berlin Patient did appear in the Times—on page A12. The short article included quotes from Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the world’s most important gatekeeper of AIDS research. Unlike other experts, Fauci accepted that Brown had been cured. He just didn’t think it was anything to get excited about. “It’s very nice, and it’s not even surprising,” he said—meaning that if you take away someone’s immune system and give him a new one resistant to HIV, it’s logical that he would be cured of AIDS. “But it’s just off the table of practicality.”

It was a disingenuous dismissal: New treatments often start out dangerous, inconvenient, and expensive. It is only with additional research that they gradually morph into, say, a one-pill-a-day therapy that can be administered anywhere, as anti-retrovirals now are. “Picture Alexander Fleming with his vats of penicillin,” says Cannon, “and people saying, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s totally going to work in sub-Saharan Africa.’ ”
Among the big questions remaining about gene therapy is whether all relevant receptors need to be disabled to achieve full HIV resistance. CCR5 is by far the most important of those receptors, but it isn’t the only one, and we don’t yet know how significant this is. With Brown, it didn’t seem to matter. This could be because he had ablation—his immune system was wiped out by chemotherapy and radiation before his transplants. But that raises another puzzle: Could ablation itself be a necessary ingredient to a cure? Full ablation is a punishing experience, and even partial ablation requires hospitalization. No cure is practical on a wide scale if it must employ it.
Science, of course, has ways to find out. Building on Cannon’s work, a clinical trial in San Francisco and Philadelphia is testing whether using the genetic scissors not on stem cells but on T-cells—immune-system cells—to modify them with the CCR5 mutation can also yield HIV resistance. The use of T-cells has some disadvantages, but its big plus is that the procedure wouldn’t require ablation. “If that virus moves, it’s kind of a new universe,” says Jay Lalezari of Quest Clinical Research, one of the trial’s leaders.
Gene therapy is only one possible path to an AIDS cure, and the fact is, it may not be the best one. There is also a less flashy approach, one explored before cure acquired its air quotes: eradication, in which a patient on anti-retrovirals is given an additional drug that wakes up the latent virus so that it can be eliminated. Scientists have identified several different substances that can turn the virus on or off, but so far, none has worked safely in people.
Answers may be years away, but until recently, nobody was even asking the questions. They’re asking now—the International AIDS Society has just set up a working group on an AIDS cure. Despite the early doubters, “the Berlin Patient proved to be a tectonic shift in the way the scientific community looked at this issue,” says AMFAR’s Frost. “I’ve lived it—we started to talk about it internally, then in public. I got e-mails from prominent scientists warning me I was raising false hope. It wasn’t until there was a scientific consensus that the Berlin Patient was cured that people came around.”
If a cure for AIDS is no longer “the C-word,” it’s not yet clear that sufficient money will follow the renewed sense of hope. Gene-therapy research has been almost entirely financed by two new entities: One is Sangamo; the other is the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, which since 2007 has given out more than $40 million in grants for AIDS-cure research, including $14.5 million to Cannon.
While the pharmaceutical industry has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into developing AIDS treatments, most drug companies are sitting out cure research. (One big exception is Merck, which is funding studies of some of its drugs’ possible uses in eradication; Gilead is also looking at its compounds for cure candidates.) It’s no mystery why. “The whole field suffers from the lack of a business model,” says Jeff Sheehy, a San Francisco activist and CIRM board member. “A cure may make sense from a public-policy point of view, but not to a company.” Unlike treatment, which must be taken daily for life, a cure would be a one-time intervention. “It’s not that it’s sinister and they don’t want a cure. But it doesn’t fit.”
Drugmakers’ indifference can doom promising potential cures, as compounds owned by a company can’t be used by anyone else. Many AIDS researchers are particularly excited about the eradication possibilities of a substance developed by Medarex. But Medarex was bought in 2009 by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is testing the compound on cancer but doing nothing visible with it on HIV. (A spokeswoman says the company is “considering the use” of the drug in HIV research, but no trials are set.)
Nor has the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the world’s largest funder of AIDS research, made a priority of cure research. According to its own figures—as obtained and published by Krauss—the NIAID spent $40 million on cure research in 2009. That’s 3 percent of its total AIDS-research budget. (Fauci argues that this doesn’t take into account other research that may eventually apply to a cure.) Until recently, the NIAID did not even have an internal code for AIDS-cure work.

But the agency’s reservations about cure research may be softening slightly. Fauci says he hopes to spend some $60 million in the coming year. As of 2013, research networks that niaid funds will be required to include studies directed at a cure. Given Washington’s budget crisis, any increase in funding is noteworthy, and some are choosing to see it as a sign of new commitment. “Tony Fauci is definitely a believer,” says Deeks. He is? “The world has changed,” Deeks says, smiling. “In the past, no. In the future, yes.”
Fauci didn’t seem like a believer when I spoke with him. Gene therapy, he says, is “promising, but it ain’t gonna be easy.” Awakening the latent reservoir? “Nothing that’s a hot product.”
What the NIH spends on cure research “is not even close to enough,” says Frost. “It doesn’t come close to representing the genuine enthusiasm the scientific community feels about the issue—and we risk losing that enthusiasm. The science isn’t all that difficult. We’re closer than people think, and with the right financial investment, we can get there. The real question in my mind is, are we going to find the money to do it?”
Brown’s second transplant cured his leukemia, but it was much harder on him than the first. Neurological problems can be a side effect of the chemotherapy and irradiation used in ablation. In Brown’s case, his doctors suspected that the leukemia had infected his brain and ordered a biopsy. It was negative but brought new trouble. “The surgeons left air bubbles on my brain and had to perform emergency surgery to relieve the pressure,” Brown says. He temporarily lost the ability to walk and talk. Hütter says that CT scans show a scar inside Brown’s head. He cannot pinpoint exactly what happened.
Brown was in physical therapy for more than a year. His intellect is intact, but today he sometimes gropes for words. He still walks haltingly. “My public personality has changed,” he says. “I am not as outgoing as I once was—for better or worse. Part of it is that I no longer feel very attractive.”
In January, Brown moved to San Francisco. His new doctor is Deeks, who is both treating and studying him. Brown is happy to be studied. Aside from a brief stint with ACT UP when he lived in Seattle in 1989, he was never an activist. Being poked and prodded by doctors—and reporters—is his activism now. “I can help,” he says.
Brown’s neurological injuries are of no relevance to the question of how to cure AIDS, but they do serve as reminders of two things we already knew: Ablation is hell, and disease capricious. I asked Brown about living with the knowledge that something has happened to him that has happened to no one else. “I do wonder why,” he says, “but sort of in the same way that I wonder how I got leukemia in the first place. I guess I do not need to ask that question about why I got HIV.” He was twice diagnosed with a fatal disease and cured of both, only to be left impaired—possibly for life, probably by the very thing that cured him. It is not clear whether Brown is the luckiest man in the world or the unluckiest. He’s been lucky for the rest of us.

Illustrations by Matthew Woodson

30 Jahre AIDS

2011-06-05T20:37:00.002+02:00

30 Jahre AIDS - eine Chronik

AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) ist eine Viruserkrankung, die das Immunsystem des Menschen angreift und dauerhaft schwächt. Ausgelöst wird die Erkrankung durch das Virus HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus). Vermutlich erreichte das Virus Deutschland erstmals Ende der 70er Jahre. Erste Fälle wurden in den 80ern bekannt.
Nach Angaben des Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI) erkrankten seit dem Ausbruch der Epidemie in Deutschland rund 86,500 Menschen an HIV und 36,500 an AIDS.
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1981
Der Wissenschaftler Michael Gottlieb von der University of California, Los Angeles berichtet im Wochenblatt des US-amerikanischen Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vom 5. Juni 1981, über ungewöhnliche Pilzinfektionen und Lungenentzündungen bei fünf ansonsten völlig gesunden jungen schwulen Männern aus Los Angeles. Offenbar ist deren Immunsystem zusammengebrochen.

In der New York Times erscheint am 3. Juli 1981 ein Artikel von Lawrence K. Altman über eine Reihe ungewöhnlicher und ähnlicher Krankheitsfälle („Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals“). Die Erkrankten seien Homosexuelle mit vielen verschiedenen Sexualkontakten.

1982

In New York wird die Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) gegründet, die weltweit erste AIDS- Hilfsorganisation.

Auf einer Konferenz von Blutspendeorganisationen einigen sich die Teilnehmer am 27. Juli auf einen neuen Namen: AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome). Grund ist das Auftreten von AIDS-Fällen auch bei Drogengebrauchern und Blutern. Bis dahin verwenden die Medien Bezeichnungen wie „Gay Cancer“ (Schwulenkrebs).

Im Juli wird in Frankfurt am Main erstmals bei einem Patienten in der Bundesrepublik AIDS diagnostiziert.

1983
Anfang 1983 weisen Luc Montagnier und Francoise Barre-Sinoussi vom Institut Pasteur in Paris Partikel eines Retrovirus nach und nennen ihn zunächst LAV (Lymphadenopathie-assoziiertes Virus). Im Mai veröffentlicht Montagnier das erste Bild des Erregers. 2008 erhält das Forschungsduo für seine Entdeckung den Medizin-Nobelpreis.

Der Spiegel bringt in Heft 23/1983 die erste AIDS Titel-Story und löst mit dem unsensiblen Artikel aus, dass gegen Schwule gehetzt wird.

Ab September 1983 werden erste AIDS-Hilfen in der BRD gegründet (in Berlin und München). Am 23. September entsteht in Berlin der Dachverband „Deutsche A.I.D.S.-Hilfe e.V.“ (DAH).

1984
Am 1. Oktober beginnt die Pflicht zum Testen von Blutprodukten auf HIV-Antikörper. Die HIV-Infektionen bei Hämophilie-Patienten gehen drastisch zurück.

1985
Die Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (BZgA) wendet sich mit einer Postwurfsendung „AIDS – Was Sie über AIDS wissen sollten“ an alle 27 Millionen „Haushaltungen“ der Bundesrepublik.

In Atlanta/USA findet die erste internationale Aids-Konferenz statt.

Am 2. Oktober 1985 stirbt US-Schauspieler Rock Hudson an den Folgen von AIDS. Sein Coming-out kurz vor seinem Tod – als schwul und HIV-positiv – sorgt weltweit für Aufsehen.

Elizabeth Taylor startet ihren unermüdlichen Kampfg gegen AIDS. Die Hollywood-Legende ist Mitgründerin der Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

1986
Mit dem bis dahin erfolglos gegen Krebs eingesetzten Medikament AZT nimmt die AIDS-Forschung im März eine entscheidende Wende: Erstmals zeichnet sich ein Medikament gegen HIV ab.

Die Internationale Kommission für Virus-Taxonomie benennt LAV und HTLV III während eines AIDS-Kongresses im Mai in Paris um in „Human Immuno Deficiency Virus“ (HIV).

1987
Princess Diana eröffnet am 9. April die erste auf HIV spezialisierte Krankenhausabteilung, das London Lighthouse. Insbesondere die Tatsache, dass Diana AIDS-Patienten die Hand gibt, ohne Handschuhe zu tragen, erregt Aufmerksamkeit – obwohl die Übertragungswege von HIV längst bekannt sind.

Die Kampagne „Gib AIDS keine Chance“ der Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung startet.

Am 25. Februar 1987 beschliesst die bayerische Staatsregierung einen „Massnahmenkatalog zur Abwehr von AIDS“ (u.a. mit der Möglichkeit „Ansteckungsverdächtige“ zum HIV-Test vorzuladen). Medienwirksamer Verfechter des Katalogs ist Innenstaatssekretär Peter Gauweiler (CSU). Am 24. Oktober kommt es in München zu einer Demonstration gegen die bayerische Vorgehensweise.

Am 17. März wird AZT (Retrovir) als erstes Medikament gegen AIDS zugelassen. Ein Meilenstein für die Behandelbarkeit von HIV – und für die Medizingeschichte: AZT ist bis dato das teuerste verschreibungspflichtige Medikament. Die Behandlungskosten betragen rund $10,000 pro Jahr.

1988
Die Vereinten Nationen rufen den 1.Dezember zum Welt-AIDS-Tag aus.

1990
Im März wird die “AIDS-Hilfe DDR e.V.” gegründet und als Verein eingetragen. In der DDR gründen sich im Laufe des Jahres 15 Aidshilfen, 14 von ihnen werden Mitglied der AIDS-Hilfe DDR.

1991

Das von der Künstler-Gruppe Visual AIDS in New York entwickelte Red Ribbon wird als internationales Symbol eingeführt. Über 100,000 werden am 20. April im Londoner Wembley-Stadion verteilt – bei einem Gedenkkonzert für den an HIV verstorbenen Freddie Mercury.

1992
Die urprünglich für Boston geplante Internationale AIDS-Konferenz findet vom 19. bis 24. Juli in Amsterdam statt. Der Grund: die US-Regierung hält an ihrer Regelung fest, HIV-Positiven die Einreise in die USA zu verwehren.

Elton John gründet die Elton John AIDS Foundatio.

1994
Mit „Philadelphia“ kommt der erste grosse Hollywood-Film über AIDS in die Kinos. Für seine bewegende Darstellung eines AIDS-Patienten bekommt Tom Hanks den Oscar.

1995
Studien zeigen endgültig, dass die kombinierte Behandlung zweier Wirkstoffe besser als eine Monotherapie wirkt. Die Zweierkombi wird neuer Behandlungsstandard.

1996
Die Vereinten Nationen schaffen mit UNAIDS ein spezielles Programm, um die internationalen Maßnahmen gegen die HIV-Epidemie abzustimmen.

Optimismus bei der 11. Welt-AIDS-Konferenz in Vancouver: Die neuen Proteasehemmer versprechen einen Durchbruch bei der Behandlung von HIV. Die Ära der Kombinationstherapien (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, kurz HAART) beginnt. Nachteile wie Nebenwirkungen und Resistenzbildungen werden erst in den Folgejahren bekannt.

1997

Die erste Multi-Wirkstoff Tablette wird zugelassen. Combivir beinhaltet Retrovir und Epivir.

Die US-amerikanischen CDC berichten, dass erstmals die Zahl der jährlichen AIDS-Toten gesunken ist. Ende 1997 leben etwa 30 Millionen Menschen mit HIV/AIDS, 2.3 Millionen sterben an den Folgen von AIDS.

1998
Auf der 12. Internationalen AIDS-Konferenz in Genf wird die Beteiligung der Community der Menschen mit HIV/AIDS auf allen Ebenen der Vorbereitung und Durchführung im so genannten Genfer Prinzip festgeschrieben. Dieses Prinzip wurde später (1999) auch in Deutschland übernommen.

1999
AIDS ist weltweit zur vierthäugisten Todesursache geworden.

2000
Die Vereinten Nationen beschliessen die Einrichtung des Global Fund zur Bekämpfung von Aids, Tuberkulose und Malaria, der drei schwersten Epidemien des Jahrhunderts.

2001
Fachleute registrieren in Deutschland – wie zuvor schon in anderen Industrieländern – eine Zunahme neuer HIV-Diagnosen.

2003
Anlässlich des Welt-Aids-Tags verkündet die Welt-Gesundheits-Organisation WHO ihre Initiative 3 by 5 – bis Ende 2005 sollen drei Millionen HIV-Infizierte in armen Staaten eine antiretrovirale Therapie erhalten. Leider wird das ehrgeizige Ziel nicht erreicht werden.

2006
Im Januar wird in den USA mit Atripla die erste einmal tägliche Dreier-Kombi in einer Pille zugelassen. Die HIV-Therapie wird immer einfacher.

2007
bis heute: Die jährlichen Neuinfektionen in Deutschland stabilisieren sich bei rund 3,000 pro Jahr.

2010
Nach mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten heben die USA das seit 1987 geltende Einreiseverbot für HIV-Positive zu Jahresbeginn endgültig auf. Das Verbot habe „mit Angst zu tun, nicht mit Fakten“, sagt US-Präsident Barack Obama.

2011
Annie Lennox wird für ihren Einsatz gegen Armut und AIDS in Afrika von der britischen Queen als ‘Offizierin’ in den Orden des britischen Empire aufgenommen.

Am 23. März 2011 stirbt Elizabeth Taylor. Sie war die erste Prominente, die sich in den USA seit 1985 gegen AIDS und für HIV-Positive engagierte. Dame Elizabeth sammelte Spenden von über $100 Millionen für die AIDS-Bekämpfung.

30 Jahre AIDS - Die erste wissenschaftliche Erwähnung von HIV/AIDS vom 5.Juni 1981

2011-06-05T17:36:00.001+02:00

Am 5. Juni 1981 berichtete Dr. Michael Gottlieb (UCLA) im Mitteilungsblatt der U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) von fünf jungen Männern, die an einer seltenen Form von Lungenentzündung erkrankt waren, verursacht durch den Pilz Pneumocystis jirovecii. Solche Infektionen sind sehr selten, weil ein gesundes Immunsystem den Erreger abwehrt. Auffällig bei den Patienten: alle fünf waren homosexuell. Im Juni 1981 hatte die Krankheit noch keinen Namen, niemand wusste, dass es sich um ein Virus handelt. Trotzdem markiert der Bericht des CDC den Beginn der AIDS-Ära, denn darin wird HIV/AIDS zum ersten Mal wissenschaftlich erwähnt.

Was Dr Gottlieb heute zu dem Bericht von damals und Leben mit HIV/AIDS heute zu sagen hat, seht ihr im folgenden Video:

Pneumocystis Pneumonia -- Los Angeles

By M.S. Gottlieb, M.D., H.M. Schanker, M.D., P.T. Fan, M.D., A. Saxon, M.D., J.D. Weisman, D.O., I. Pozalski, M.D.
From U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

June 5, 1981

In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection. Case reports of these patients follow.

Patient 1: A previously healthy 33-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia and oral mucosal candidiasis in March 1981 after a 2-month history of fever associated with elevated liver enzymes, leukopenia, and CMV viruria. The serum complement-fixation CMV titer in October 1980 was 256; in may 1981 it was 32.* The patient's condition deteriorated despite courses of treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX), pentamidine, and acyclovir. He died May 3, and postmortem examination showed residual P. carinii and CMV pneumonia, but no evidence of neoplasia.

Patient 2: A previously healthy 30-year-old man developed p. carinii pneumonia in April 1981 after a 5-month history of fever each day and of elevated liver-function tests, CMV viruria, and documented seroconversion to CMV, i.e., an acute-phase titer of 16 and a convalescent-phase titer of 28* in anticomplement immunofluorescence tests. Other features of his illness included leukopenia and mucosal candidiasis. His pneumonia responded to a course of intravenous TMP/.SMX, but, as of the latest reports, he continues to have a fever each day.

Patient 3: A 30-year-old man was well until January 1981 when he developed esophageal and oral candidiasis that responded to Amphotericin B treatment. He was hospitalized in February 1981 for P. carinii pneumonia that responded to TMP/SMX. His esophageal candidiasis recurred after the pneumonia was diagnosed, and he was again given Amphotericin B. The CMV complement-fixation titer in March 1981 was 8. Material from an esophageal biopsy was positive for CMV.

Patient 4: A 29-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia in February 1981. He had had Hodgkins disease 3 years earlier, but had been successfully treated with radiation therapy alone. He did not improve after being given intravenous TMP/SMX and corticosteroids and died in March. Postmortem examination showed no evidence of Hodgkins disease, but P. carinii and CMV were found in lung tissue.

Patient 5: A previously healthy 36-year-old man with clinically diagnosed CMV infection in September 1980 was seen in April 1981 because of a 4-month history of fever, dyspnea, and cough. On admission he was found to have P. carinii pneumonia, oral candidiasis, and CMV retinitis. A complement-fixation CMV titer in April 1981 was 128. The patient has been treated with 2 short courses of TMP/SMX that have been limited because of a sulfa-induced neutropenia. He is being treated for candidiasis with topical nystatin.

The diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia was confirmed for all 5 patients antemortem by closed or open lung biopsy. The patients did not know each other and had no known common contacts or knowledge of sexual partners who had had similar illnesses. Two of the 5 reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners. All 5 reported using inhalant drugs, and 1 reported parenteral drug abuse. Three patients had profoundly depressed in vitro proliferative responses to mitogens and antigens. Lymphocyte studies were not performed on the other 2 patients.

Editorial Note

Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients.¹ The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population. All 5 patients described in this report had laboratory-confirmed CMV disease or virus shedding within 5 months of the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia. CMV infection has been shown to induce transient abnormalities of in vitro cellular-immune function in otherwise healthy human hosts.^2,3 Although all 3 patients tested had abnormal cellular-immune function, no definitive conclusion regarding the role of CMV infection in these 5 cases can be reached because of the lack of published data on cellular-immune function in healthy homosexual males with and without CMV antibody. In 1 report, 7 (3.6%) of 194 patients with pneumocystosis also had CMV infection' 40 (21%) of the same group had at least 1 other major concurrent infection.¹ A high prevalence of CMV infections among homosexual males was recently reported: 179 (94%) had CMV viruria; rates for 101 controls of similar age who were reported to be exclusively heterosexual were 54% for seropositivity and zero fro viruria.⁴ In another study of 64 males, 4 (6.3%) had positive tests for CMV in semen, but none had CMV recovered from urine. Two of the 4 reported recent homosexual contacts. These findings suggest not only that virus shedding may be more readily detected in seminal fluid than urine, but also that seminal fluid may be an important vehicle of CMV transmission.⁵
All the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis. Although the role of CMV infection in the pathogenesis of pneumocystosis remains unknown, the possibility of P. carinii infection must be carefully considered in a differential diagnosis for previously healthy homosexual males with dyspnea and pneumonia.

M.S. Gottlieb, M.D., H.M. Schanker, M.D., P.T. Fan, M.D., A. Saxon, M.D. and J.D. Weisman, D.O., are with the Division of Clinical Immunology-Allergy at the Department of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine. I. Pozalski, M.D., is with the Cedars-Mt. Siani Hospital, Los Angeles and the Field Services Division, Epidemiology Program Office at the CDC.

References

Walzer PD, Perl DP, Krogstad DJ, Rawson G, Schultz MG. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in the United States. Epidemiologic, diagnostic, and clinical features. Ann Intern Med 1974;80:83-93.
Rinaldo CR, Jr, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Interaction of cytomegalovirus with leukocytes from patients with mononucleosis due to cytomegalovirus. J Infect Dis 1977;136:667-78.
Rinaldo CR, Jr, Carney WP, Richter BS, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Mechanisms of immunosuppression in cytomegaloviral mononucleosis. J Infect Dis 1980;141:488-95.
Drew WL, Mintz L, Miner RC, Sands M, Ketterer B. Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection in homosexual men. J Infect Dis 1981;143:188-92.
Lang DJ, Kummer JF. Cytomegalovirus in semen: observations in selected populations. J Infect Dis 1975; 132:472-3.

Der Tag, an dem sich für Montgomery Clift alles änderte

2011-05-12T00:21:00.000+02:00

Above is a photo of American actor Montgomery Clift’s automobile after it skidded off a dark road and smashed into a telephone pole. Clift, along with actor Kevin McCarthy, had been attending a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s house in Beverly Hills. When they left, they got into their respective cars and began driving down the steep, curving road. We’ll let McCarthy describe what happened next:

Behind me I saw Monty’s carlights weave from one side of the road to the other and then I heard a terrible crash. A cloud of dust appeared in my rearview mirror. I stopped and ran back. Monty’s car was crumpled like an accordion against a telephone pole. The motor was running like hell. I could smell gas. I managed to reach in the window and turn off the ignition, but it was so dark I couldn’t see inside the car. I didn’t know where Monty was. He seemed to have disappeared. I ran and drove my car back and shone my headlights into Monty’s car. Then I saw him curled under the dashboard. His face was torn away—a bloody pulp. I thought he was dead. I drove back to Elizabeth’s shaking like a leaf and pounded on the door. “There’s been a terrible accident!” I yelled. “I don’t know whether Monty’s alive or dead—get an ambulance quick!” Mike Wilding and I both tried to keep Elizabeth from coming down to the car with us, but she fought us off like a tiger. “No! No! I’m going to Monty!” she screamed, and she raced down the hill. She was like Mother Courage. Monty’s car was so crushed you couldn’t open the front door, so Liz got through the back door and crawled over the seat. Then she crouched down and cradled Monty’s head in her lap. Then he started to choke. Some of his teeth had been knocked out and his two front teeth were lodged in his throat. I’ll never forget what Liz did. She stuck her fingers down his throat and pulled those teeth. Otherwise he would have choked to death.

This happened on May 12, 1956.

Der Kniefall von Warschau

2010-12-05T23:01:00.000+01:00

7.Dezember 1970: Der Kniefall von Warschau

Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt legte am 7.12.1970 vor dem Ehrenmal der Helden des Ghettos in Warschau einen Kranz nieder. Nach dem Richten der Kranzschleife verharrte er nicht wie üblich stehend, sondern kniete einige Zeit schweigend nieder, erhob sich wieder und ging an der Spitze seiner Delegation fort.

"Wenn dieser ... für das Verbrechen nicht mitverantwortliche, damals nicht dabeigewesene Mann nun dennoch auf eigenes Betreiben seinen Weg durchs ehemalige Warschauer Getto nimmt und dort niederkniet -- dann kniet er da also nicht um seinetwillen. Dann kniet er, der das nicht nötig hat, da für alle, die es nötig haben, aber nicht da knien -- weil sie es nicht wagen oder nicht können oder nicht wagen können. Dann bekennt er sich zu einer Schuld, an der er selber nicht zu tragen hat, und bittet um eine Vergebung, derer er selber nicht bedarf. Dann kniet er da für Deutschland." - Hermann Schreiber, der zugegen gewesen war, eine Woche später in Der Spiegel.

Die Demutsbekundung war überraschend: für die Delegation, die Gastgeber und die Öffentlichkeit. International wurde sie als Bitte um Vergebung gewertet und ebnete der Ostpolitik den Weg, für die Willy Brandt 1971 den Nobelpreis für Frieden bekam. In der Bundesrepublik stiess der Kniefall auch auf Ablehnung - vor allem aus den Reihen der CDU. Einer Der Spiegel-Umfrage zufolge fanden damals 48% der West-Deutschen den Kniefall übertrieben, 41% angemessen, 11% hatten keine Meinung dazu.

Im Rückblick ist man sich einig, dass der Kniefall eine wichtige Rolle bei der Entspannung zwischen den Blöcken spielte. Der am gleichen Tag unterzeichnete Warschauer Vertrag erkannte die Unverletzlichkeit der faktischen polnischen Grenzen an.

Viel wurde darüber spekuliert, ob Brandt spontan gehandelt habe. Er selbst schrieb dazu in seinen 1989 erschienen Erinnerungen:

Immer wieder bin ich gefragt worden, was es mit dieser Geste auf sich gehabt habe. Ob sie etwa geplant gewesen sei? Nein, das war sie nicht. Meine engen Mitarbeiter waren nicht weniger überrascht als jene Reporter und Fotografen, die neben mir standen, und als jene, die der Szene ferngeblieben waren, weil sie »Neues« nicht erwarteten.
Ich hatte nichts geplant, aber Schloss Wilanow, wo ich untergebracht war, in dem Gefühl verlassen, die Besonderheit des Gedenkens am Ghetto-Monument zum Ausdruck bringen zu müssen. Am Abgrund der deutschen Geschichte und unter der Last der Millionen Ermordeten tat ich, was Menschen tun, wenn die Sprache versagt.

Egon Bahr äusserte sich 1996 in seinen Erinnerungen Zu meiner Zeit :

Als die Wagenkolonne sich zum Ghetto-EhrenmaI in Bewegung setzt, vergleichen Berthold Beitz und ich unsere Eindrücke. Wir steigen in Ruhe aus und haben es nicht eilig, uns der dichten Menge von Journalisten und Photographen zu nähern - da wird es plötzlich ganz still. Dass dieses hartgesottene Völkchen verstummt, ist selten. Beim Nähertreten flüstert einer: »Er kniet.« Gesehen habe ich das Bild erst, als es um die Welt ging. Den Freund zu fragen, habe ich mich auch am Abend beim letzten Whisky gescheut. Dass einer, der frei von geschichtlicher Schuld, geschichtliche Schuld seines Volkes bekannte, war ein Gedanke, aber grosse Worte zwischen uns waren unüblich. »Ich hatte das Empfinden, ein Neigen des Kopfes genügt nicht.«

Auf dem Willy-Brandt-Platz etwa 150 Meter vom Ehrenmal der Helden des Ghettos, bis zum Bau des Museum der Geschichte der polnischen Juden in Sichtweite des Ehrenmals, erinnert seit dem Jahr 2000 eine Gedenkplakette an das Ereignis.

Bis heute hat sich gerade auch unter jüngeren Deutschen kein anderes Bild von Willy Brandt so stark eingeprägt. Ein Kanzler, der als Emigrant persönlich nicht in die Verbrechen der Nationalsozialisten verstrickt war und für die deutsche Vergangenheit auf diese Weise die Mitschuld übernahm, beeindruckte viele im In- und Ausland. «Dieses Bild werde ich mein Leben lang vor Augen haben», sagte Gerhard Schröder vor zehn Jahren, als er auf dem Willy-Brandt-Platz in Warschau ein die Gedenktafel enthüllte. Nach Überzeugung dvon Alt-Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker hat Brandt mit dieser «unerhörten Tat» sogar die EU-Osterweiterung erst ermöglicht.

Schwule Emanzipation am Ende?

2010-05-16T16:27:00.000+02:00

Lesben und Schwule müssen sich nicht mehr verstecken. Nicht zuletzt zehn Jahre Homo-Ehe, offen schwule Popstars und Politiker, aber auch lesbische TV-Größen sorgen für Selbstbewusstsein.

Die meisten Medien haben viel Verständnis. Außenminister Guido Westerwelle plauderte über sein Schwulsein sogar in der Jugendzeitschrift «Bravo». Die Insolvenz des schwulen TV- Senders Timm könnte man außerdem so auslegen, dass keine Extrawurst mehr nötig ist. Und das Web sorgt sowieso für unendliche Freiheit. Doch herrscht wirklich Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen?

Die Begriffe «schwul» und «lesbisch» rufen in jedem etwas anderes hervor - das ist auch bei den Leuten so, die sich selbst vom eigenen Geschlecht erotisch angezogen fühlen. Viele Jüngere können mit den Kampfbegriffen aus den 70er Jahren nichts mehr anfangen. Sie sehen damit überkommene Verhaltensweisen verbunden und eine offensive Rolle des Andersseins, die sie nicht einnehmen wollen.

Dazu kommt das Internet, das den Rückzug ins Private einfach macht und gleichzeitig viel Raum schafft, sich auszuleben. Außer in Großstädten, vor allem in Berlin mit seiner riesigen Homo-Szene, ziehen viele inzwischen die Aktivität im Web der öffentlichen Aktion vor - oft tun sie das aber auch nur, weil das bequemer ist und man keine Blicke oder Getuschel aushalten muss.

Mancher Schwule alter Schule ist währenddessen genervt von zu viel Verständnis oder sogar positiver Diskriminierung. «Wir sind nur noch das hippe Ambiente für den weltoffenen Mainstream, das aufregende Umfeld für das langweilige Leben anderer», beschwerte sich ein Leserbriefschreiber im Hamburger Schwulenmagazin «Hinnerk». Grund: Im eigentlich schwullesbischen Café Gnosa machen angeblich zu viele Hetero-Frauen die «schwule Wohnzimmerkultur» kaputt. «Ganz ehrlich, so hab' ich mir die Gleichstellung nicht vorgestellt.»

Doch denken jetzt wirklich alle, Schwule haben die schöneren Cafés, die cooleren Clubs, die witzigeren Klamotten? «Seit dem Jahr 2008 steigt die sogenannte Homophobie (Schwulenfeindlichkeit) wieder an, nachdem sie jahrelang kontinuierlich abnahm», sagt Prof. Dr. Andreas Zick von der Uni Bielefeld. Der Wissenschaftler vom Institut für Interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung stützt sich auf repräsentative Umfragen in einem Forschungsprojekt zu «gruppenbezogener Menschenfeindlichkeit». In einer Umfrage Ende 2008 stimmten 38 Prozent der Deutschen der Auffassung zu, Homosexualität sei unmoralisch.

Das «sexuelle Vorurteil» hängt laut Zick mit einer Palette anderer Vorurteile zusammen - es komme fast nie alleine vor. Nach wie vor ist «schwul» ein Schimpfwort auf Schulhöfen und in Stadien. Gerade im Fußball gibt es noch viel Gedruckse beim Thema Homosexualität - mittlerweile ist es ein Klassiker politisch korrekter Meinungsäußerung, das zu beanstanden.

Eine andere Erkenntnis bei aufmerksamer Gesellschaftsbeobachtung dürfte sein, dass die schlimmsten Schwulenfeinde oft selber homophil sind, um es mit einem altbackenen Begriff zu umschreiben. Mancher Verklemmte wirft Homosexualität sogar mit Pädophilie in einen Topf - sei es aus Boshaftigkeit oder Dummheit.

In der Politik ist Schwulenfeindlichkeit dagegen inzwischen weitgehend passé. Kaum jemand nimmt noch an, dass männerliebende Männer nicht führen können, aber auch nicht, dass sie reibungsloser regieren - und das ist auch gut so. Egal, ob Ole von Beust (CDU) in Hamburg oder Klaus Wowereit (SPD) in Berlin: Politiker polarisieren. In einer Demokratie sind sie dafür da. Für Guido Westerwelle (FDP) gilt das aber besonders. Er hat sich viele Gegner erarbeitet, bis hin zu Gruppen wie «Gays against Guido».

Kompliziert wurde es, als Westerwelle vor ein paar Wochen wegen seiner Amtsführung angegangen wurde. Es ging um seine Reise- Entourage. Parteifreunde verdächtigten Kritiker der Homophobie. Jens Jessen schrieb in der Wochenzeitung «Die Zeit», ein solcher Einwand könne «das Klischee des larmoyanten Schwulen» wiederbeleben: «Die Unterstellung ist vor allem höchst riskant. Sie ruft etwas wieder auf, was der größte Teil der Gesellschaft überwunden hat, aber womöglich, mit der Nase darauf gestoßen, wiederentdecken könnte.»

Die Situation von Lesben und Schwulen ist also widersprüchlich. Einerseits schafft das Internet Freiheit, andererseits ist es eine Art Rückzugsgebiet. Einerseits fühlen sich manche Schwule von zu viel Verständnis erdrückt, andererseits moralisiert fast die Hälfte der Bevölkerung noch immer ihr Privatleben. Und dann noch das: Mancher Politiker verwechselt Kritik an einem Schwulen mit Homophobie und ein liberaler Kommentator warnt Homosexuelle, bitte nicht angeblich überwundene Vorurteile zu bestätigen. Deutschland im Jahr 2010.

dpa Feature vom 16.Mai 2010

Remembering Michael Jackson

2009-07-03T05:03:00.001+02:00

"Talent besitzt jemand der ein Ziel erreicht, das andere nie erreichen werden. Ein Genie erreicht ein Ziel, das andere nicht mal sehen."

Michael Jackson war in der Tat ein Genie. Trotz der Dämonen, dem Wacko Jacko Verhalten und all den schrecklichen Vorwürfen – was ich jetzt betrauere ist das Genie seiner Musik. Man könnte (und einige tun das auch) über Michael Jackson erzählen, ohne ein gutes Wort über ihn zu verlieren, aber das wird hier nicht passieren. The King of Pop lebte und starb kontrovers, aber er wird noch lange als Ikone in Erinnerung bleiben. Und das, was wir ihm vorgeworfen und über ihn geschmissen haben, es wird nichts mehr bedeuten.

Denn: Michael Jackson brachte uns dazu, zu tanzen!

Es geht nicht darum, wieviele Rekorde er hält oder wieviele Platten er verkauft hat. Es geht auch nicht um die Hysterie, die ihn begleitete seit er ein kleiner Junge war. Es geht nicht um den Moonwalk. Es geht darum, dass er uns dazu brachte, Tanzen zu wollen. Wir wollten zu seiner Musik tanzen und glücklich sein. Diese Welt ist keine Welt, die gerne tanzt. Sie liebt, sie hasst, sie singt und sie zieht in Kriege. Michael Jackson brachte der Welt das Tanzen bei.

Wenn jemand stirbt, der einen grossen Teil unseres Lebens begleitet, dann geht ein Teil von uns mit ihm. Heute ist CSD in Berlin und ich bin nicht hingegangen. Ich bin traurig weil Michael Jackson auch einen Teil von mir mitgenommen hat. Das mag total bescheuert klingen, und ich kann es noch nicht mal erklären. Ich war ja nicht mal ein echter Fan. Aber Michael Jackson war ein Teil meiner Kindheit, er war Teil meiner Jugend und als Erwachsener war er sogar Teil meines Berufs.

Natürlich werden die hässlichen Ereignisse und die Dämonen Teil seines Vermächtnis sein, aber unterm Strich soll sein Genie über allem stehen. Seine Musik. Seine Gabe, uns tanzen zu lassen.

Ich empfand Michael Jackson immer als ganz netten Menschen. Ein scheues, leises Reh umgeben von einem Rudel Wölfe das scheinbar mehr Verwirrung stiftete als ohnehin schon da war. Die ihn um das Geschenk seiner Freundschaft anbettelten, die ihn ausnutzten, ihn zerfleischten und abhauten, als er er für sie nichts mehr wert war. Seine Mutter, seine Geschwister waren immer dann da, wenn das Rudel sich abgewendet hat. Wie oft wurde ihnen das Herz gebrochen und wie oft standen sie ihm in seinen dunklen Tagen bei. Fast schon paradox, dass ausgerechnet sein Herz jetzt nicht mehr schlägt.

Was jetzt? Es wird kein Comeback geben. Keine Gerüchte. Wir werden keine Wacko Jacko Momente mehr erleben. Keine Masken mehr. Ja, er hinterlässt einen rechtlichen und finanziellen Scherbenhaufen. Aber der soll von anderen aufgeräumt werden. Der Welt, uns und mir hinterlässt er das Geschenk seiner Musik. Sein Genie. Die Beats. Die Grooves. Die Bewegungen. Den Tanz. Den unvergesslichen Soundtrack zu Teilen unseres Lebens. Die eigentliche Tragödie ist gar nicht, dass Michael Jackson tot ist. Das wirklich Tragische ist, dass er der unserem Leben soviel schenkte, selbst nie ein echtes Leben hatte.

Wenn wir in diesen Tagen in den Himmel schauen, dann wollen wir das mit einem Danke tun. Danke dafür, dass wir Michael Jackson hatten.

Danke für den Tanz!

Happy Birthday, Donald Duck!

2009-06-10T13:27:00.001+02:00

DONALD DUCK

9.Juni 1934

Wie heisst Donald Duck mit zweitem Vornamen? Das ist eine Frage, die jetzt auch endlich beantwortet werden kann.

In den 40ern wich Walt Disney von einer seiner eisernen Regeln ab, die bis dahin lautete: "No Politics in Duckburg". Mit einer Reihe von patriotischen
Trickfilmen unterstützte er die US-Regierung und vor allem die US-Armee im Kampf gegen die Nazis. Donald, der damals schon ein extrem populärer Star war, spielte hier grosse Rollen. Für den Kurzfilm er Fuehrer's Face erhielt er sogar einen Oscar.

Am 1. Mai 1942 hatte der Trickfilm Donald Gets Drafted Premiere. Der Film beginnt damit, dass Donald seinen Einberufungsbescheid zur Armee erhält. Und just auf diesem "offiziellen Regierungsdokument" steht deutlich zu lesen: Donald Fauntleroy Duck! In der letzten Szene sieht man Donald Duck Kartoffeln schälen; mal wieder eine grandiose Karriere ...

Geburt eines Weltstars: Donald Duck in dem Kurzfilm The Wise Little Hen, der am 9.6.1934 Premiere hatte.

Donald = Phantomias

Es schlägt Mitternacht in Entenhausen, die Stunde der Diebe, Verbrecher und Ganoven - Zeit für Donald, sein Kostüm anzuziehen. Seit 1969 beschützt er nun schon als Phantomias das nächtliche Entenhausen – ein weiteres Jubiläum das der Erpel dieses Jahr feiern kann.

Zu Beginn ging es Donald als Phantomias ausschliesslich darum, sich an seinen Verwandten zu rächen oder sein tägliches Leben angenehmer zu gestalten. Dann aber wurden seine nächtlichen Patrouillen immer wichtiger und der Kampf gegen das Verbrechen bekam schnell höchste Priorität. Donald dreht in seiner Rolle als Superheld so richtig auf: moderne Waffen, schnelles Auto und fiese Gegner - alles was ein Held zum Glücklichsein braucht.
Und auch nach 40 Jahren staunen wir nicht schlecht, was ein Kostüm und hehre Ziele bewirken können: vom faulen Erpel zum Retter von Entenhausen – ein echter Superheld eben.

Amazon.de Widgets

THE STORY OF BARBIE

2009-03-09T04:36:00.000+01:00

Barbara Millicent Roberts
*9.März 1959, New York (International Toy Fair)

Fashion Icon, Superstar, Pop-Kultur Phänomen, Supermodel und bestimmt noch viele andere Superlative mehr, das ist Barbara Millicent Roberts aka Barbie. Die erfolgreichste Puppe der Welt wird 50 und natürlich sieht man es ihr nicht an. Deshalb links mal ein Tip, wie Barbie heute aussehen würde, wenn die Jahre Spuren hinterlassen hätten.

Mini-Biographie:
Barbie stammt aus Wisconsin, ihre Eltern hiessen George und Margaret, ihre Schwester ist die jüngere Skipper. Die Familie zog später nach New York und besuchte die Manhattan International High School. 1961 lernte sie on-off Beau Ken kennen, mit dem sie bis 2004 verheiratet war. Ihre älteste Freundin, seit 1963, ist Midge. Nach einer Affaire mit Blaine ist Barbie seit 2006 wieder mit Ken zusammen. Barbie hatte über 40 Tiere, sie arbeitete als Stewardess, Pilotin, Tierärztin, Diplomatin und Astronautin. In den 90er Jahren kandidierte sie mehrmals für das Amt der US-Präsidentin. Barbie ist genau 29.2 cm gross und wiegt 206 Gramm.

Die Geschichte von Barbie ist mal wieder eine Geschichte, an der die Deutschen mitgeschrieben haben.
Das Vorbild für Barbie war nämlich die Bild-Lilli - ursprünglich ein Comic, der von 1952 - 1961 in der Bild Zeitung erschien.
Die Figur (die an Marlene Dietrich angelehnt war) wurde schnell so populär, dass die Redaktion beschloss, eine Puppe nach der Comic Heldin herstellen zu lassen. Bild-Lilli schlug ein wie eine (Sex-)Bombe und wurde zum ersten PinUp Girl der Bundesrepublik.

Bild Lilli

#1 Barbie 1959

1956 entdeckte die Amerikanerin Ruth Handler (1916-2002) bei einem Urlaub in Deutschland die Bild-Lilli. Handler kauft drei Lillis. Eine schenkt sie ihrer Tochter Barbara (Barbie), die andere Sohn Ken. Die dritte bekommt der Designer ihrer Firma. "Entwirf mir so eine Puppe", soll Handler gesagt haben. "Eine Puppe, für Kinder, mit solchem Busen?" lautete der Einwand des Designers. Mrs Handler, ihr Gatte und Harold Matson hatten 1945 die Firma Mattel gegründet und Mattel präsentierte auch am 9.März 1959 auf der American Toy Fair in New York die erste Barbie mit dem unschönen Namen Ponytail Number 1. Eine Puppe kostete damals $3 , das entspricht heute ca. €12. Im ersten Jahr verkauft Mattel 351,000 Barbies.

Barbie's erste Werbung

Die Rechte an der Bild-Lilli kaufte Mattel erst 1964, deren Produktion daraufhin eingestellt wurde. Damit konnte Barbie auch in Deutschland verkauft werden. Der Rest ist Geschichte.

Interview mit Ruth Handler

FACT SHEET:
Die erste Barbie gab es in blond und brünett, jeweils mit Pferdeschwanz und gelocktem Pony und genau wie Bild-Lilli hat sie einen Körper mit weiblichen Formen und trägt kräftiges Make Up. Anders als die meisten anderen Puppen spreizt sie ihre Beine beim Hinsetzen nicht, sondern hält sie damenhaft parallel (dies war ebenfalls schon bei Lilli so).

1967 bekam Barbie ein neues Gesicht. Die Lippen sind leicht geöffnet und die Wimpern sind aufgemalt oder aus richtigen Haaren. Insgesamt wirkt sie mädchenhafter als die Vorgängerin.

1970 erschien mein persönlicher Liebling, die Cher-Barbie. Inclusive Bob Mackie Dress. 2007 brachte Mattel zusammen mit Bob Mackie noch einmal zwei Cher-Barbies auf den Markt.

1977 erschien die "Superstar Barbie". Sie hatte als erste den Kopf, der 20 Jahre lang für Barbie verwendet wurde: ein breit lächelndes Gesicht mit grossen Augen und Grübchen am Kinn. Es ist die von Mattel am häufigsten verwendete Kopfform. Die Vielfalt der Haarfarben wurde mit dieser Puppe aufgegeben: Barbie war von nun an grundsätzlich blond. Erst ab 1991 gab es Barbie wieder mit anderen Haarfarben.

Seit 1996 hat Barbie ein neues Gesicht mit geschlossenem Mund.

2003 brachte Mattel Puppen mit einer neuen Körperform auf den Markt; Rumpf und Beine sind kürzer und die Hüften breiter.

In Deutschland hat die Marke Barbie einen Bekanntheitsgrad von 100%. Im Ø besitzt jedes Mädchen 7 Barbies.

Statistisch gesehen werden drei Barbie-Puppen pro Sekunde verkauft.

Mattel machte zum Promoting neuer Puppen schon in den 1960er Jahren biographische Details "offiziell bekannt". So wurden 1961 Fernsehspots ausgestrahlt, in denen berichtet wurde, wie Barbie Ken kennenlernte.

Nachdem Wissenschaftler Barbies Körpermasse auf einen Menschen umrechneten und übertrugen, kamen sie zu dem Schluss, dass ein menschliches Wesen mit dem Körper von Barbie nicht lebensfähig sei. Insbesondere biete der Unterleib nicht genug Platz für alle lebensnotwendigen Organe.

Barbie als Wonder Woman, Dorothy und Tippi Hedren.

Eine Angela Merkel-Barbie gibt es seit 2008 auch.

Nach Barbie wurde eine psychische Krankheit benannt: das "Barbie-Syndrom" ist der Wunsch, wie die Puppe aussehen zu wollen. Bekannt wurde der Fall der Amerikanerin Cindy Jackson, die in rund 20 Jahren fast 30 Operationen an sich vornehmen liess und dafür mehr als $50,000 ausgab. Bekanntes deutsches Beispiel ist das Model Angela Vollrath, das sich selber zur "Miss Barbie" erklärte und bis heute versucht, sich durch zahlreiche Schönheitsoperationen ihrem Vorbild anzunähern.

Es gibt auch Männer, die sich durch Schönheitsoperationen in Ken verwandeln lassen (den Ausdruck "Ken-Syndrom" gibt es aber nicht).

Bereits in den 1960er-Jahren erschienen Bücher, in denen Barbie die Hauptrolle spielte; diese gibt es heute noch.

Seit 2001 ist Barbie auch in Filmen zu bewundern - ausserdem sind bislang sind mehrere Videospiele mit Barbie erschienen.

In The Simpsons existiert eine Parodie von Barbie, die unter dem Namen "Malibu Stacy" auftaucht. In der Episode "Lisa gegen Malibu Stacy" von 1994, lehnt sich Lisa Simpson gegen die sexistischen Sprüche der sprechenden Malibu Stacy auf.

Crystal Meth Barbie ist eine Parodie aus The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Die dänisch/norwegische Gruppe Aqua veröffentlichten im Jahr 1997 ihren Hit Barbie Girl (#1 in über 35 Ländern). Aufgrund der sexuellen Anspielungen im Lied und dem dazugehörigen Video wurde Aqua von Mattel verklagt. Die Klage wurde im Jahr 2003 (als es Aqua schon lange nicht mehr gab) endgültig abgewiesen. Barbie Girl ist übrigens eins meiner absoluten Hass-Lieder und kommt gleich nach Wind of Change von The Scorpions.

Karl Lagerfeld entwarf zum 50.Geburtstag eine eigene Barbie & Ken Kollektion.

Barbie and Ruth
The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her
von Robin Gerber
288 Seiten, englisch

Faszinierendes Buch mit unveröffentlichtem Material über zwei Frauen, die amerikanische Kultur und Business für immer verändert haben.

Barbie and Ruth im POP-SHOP bestellen

Infos: Bild-Lilli, Barbie Fact Sheet, Barbie History

SIMON BAKER | INTERVIEWS

2009-03-01T13:32:00.007+01:00

OK!: Have you become more intuitive since exploring your character’s observational skills on The Mentalist?

I wish. In all truth, as a mentalist, I’m a decent actor, but as an actor, I’m not a very good mentalist.

OK!: What’s the best part of being a dad?

Just being involved in the experience. I love having a family. Watching them grow and develop, share ideas and thoughts, is amazing.

OK!: We hear you’re a fan of Gossip Girl.

I sit in bed and watch it with my daughter. She works hard on her school work, and that’s the one thing she’s allowed to watch on a weeknight. The storylines are so over the top — it’s a guilty pleasure.

OK!: Does it help your relationship with your daughter?

We don’t use Gossip Girl as a reference point for our relationship. It’s just hard candy.

OK!: Do you have a secret talent?

I’m pretty good at gardening. It consumes my time, and it feels like I’m doing something constructive.

OK!: Are you into male grooming?

No, I just clean my teeth!

OK!: What do you miss most about Australia?

The physical beauty of the area where I grew up. And I miss my close friends. I miss trivial things too... like meat pie!

©OK! 2008

Starting this month, men who are sick of being portrayed on TV as having the intuitive powers of lug nuts will be granted a weekly hour-long reprieve from this soft bigotry of low expectations, thanks to CBS and Australian-born actor Simon Baker. Imagine a man, like Baker's Patrick Jane on The Mentalist, who's so adept at paying attention to little clues that seconds after meeting a woman, he's able to announce, "You love India, but you've never been there." Now imagine your surprise upon learning that such a guy, complete with blond curls and that surfer bod, doesn't use this gift to bed Ford Models' entire roster, but rather devotes himself to solving tricky crimes. The 39-year-old—memorable as the journo who nearly corrupts Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada—has a trio of kids with fellow Aussie actress Rebecca Rigg. Though no mentalist himself, Baker possesses a quality incredibly rare in men: an uncanny ability to play it cool around topless women.

ELLE: Can you share a moment of early romantic humiliation?

SIMON BAKER: In third grade, I had a crush on a girl and I'd written her a love letter that I planned to put in her schoolbag. I was riding my bike to school in the rain, and I came around a corner and the front wheel slipped out and I crashed my bike. The love letter came out of my pocket, and someone found it. Later that day, everyone knew I'd written this love letter to her.

ELLE: And then the little girl showered you with kisses, which eased the pain?

SB: No. I think she hated me because she became part of the scandal. It was like her voice was on the Pellicano tapes.

ELLE: What can you tell me about your first time?

SB: Brief. Then the very next day I was surfing at this point break, and I remember getting more and more depressed, thinking, "That's it. I've done everything."

ELLE: Did you lose it early?

SB: I was probably not the first to lose my virginity among my friends. I was definitely one of the last ones to reach puberty—I didn't grow until the last couple years of high school.

ELLE: Do you remember being ashamed of your hairlessness?

SB: No, I was a pretty confident kid, even if it was all false bravado. But definitely, in the PE change room, there were always one or two pubic beasts who were shaving while everyone else was sitting around wondering when their balls were going to actually drop.

ELLE: Do you remember any figures from your childhood who awakened your sexuality?

SB: Definitely some of my best friends' moms. I grew up surfing on the north coast of New South Wales, and on most of the beaches, women never wore tops. When we were 10 or 11, me and my mates couldn't drive, so they'd take us surfing and then sit on the beach topless and read a book. I don't know if I quite saw them sexually, but there was physical intrigue.

ELLE: Did being exposed to all those breasts in your youth diminish their erotic power for you?

SB: No, I'm not immune to the charms of the female form. And when I was 17 and I spent every spare minute surfing, most of the girls we hung out with would be topless.

ELLE: Do you even realize how lucky you were?

SB: We thought we were lucky at the time, but at the same time—you know you're onto a good thing, don't go frothing at the mouth, because you're liable to spook them.

ELLE: You've said that your wife is a "city chick" and you're a "country bloke." Do you recall any scenes from your courtship that might illustrate that?

SB: When I met my wife, I had literally eaten out at a restaurant maybe three times in my life. After one of the first nights we spent together in Sydney, we went and bought breakfast. I was 21 and I'd never bought breakfast in a cafè, and I think we had about five bucks between us. I said, "What are we doing? Why don't we get a box of cereal and some milk, and we'll have two-fifty left?" She was like, "No. Pancakes with Canadian bacon and a coffee."

ELLE: If your wife insisted that, for your birthday, you make love with any one woman, who might you cash in your free pass with?

SB: Sophia Loren in the '60s. I've always been really drawn to that kind of sexual earthiness in European women, and Sophia Loren covered all the bases, including the whole mummy fantasy.

ELLE: Do you ever find yourself fantasizing about any current young actresses?

SB: No. Now that I'm in the business, I'm tainted. They all look extremely complicated to me, not warm and nurturing. It's more like, "Oy, a lot of work there."

ELLE: So, if some average Joe told you he was considering dating some famous actress, would you encourage him to run away?

SB: You're talking about an everyday guy being with an actress? See, I think there's more chance of that working. I have actress friends who say, "Oh, I need to find a guy." And I'm always saying to them, "Find a guy who's not in the business. What about a carpenter?"

ELLE: How do they respond?
SB: They'll say, "Can you find me a carpenter who looks like Jake Gyllenhaal?"

©ELLE 2008

The Fabulous Baker Boy

There's no place like home, you say? The Guardian's Simon Baker would have to disagree, mate. His mellow Malibu beach house—complete with eucalyptus trees, ocean breezes and a cool collection of surfboards—conjures up beautiful memories of his beloved Australia.

A Pacific storm is pounding the Malibu shore, churning the surf into a muddy lather. On any other Saturday morning, Simon Baker would most likely be out there straddling his Yater Spoon surfboard, perhaps teaching his 9-year-old daughter, Stella, to ride the waves just as he did as a golden-haired youth growing up in Australia. Instead, he's sitting barefoot in the window seat of his kitchen, wearing jeans and a paisley shirt, checking the news on his Apple laptop—which is set to The Sydney Morning Herald. “I get back home nearly every day on the computer,” says the 33-year-old actor. “It's weird, but the last 12 months, I've been crazy about it.”

His wife, actress Rebecca Rigg, 35, sets down a plate of Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies, pours some tea, and picks up the topic where her husband left off. “Since we've lived here, we've become so … patriotic,” she says. “Almost flag-waving Australians. We've just taken it up.”

Fortunately, the Bakers have found the perfect antidote for their homesickness. They've created an L.A. nest for themselves and their three kids—Stella, Claude, 4, and Harry, 1—that reminds them of Australia. Baker discovered the neighborhood a few years ago, when he drove up the coast to surf with some Aussie buddies who live nearby. No sooner did the actor land his own TV series, The Guardian, in 2001 (he plays Nick Fallin, a slick-suited attorney who is sentenced to work as a child advocate after being busted for drug use), than he and Rigg splurged on the fifties-era ranch house. Surrounded by eucalyptus and bottle trees, and sitting on a grassy Malibu acre that's within easy reach of secluded beaches, the three-bedroom home has become a welcome respite from the TV grind. “Every Australian who comes up here says, 'God, this feels like Australia,'” says Rigg.

Initially, it didn't. So to give their home a more “open, beach-house feel,” the couple decided to streamline the place and rid the house of its country touches. “We have so much chaos already in our lives—the kids, work—so we didn't want a lot of frilly stuff,” says Baker. “It's very muted.” They painted the knotty-pine plank floors a cool gray and the walls a crisp white, raised the living room ceiling to expose structural beams, added built-in bookshelves for their Asian artifacts, and turned a drab office into a comfortable family room with French doors (behind which rests the only TV in the house). “It's very relaxed now,” says Baker, who was hands-on throughout the design process.

The furniture—much of it picked up during the couple's travels—adds a personal touch. There's a nine-foot dining table with bench seats all made of recycled teak from Indonesia (“Not the new teak that's upsetting the whole rain forest ecosystem,” says the environmentally conscious Rigg), an antique Japanese kimono cabinet made of balsa wood that houses Baker's collection of cameras, a soapstone Buddha head Rigg brought back from Cambodia when she was 19, and baskets from Thailand. “Asia is such a part of most Australians' aesthetic,” Rigg explains. “Everyone would go to Bali and bring back fabrics, masks and wooden things. People would get off the airplane with these weird objects.”

The land surrounding the house was equally rich with possibilities: A pathway connects a two-bedroom guesthouse, which has a makeshift darkroom for Baker's photography, and a small artist's studio (formerly a tack room for horseback-riding equipment), where Rigg paints. A one-bedroom trailer, where her younger brother, Jake, has been staying (“The Love Shack,” Baker has jokingly dubbed it), has a private deck where Baker likes to read scripts or nap on an outdoor sofa. “You could sit there in the nude all day long and no one would see you,” he says. Along the way there's a grassy patch of lawn where Baker can camp outside with Claude; there's even a chicken coop for their rust-feathered hen, May. “It's heaven,” says Baker. “A good place to spend time.”

Indeed, hanging out is something of an art form at the Baker house. As the skies fill with thunder and a fire roars in the dining room's gray-brick fireplace, Rigg chops prosciutto for a pasta salad and opens a bottle of red wine. The sensual sound of Sade pours from wall speakers as the conversation turns to another Aussie art form: swearing. “What you see is what you get with us,” says Rigg, who can be as verbally colorful as she is direct. “Stella is always saying, 'You've got to stop swearing in front of my friends. It's humiliating.' But Australians use swear words in an endearing way.”

“Simon and Rebecca have got a lot of exuberance and intensity,” says David Hollander, creator of The Guardian and a frequent guest at the Baker house. “Their home is not a place you go to watch TV but a place to have debates and play hard. These two people attack life.”

Nicole Kidman, another of the couple's close friends, agrees. “Their place has such a good vibe,” she says. “I always say, if I ever buy another place in California, it'll be out near them. We can create a little commune.”

Like Kidman and the rest of his circle of friends (Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe among them), Baker comes by his high-spiritedness naturally. Born in Tasmania, Baker moved with his family around Australia before settling in the idyllic coastal community of Byron Bay. As a kid Baker developed an independent streak. He'd ride his bike to the beach and sleep on the sand with his friends. “I didn't grow up with money, but I grew up with a lot of space,” he says. “All I did was surf. I was committed to the ocean. That's one thing about Australians—we have the capacity to embrace life.”

After a short stint in nursing school (“There were six girls to one guy,” says Baker. “It was fun”), he appeared in commercials, modeled in print ads, and—as his wife delights in recounting—“worked as a dancer in music videos.”

“A dancer?” responds a chagrined Baker. “Well, you were,” says Rigg, playfully adding, “Aw… am I in trouble for saying that?”

By the time Baker and the straight-shooting Rigg met through mutual friends in 1991, he had been cast for a popular prime-time TV soap opera, E Street. “He seemed quite naïve, a country boy,” says Rigg, a city girl who had been acting since she was 11. “He was introduced to me as Smiley. He'd been called that since he was 8 or 9 years old. Then, the second night we were out, I said, 'I can't call you this. I need to know what your name is.'”

The couple moved in with each other six weeks later. In 1995 they headed for L.A. Soon after, Baker landed a string of movie roles, starting with a part in L.A. Confidential. A year later, they were married in a grove of eucalyptus trees on her mother's 40-acre property outside Sydney. Rigg and her two bridesmaids—her sister, Amy, and Watts—wore vintage nightgowns. “It went on for three days and turned into a bit of a bacchanalia,” Riggs recalls. “Naomi was in the lake, her gown disintegrating. People stayed overnight and basically slept where they fell. It was beautiful.”

So is the couple's life together. Savoring each and every moment of family is important to them—and that passionate nature is something they've passed on to their children. “Hey, there're some good puddles, Claude!” Baker calls to his son as they troop across the yard. It's mid-afternoon, and the rain is still coming down. Rigg signals that lunch is ready. Afterward, there will be time for more puddle-jumping, maybe even an hour or two of surfing. Or perhaps the couple can find some rare time alone together.

The Love Shack awaits.

Hildegard Knef Album Edition 1972 - 1980

2009-02-16T09:54:00.000+01:00

Zum ersten Mal auf CD: die Alben, die Hildegard Knef zwischen 1972 und 1980 für Philips aufnahm. Acht Studio-Alben sind in der Zeit entstanden und dann war da 1980 noch die legendäre Live LP Tournee, Tournee. Die findet sich als besonderer Leckerbissen zusätzlich zu den Studio-Alben in der 5-CD-Box Die Hildegard Knef Album Edition 1972-1980. Die anderen vier CDs beinhalten jeweils zwei LPs und die kann man auch einzeln kaufen. Die Philips Alben spiegeln eindrucksvoll den Lebensweg wider, den Hilde in den 70ern ging und den sie in ihren wunderbaren Texten verarbeitet hat. Echte Knef-Klassiker sind darauf zu hören und einiger meiner Favoriten: Ich zieh' mal wieder um, Ich bin den weiten Weg gegangen, Wenn das alles ist oder Ich möchte mich gern von mir trennen. Immer echt, immer genial, immer Hildegard Knef. Sehr empfehlenswert!

BARBRA STREISAND TALKS YENTL

2009-02-12T07:24:00.008+01:00

Barbra Streisand remembers the buzz generated before she started filming the musical "Yentl," and it wasn't particularly good.

Despite her superstar status and two Oscars (one best actress trophy, another for composing) she recalls hearing negative comments about whether she could pull off the Herculean task of starring, directing, co-writing and producing the period piece about a Jewish woman who disguises herself as a man to pursue an education.

"Women being actresses, somehow, in certain people's minds, in executives' minds, it's a frivolous job," she said in phone interview. "When you start to handle millions of dollars and production, that probably scared them."

The movie's success should have allayed those fears — "Yentl" garnered Oscar nominations and two Golden Globes. Now, 25 years later, the 66-year-old Streisand is reminiscing about what it took to get the movie made in this week's DVD release. The two-disc set comes with special features like rehearsal scenes and Streisand's commentary.

It's not the only project Streisand is working on these days. She's finishing an upcoming CD being produced by best-selling jazz singer Diana Krall, and she regularly keeps busy with her Web site, which includes the liberal Democrat's musings on politics.

The Associated Press: What was the most challenging part of making "Yentl"?

Streisand: I think it was just getting it made, selling it in America. Because once I came to England, things were really wonderful. They had no fear of a woman being in a powerful position because they had a queen and the prime minister was Margaret Thatcher. Being a woman director there didn't seem to scare them. They were the most supportive, helpful, wonderful group of people. I'm very grateful for that. It wasn't until I came back to America it was an odd thing, directing this movie, before I started and after I finished, and that's really fascinating to me. And look how many years it's taken to even conceive of a women being president in the United States? At that time, you couldn't even conceive of a woman being president of the United States, until two years ago ... but times have changed.

AP: You were a very vocal critic of former President George W. Bush, but said he was very gracious after he gave you a kiss during the Kennedy Center Honors.

Streisand: It still doesn't change my mind about his politics, the ruination of our country. But, he was very disarming and very nice and kind of fun with it.

AP: I didn't see you at the Obama inauguration.

Streisand: I was supposed to go, I was asked to go, but I'm in the middle of this recording ... and I just couldn't go. It was the most thrilling thing to watch this man Obama, Barack Obama, become the president of United States. It's such a wonderful thing for our country and our world. He's so intelligent and so smart, and that is such a change, and such a relief.

AP: Diana Krall is producing your new album. Is she also singing on it?

Streisand: I'm trying to convince her to sing with me, but she's resisting it. She plays the piano for me on several songs, but it's not over yet. I'm still working on her to try to do a duet with me. ... We have to find the right song.

AP: When do you plan to return to film?

Streisand: I'd like to get back to directing. There's something I've been working on for many many years and it's kind of almost time to get back into my directing role and there also is possible a sequel to "Meet the Fockers."

AP: Your stepson, Josh Brolin, is an Oscar nominee this year.

Streisand: Isn't that great? It's so great for him because now win or lose, he is an Oscar-nominated actor, and it's wonderful to get the recognition of your peers.

AP: Are you going to be involved in this year's Oscars?

Streisand: Doubt it. I like to watch from home, eat pizza ... I cuddle up on my couch.

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY

As a rule, a diva never faces a camera crew looking less than her best. But to play a young woman who passes herself off as a boy in 1983's Yentl, Barbra Streisand threw vanity to the wind.

"My face has two very different sides," Streisand says. "As a girl, I prefer the left side. But I used the right side as a boy, so that I would look different."

Fans can review her strategy Tuesday, when Yentl, which Streisand also directed and co-wrote, becomes available in a new two-disc set, loosely pegged to its 25th anniversary. The director's edition of the musical movie about a Jewish woman seeking to study religion in a patriarchal culture includes previously unreleased rehearsal footage, musical montages and deleted scenes.

"There are fun things, like where we put the rehearsal tapes and the final film versions" of several numbers side by side. Streisand "had only nine days to rehearse" before leaving for the U.K., where Yentl was shot. "So I just dressed up in a schleppy little costume and tried out my scenes, with my friends playing the other parts, at my house and their houses."

She points out that a number of American studios had passed on Yentl. "There was this notion that you can't be an actress who directs." In England, "they had a queen and a female prime minister, so they had no problem with my being a woman."

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Streisand has chosen another woman to shepherd her latest project. She is working on a new album produced by jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall, with musicians from Krall's band, due this year.

"This is (Krall's) first time producing," says Streisand, 66, who is executive producer. "She's so good at what she does, and I like her so much as a person. We're working with a small group, like I did when I was a young performer." Tracks in progress include standards such as Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most and In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.

Her recording schedule prevented Streisand from appearing at President Obama's inauguration in January, she says. "I just couldn't be away for four days to rehearse and sing. But it was great watching it on television, from my warm bed."

And, predictably, Streisand isn't reluctant to opine on Obama's initial progress.

"He's doing great," she says. "He's done more in eight days than (the previous administration) did in eight years — and constructively, rather than destructively. It's great for our country and great for the world."

By Elysa Gardner

YENTL DVD bei amazon.com

TELEDIALOG

2009-02-08T09:57:00.004+01:00

Auweia! Da schlag ich verdammt unausgeschlafen und total GaGa die Feuilleton Seiten der FAS auf und will lesen, welche Real-Satire diese Woche für den TeleDialog der Woche gesorgt hat. Find ich nämlich immer ziemlich lustig und bitchy. Tja, was soll ich sagen: den TeleDialog der Woche hatten diesmalSimone Panteleit, Marlene Lufen und Torgen Schneider.

Oui, MOI!*knallrotschämendimerdbodenversink*

Wie peinlich ist das denn? Heul!

Den pfiffigen Leuten bei der FAS ist unsere zugegebenermassen ein wenig aus dem Ruder gelaufene Plauderei über Barack & Michelle Obama. War aber auch spassig. Danke liebe FAS, für den Spiegel den ihr mir da vorgehalten habt. Ich werde morgen versuchen, meinen Buchstaben-Salat einigermassen zusammenhängend von mir zu geben.

TELEDIALOG
Halbbruder

Zwei Wochen nach der Vereidigung Barack Obamas nähert sich die Euphorie für den neuen US-Präsidenten im Sat.1-Frühstücksfernsehen langsam dem Höhepunkt. Am Montag berichtete Reporter Torgen Schneider den Moderatorinnen Marlene Lufen und Simone Panteleit vom Zusammenhang des Gerüchts, Michelle Obama sei schwanger, mit dem spontanen Tanz ihres Mannes in einer Late-Night-Show.

Schneider: Ich hab' heut' Morgen schon gesagt: So tanzt ja nur einer, dessen Frau ein Kind erwartet. Da ist ja der Groove praktisch . . . also . . .

Panteleit: Der ist so cool!

Schneider: Der ist 'ne coole - ich sag's jetzt mal: der ist 'ne coole Sau. Am Schluss der Sendung darf ich's mal sagen.

Lufen: Ein großartiger Politiker, ein großartiger Tänzer, und er wirkt wie ein wirklich guter - Mann.

Schneider: Der Bruder von der Michelle Obama will jetzt ein Buch schreiben, und der hat auch nichts Schlechtes zu sagen. Ist ja auch selten.

Panteleit: Dafür ist der Bruder von Barack Obama, der ist in den Knast jetzt gekommen.

Schneider: Nee, nee, der ist nur verhaftet worden, wegen 'nem Joint.

Lufen: Und es ist auch nur der Halbbruder.

Schneider: Und es ist auch nur der Halbbruder! Einer von vielen.

Panteleit: Trotzdem.

Text: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 08.02.2009, Nr. 6 / Seite 32

SUPER BOWL XLIII COMMERCIALS

2009-02-07T14:57:00.001+01:00

Die irritierendsten Gäste der Late Show w/ David Letterman

2009-01-30T11:41:00.002+01:00

Der erzkonservative Talk-Show Moderator Bill O'Reilly.

Das blondierte Erb-Stück Paris Hilton.

Die 1994 wiederholt fluchende und sich dann bis 2000 nicht mehr zu Besuch trauende Madonna.

Die damals (1995) noch sehr verwirrte Drew Barrymore.

Die immer sehr verwirrte Courtney Love.

Das sind die vielleicht irritierendsten Gäste, die sich David Letterman in seine Late Show eingeladen hat. Und die er trotzdem, oder wahrscheinlich eher gerade darum, immer wieder einlädt.

Wer ist Uschi Blum?

2009-01-11T15:37:00.005+01:00

Die bekannte Schlagersängerin Uschi Blum wurde als Hildegard Sterczinski in Dinslaken geboren. Über das Geburtsjahr gibt es unterschiedliche Angaben aus verschiedenen Quellen: 1949, 1957 oder 1968. Uschi Blum besteht auf 1968.

Uschi Blum lebt alleine, abwechselnd in ihren Anwesen in Bad Orb und Dinslaken, und legt Wert darauf, dass sie noch nie in Albanien war.

Die kleine Uschi wuchs bei ihrer allein erziehenden Mutter Hannelore Beate Sterczinski auf. Der Vater ist unbekannt. Uschi Blum behauptet, das Ergebnis einer romantischen Liaison zwischen ihrer Mutter und dem Prinzen Elzany von Albanien zu sein. Der Adlige saß wegen mehrfachen Betrugs und Bigamie jahrelang im Gefängnis, hatte aber zehn Monate vor Uschis Geburt Freigang wegen guter Führung. Er flüchtete ins ehemalige Jugoslawien und lernte dort die junge Hannelore Beate Sterczinski bei ihrer ersten Auslandsreise nach Dubrovnik kennen. Nach dem Urlaub brach der Kontakt ab. Prinz Elzany von Albanien wurde nach seiner Flucht ausgebürgert, ist seitdem staatenlos und untergetaucht. Uschi Blum sucht noch immer verzweifelt nach ihrem leiblichen Vater.

Uschi Blum besuchte die Volksschule in Dinslaken bis zur 8. Klasse. Ihre Leidenschaft für die Musik entdeckte sie im Mädchenchor St. Hedwig, wo sie schon als Zehnjährige Alt sang.
Nach der Schule begann sie eine Ausbildung als Kosmetikerin und Nageldesignerin. Nach einem halben Jahr beendete sie die Lehre und begann eine neue Ausbildung als Hundefachpflegerin. Auch diese Lehre brach sie kurz vor Ende ab. Es folgten diverse Praktika – u. a. im „Club Anita“ in Dortmund-Mengede.

1978 wurde sie 4. bei der Wahl zur „Miss Dinslaken“. Die schwarz-silberne Trostpreis-Krone (in Form eines Förderturms) hat Uschi Blum bis heute aufbewahrt.

1979 fiel sie beim Talentwettbewerb im „Schlagerparadies Dormagen“ dem Erfolgs-Produzenten Bodo Katzenberg (bekannt durch seine Titel „Ich hab endlich einen in der Krone“ und „Zu Fuß nach Arenal“) auf. Einen Monat später wurde geheiratet und Katzenberg schrieb für seine Frau den Disco-Song „Und ab dafür“, mit dem sie – unter dem Künstlernamen Tina Teufel – mehr oder weniger erfolglosreich durch die Diskotheken Nordrhein-Westfalens tingelte.

Nachdem Bodo Katzenberg zwei Monate später samt sämtlicher Gagen von Tina Teufel spurlos verschwand, half der bisexuelle Show-Hypnotiseur Claus Caledro ihr wieder auf die Beine. Nach der Blitzscheidung von Bodo wurde Claus ihr zweiter Mann. Sie änderte ihren Namen erneut – in Uschi. Als „Claus und Uschi – Das phänomenale Trance-Duo“ traten sie gemeinsam auf. Aus dieser Zeit stammt Uschis hypnotische Ausstrahlung, die sie bis heute auf ihr Publikum ausübt.

Trotz der Erfolge als „Trance-Duo“ verlor Uschi Blum ihre eigentliche Berufung nie aus den Augen. In Bad und Küche schulte sie ihre Gesangsstimme weiter. Schließlich begann sie, ihre eigenen Songs zu komponieren. Erste Erfolge feierte sie bei den regelmäßigen, geselligen Treffen mit Freunden und Bekannten im heimischen Partykeller. Dort entdeckte sie 1983 der Plattenproduzent Lothar Hebel (ein Schwipp-Schwager von Claus Caledro), der schließlich ihren ersten Hit produzierte und – nach der Blitzscheidung von Claus Caledro – der dritte Ehemann von Uschi Blum wurde.

Mit dem Song „Gefühl pur“ gelang ihr 1990 unter ihrem neuen Künstlernamen ihr erster Chart-Erfolg in Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und in Luxemburg, wo Uschi Blum auf Anhieb auf Platz 94 der Luxemburger Hitparade einstieg und sich dort sagenhafte vier Wochen lang halten konnte. Den Grundstein zu ihrem Erfolg legte die Veröffentlichung ihres Hits in Albanien. Der von ihr selbst ins Albanische übersetzte Titel „Emotioneli purski“ kletterte auf Platz 17 der offiziellen albanischen Charts. Uschi Blum ist damit bis heute unangefochten der bedeutendste deutsche Star Albaniens. Es wird jedoch gemunkelt, dass sie diesen unglaublichen Erfolg alten Verbindungen ihres leiblichen Vaters Prinz Elzany verdankt, der sämtliche Platten bereits vor der Auslieferung von seinen Cousins in Tirana aufkaufen ließ und somit die Chart-Platzierung seiner heimlichen Tochter gewährleistete.

Dass sie allein durch ihr Talent, Können und ihre Personality erfolgreich sein kann, bewies Uschi Blum ein Jahr später, als sie mit dem Titel „Tour d’Amour“ den 12. Platz beim Luxemburger Vorentscheid für den „Grand Prix d’Eurovision de la Chanson 1991“ belegte. Für diesen Erfolg wurde sie im selben Jahr mit dem „Goldenen Schlagerbären“ von Luxemburg ausgezeichnet.

Bei der feierlichen Preisverleihung verzauberte sie ihren Schlager-Kollegen Roberto Negro, der sie umgehend für sein Musical „Die Nashörner“ engagierte. Zwei Jahre lang spielte Uschi Blum die Rolle des salsa-tanzenden Nilpferds „La Baracka“ in Erfurt. Die Kritik jubelte: „Sie ist absolut glaubwürdig!“

1993 verpflichtete sie der unbekannte Jung-Regisseur Hape Kerkeling für seinen ersten Kinofilm „Kein Pardon“. Er erhoffte sich durch den Gesangs-Auftritt einer grandiosen Diva den großen Durchbruch. Nachdem Liza Minelli, Milva und Marianne Rosenberg abgesagt hatten beim Casting durchgefallen waren, übernahm Uschi Blum die Rolle. Die Rechnung ging auf! Nicht zuletzt dank des Hits „Lieb mich“, mit dem Uschi Blum ihr nächster Top-Hit gelang, wurde der Film ein Kassenschlager –– obwohl sie in „Kein Pardon“ größtenteils nur von hinten zu sehen ist. Sie prozessiert wegen der erlittenen Demütigung bis heute auf Schadensersatz gegen Regisseur Kerkeling.

Nach dem Film-Erfolg klopfte Hollywood an Uschis Tür. 1994 brach die Diva alle Brücken zu Deutschland ab, ließ sich erneut scheiden und reiste in die USA. Für ihre große Amerika-Tournee finden sich keine belegbaren Beweise – nur Gerüchte. Unter der Anschrift ihres US-Managers, dem iranisch-stämmigen Amerikaner Dr. James Geoffrey Ali Ibn Saud, verbirgt sich die Adresse einer bekannten Beautyklinik in Los Angeles. Uschi Blum bestreitet allerdings vehement, sowohl, eine vierte Ehe mit ihrem iranisch-amerikanischen Manager/Chirurgen eingegangen zu sein, noch, sich jemals einer Schönheitsoperation unterzogen zu haben. Stattdessen schwört sie, lediglich sehr viel stilles Wasser zu trinken und so ihre Figur zu halten. Die fülligen Lippen und die zarte Nase habe sie von ihrem Vater.

Durch ihren monatelangen USA-Aufenthalt wurde es in Deutschland merklich ruhig um den Schlager-Star. 1995 beschloss Uschi Blum aus freien Stücken, sich aus dem Rampenlicht zurückzuziehen. Sie wollte sich lieber auf ihre anderen Stärken besinnen. Dank ihrer breit gefächerten Ausbildung konnte sie eine neue Karriere starten: Sie eröffnete das Hunde-Nagelstudio „Uschi’s Pfötchen-Salon“ in der Dinkelgasse in Dinslaken, das sie bis vor kurzem erfolgreich selbst führte.

Doch ihre vielseitige künstlerische Begabung hat Uschi Blum auch in dieser Zeit nicht losgelassen. Sie fand eine neue Ausdrucksmöglichkeit für ihre Kreativität: Ihre Skulpturen aus Ytong-Steinen machten Ende 1999 in zwei Ausstellungen Furore. Unter dem Titel „Hart wie Staub“ stellte sie ihre Werke – pünktlich zur Jahrtausendwende – im Foyer der Rehaklinik in Bad Orb und später im Gesundheitsamt Dinslaken aus. Über 400 Besucher und ein Journalist bewunderten ihre „expressive Ausdruckskraft mit hypnotischer Wirkung“ (so die lokale Presse).

Bei einer Wein-Fastenkur in Bad Orb, die sie bei einer Tombola während der Vernissage zu ihrer Ausstellung gewonnen hatte, lernte Uschi Blum (laut guten Bekannten) ihren fünften Ehemann kennen – den Honorarkonsul von Guinea und Massivholz-Möbelpolitur-Hersteller, Konsul Eberhardt von Schwärtl-Schippke. Nach diversen gemeinsamen kalten Kneipgüssen und heißen Heubädern heiratete das Paar eine Woche nach Ende der Kur. Sie bezogen eine Doppelhaushälfte am Rande von Bad Orb. Was vier Monate später geschah, bleibt im Dunkeln. Nur soviel ist gesichert: Konsul Eberhardt von Schwärtl-Schippke brach im April 2000 zu seiner jährlichen Dienstreise nach Guinea auf und ist seitdem verschollen. Uschi Blum bewohnt die Doppelhaushälfte seitdem allein und soll 2008 die Scheidung eingereicht haben.

Trost fand Uschi Blum in der schweren Zeit nach dem Verschwinden ihres Gatten bei Wein und Whisky ihrer englischen Patentochter Amalie Weinhaus, die eine uneheliche Enkelin von Prinz Elzany von Albanien sein soll (unbestätigt). Eine gemeinsame Rock-Ballade der beiden Diven ist in Vorbereitung (unbestätigt), erste Aufnahmen entstanden (laut guten Bekannten) bereits im Partykeller von Uschi Blum.

Seit zwölf Jahren schreibt die Schlager-Legende außerdem an ihrer Autobiografie mit dem Titel „Gefühl pur – Eine Diva packt aus“. Darin wird der Leser alle schmutzigen Details ihrer drei (zugegebenen) Ehen erfahren – warum sie scheitern mussten und weshalb Uschi Blum an ihre Männer bis heute Alimente zahlt.

2009 erlebt Uschi Blum überraschend ihr großes Comeback: Dank ihrer Gesangsauftritte im Spielfilm „Ein Mann, ein Fjord!“ (Regie: Angelo Colagrossi) stürmt sie die Charts. Ihre Schlager-Schnulze „Mittsommerblues“ wird zum Sommerhit des Jahres und der fesselnde Erotik-Knaller „Sklavin der Liebe“ avanciert im Trance-Remix zum Kult-Hit in den angesagten Clubs zwischen Berlin, Bad Orb und Dinslaken. In ihrem Film-Vertrag hat sie sich zusichern lassen, dass sie diesmal nur von vorne gezeigt werden darf. Die exorbitante Gage, die sie für ihre Filmrolle verlangte, katapultierte sie kurzzeitig an die Spitze der deutschen Filmriege. Die Gage, die sie am Ende bekam, reichte immerhin für diverse Drinks an der Bar des Hurtigruten-Schiffs „MS Midnatsoil“ sowie mehrere Einladungen an einen geheimnisvollen Trenchcoat- und Herrenhandtaschenträger aus Grevenbroich, in den sich Uschi Blum während der Dreharbeiten unglücklich verliebt hat. Da er sie allerdings flüchtig an den „Kein Pardon“-Regisseur, gegen den sie immer noch klagt, erinnerte, endete die heiße Affäre, bevor Uschi ihren sechsten Ehemann hätte heiraten können. Jetzt konzentriert sie sich mit allen Sinnen auf ihr Comeback und ihre Gesangskarriere. Weitere Angebote von Musik- und Filmproduzenten aus dem In- und Ausland sollen bereits vorliegen.

LPs:

„Hallo Gefühl!“, 1979
„Gefühlstemperatur“, 1980
„Gefühl pur“, 1990
„Nur Emotionen“, 1993
„Ich fühle“, 1994
„Ich fühle nichts“, 1994
„Ich strecke meine Fühler wieder aus“, 1995

Singles:

„Und ab dafür“, 1979, Tina Teufel
„Ich nehm dich heute Nacht!“, 1979, Tina Teufel
„Mit Haut und Nägeln“, 1980
„Fass mich nicht an“, 1980
„Träume von Tobago“, 1980
„Gefühl pur“, 1990
„Emotioneli purski“, Albanien, 1990
„Tour d’Amour“, Luxemburg, 1991
„Wasser im Maul“, 1991, aus dem Musical „Die Nashörner“ von Roberto Negro
„Lieb mich“, 1993
„Fürstin der Leidenschaft“, 1994
„Duches of Passion“, USA, 1994 (Uschi Blum bestreitet, auch die englische Version ihres Songs „Fürstin der Leidenschaft“ gesungen zu haben)
„Sei mein Gebieter“, 1995
„Eine Frau, wie ich...“, 1995
„Mittsommerblues“, 2009
„Sklavin der Liebe“, 2009

Filme:

„Kein Pardon“, Deutschland, 1993, Regie: H. Kerkeling
„Slicky Sticky Duches of Passion“, USA, 1994, Regie: M. Ibn Saud (Uschi Blum bestreitet allerdings, dass sie die Hauptrolle der Duches Dildo (Regie führte Mehmet, der Bruder von Dr. James Geoffrey Ali Ibn Saud) gespielt hat. Uschi Blum: „Die Darstellerin ist ja nur von hinten zu sehen und ich habe ein viel schmaleres Becken.“)
„Ein Mann, ein Fjord!“, Deutschland, 2009, Regie: A. Colagrossi

Preise, Auszeichnungen, Ehrenämter, Auftritte (eine Auswahl):

Mädchenchor St. Hedwig, Alt-Stimme, Dinslaken
„Miss Dinslaken“, 4. Platz, 1978, Dinslaken
Talentwettbewerb im „Schlagerparadies Dormagen“, 1979, Teilname
„Claus & Uschi – Das phänomenale Trance-Duo“, Show-Hypnose-Assistentin, 1979-1983
„Goldener Schlagerbär“ 1991, Luxemburg
„Die Nashörner“, 1991, Rolle: „La Baracka“, Musical
Ehrenvorsitzende des Vereins „Verkehrssicherheit für Frauen in West-Westfalen“
Ehrenkommandantin der „Pink Prinzengarde Leverkusen e.V.“
Schriftführerin der Vereinigung „Mittelständischer Wellness-Unternehmer“

Vorbilder:

Nana Mouskouri, Anneliese Rothenberger, Grace Jones und Hannelore Beate Sterczinski

Ausstellungen:

„Hart wie Staub“, Ytong-Skulpturen, Rehaklinik Bad Orb, 1999
„Hart wie Staub“, Ytong-Skulpturen, Gesundheitsamt Dinslaken, 2000

Privates:

geboren am 25. Oktober in Dinslaken, Deutschland: 1949, 1957 oder 1968 (Uschi Blum selbst besteht auf 1968)
Sternzeichen: Skorpion, Aszendent: Jungfrau
Geburtsname: Hildegard Sterczinski
Pseudonyme: Tina Teufel, Uschi, Duches Dildo (nicht bestätigt), Uschi Blum
Mutter: Hannelore Beate Sterczinski
Vater: unbekannt (vermutlich Prinz Elzany von Albanien)
Größe: 186 cm (mit Schuhen)
Gewicht: 131 kg, 123 kg, 98 kg, 57 kg (andere Angaben mussten unter Androhung einstweiliger Verfügung gestrichen werden)
Konfektion: 34/36
Schuhgröße: 43
Haare: mittel-asch-blond (Perücke), karmesin-rot, Natur-Locken (andere Angaben mussten unter Androhung einstweiliger Verfügung gestrichen werden)

Ausbildung:
Volksschule Dinslaken
Ausbildung zur Kosmetikerin und Nageldesignerin in „Silke’s Nägel und Schönheit-Studio“, Dinslaken, sechs Monate
Ausbildung zur Hundefachpflegerin in „Harry’s Hunde-Zwinger“, Möllen bei Dinslaken, zweieinhalb Jahre
Praktika:
u. a. „Club Anita“, Dortmund-Mengede
selbständig:
„Uschi’s Pfötchen-Salon“, Dinslaken

Kinder:
keine
Patentochter: Amalie Weinhaus (Sängerin)

Ehen:
Bodo Katzenberg, 1979-1979
Claus Caldero, 1979-1983
Lothar Hebel, 1983-1994
Dr. James Geoffrey Ali Ibn Saud, 1994-1995 (unbestätigt)
Konsul Eberhardt von Schwärtl-Schippke, 2000-?, (unbestätigt)

©ROOF MUSIC

'CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA'

2008-11-05T06:51:00.003+01:00

Transkript der Obama Siegesrede. Chicag0, 4.11.2008

Barack Obama:

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best -- the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Matthew Shepard: Has Anything Changed?

2008-10-12T12:07:00.001+02:00

The creators of 'The Laramie Project', a play about Matthew Shepard, returned to Wyoming on the 10-year anniversary of his death.

One month after the brutal murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, 10 members of the Tectonic Theater Project , led by playwright and director Moisés Kaufman, went to Laramie, Wyo., to interview residents about the killing. Those interviews served as the basis for "The Laramie Project," a play that chronicles how the community grappled with the slaying. On the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, which has become a rallying cry for gay rights and hate-crime laws, the theater company returned to Laramie. These are their observations:

In returning to Laramie, Wyo., 10 years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the pressing question for all of us was: how has the town changed since 1998? But soon a different question arose: how do we measure that change?

On the state level no hate crime legislation has passed; the fence where Matthew Shepard was murdered has been dismantled; the Fireside Bar where Matthew met his killers has been renamed; and the University of Wyoming still has yet to grant domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian faculty and staff. And when you ask of the people of Laramie how has the town has changed, many say, "We've moved on."

"Moved on to what?" asks Reggie Fluty, the policewoman who was the first to arrive at the fence where Matthew was tied. "If you don't want to look back, fine. But what are we moving towards?"

Certainly the university has taken several concrete actions to promote inclusiveness: they've added gay and lesbian study classes to the curriculum, created a resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and permanently renamed the Social Justice Symposium after Matthew Shepard. They've also recently joined Matthew's mom, Judy Shepard, in memorializing Matthew on campus. (Judy is the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.)

As for the rest of the town, Shepard's former academic adviser Jon Peacock says, "I think when you're so close to an event like this you become more sensitized. You start to pay more attention to those issues." Detective Sergeant Rob Debree, the lead investigator in Shepard's murder, adds, "I think overall, there's just more acceptance." Debree became a forceful national advocate for Federal Hate Crime legislation alongside Officer Dave O'Malley as a result of this murder.

"The fact that cops like DeBree and O'Malley, law officers in positions of real power, are committed to gay and lesbian people and their protection, that should be construed as concrete change," says Beth Loffreda, author of the book, "Losing Matthew Shepard." "You won't find that in a statute or in a public monument to Matt, but that's real and meaningful change."

A real cause for concern, however, is the emergence in Laramie of a narrative that has gained many proponents in recent years: one that states that Shepard's murder by two local residents, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, was only "a robbery gone bad" or "a drug-fueled murder" and not a hate crime. "That's nonsense," says Fluty. "All you have to do is look at the evidence." O'Malley, lead investigator of the Laramie Police Department agrees, "I'm convinced that these guys killed Matt because he was gay."

Debree of the Sheriff's department adds: "We went in depth reviewing [the murderers'] blood for any kind of drugs or anything to that effect. There was nothing." The fact that this was a hate crime was decisively proved at the trial when in excerpts of McKinney's confession, the jury heard him tell DeBree: "[Shepard] put his hand on my leg. ... I told him I'm not a f---ing faggot" before beginning to brutally beat Matthew Shepard.

Catherine Connolly, the first openly gay professor at the university, also takes issue with this willful ignoring of the facts: "This distortion of history, this is what kids 18, 19 years old think now. It's devastating to us. This is our history."

So why has this distortion of the truth become so prevalent? One hypothesis is that because Laramie was portrayed in the media as a backward town where hatred and bigotry were rampant, forcing the citizens to question their identity as an idyllic community, a "good place to raise your children." "And when we have a theory about who we are," says Laramie resident Jeffrey Lockwood, "and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things."

Yet there are many people who found in this murder an opportunity to reflect deeply about the role that the culture and values of Laramie played in the crime. "This whole thing forced us to look at our warts," says Dr. Don Cantway, the physician who treated Matthew's injuries. "To look at our bigotry, the hatreds, the intolerance that exist here."

These two stances, denial and self-reflection, have divided the town. "This is where I choose to live," insists Jonas Slonaker, a gay man who chose to come out after Shepard's murder, "and this is a state that always votes Republican and is pretty conservative. So there'll be a lot of resistance [to change]. It might be a situation where those rights will come from a federal level down before it comes to the state level."

But nationally, the situation regarding gay rights legislation mirrors Wyoming's. In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act passed in both the House and the Senate but the legislation never made it out of Congress—because of a Bush veto threat and the bill's attachment to a defense authorization measure.

Still, shifts are occurring: Wyoming's Governor Dave Freudenthal, says, "If you really believe in that Western 'live and let live' [philosophy] then you wouldn't have homophobic violence. So there's a contradiction. We tolerate an awful lot of violence in this state and we have to look at that." In 2005, the neighboring town of Casper elected a gay man as mayor and professor Connolly is running for a State House seat in the coming election. In addition, the faculty at the university continues to fight for same-sex partner benefits.

Measuring change is not an exact science: the markers can be elusive or blurry, yet no less meaningful. Peacock says, "I think it does a great disservice to the power of the story around Matthew's death to measure it by whether there's been definitive or quantifiable change like a law passed. We know that there has been so much qualitative and transformational change. So I think it does a real disservice to the story to measure it that way. I just think that's too thin of a measure."

Der Fall Matthew Shepard: Die Hölle von Wyoming

2008-10-12T12:05:00.002+02:00

Warum der Mord an dem schwulen Studenten Matthew Shepard vor genau zehn Jahren die USA bis heute beschäftigt. Von Frank Stern

Laramie ist kein Ort für einen Schwulen. Laramie - das klingt eher nach Cowboys, die durch Saloon-Türen poltern, sich eine Flasche Whiskey greifen und ein, zwei Mädchen mit aufs Zimmer nehmen. Es klingt nach Sternenbanner statt nach Regenbogenfahne. Wenn Amerika schwul ist, dann an den Rändern, in New York oder San Francisco. Nicht im Herzen. Nicht in Laramie/Wyoming.

Matthew Shepard hätte auch anderswo studieren können. Er war in der Schweiz zur Schule gegangen, sprach Deutsch und Italienisch. Doch er entschied sich für die amerikanische Provinz und schrieb sich im Herbst 1998 an der Uni von Laramie ein, an der schon sein Vater studiert hatte. Ein paar Wochen später war er tot - für die einen eine Art Märtyrer, für die anderen ein Schwuler, der sich in Gefahr begeben hatte und darin umgekommen war.

Es gibt Morde, die ähnlich grausam sind. Oder schlimmer. 1998 wurden in den USA 26 Homosexuelle aus Schwulenhass umgebracht, aber keiner dieser Fälle schlug so hohe Wellen wie der von Matthew Shepard. Selbst ausländische Medien griffen die Story vom Tod des 21-Jährigen auf, den zwei Gleichaltrige aus Laramie, die sich als Schwule ausgaben, in ihren Wagen lockten, mit ihm an einen einsamen Ort fuhren und ihm mit einem Revolver den Schädel einschlugen. Mit ausgestreckten Armen an einen Koppelzaun gebunden, wurde er 18 Stunden später gefunden. Da lebte er noch. Oder besser, er atmete. Fünf Tage lang hing er an Schläuchen und Maschinen. Am 12. Oktober 1998 starb er, ohne das Bewusstsein wiedererlangt zu haben.

Keine Tränen für Schwule

Vielleicht brauchte Amerika diesen schmächtigen Jungen mit der Zahnspange, um sich einzugestehen, dass es sich trotz aller Political Correctness und aller öffentlichen Toleranzappelle im Grunde einen Dreck um die Situation von Schwulen scherte. Vielleicht brauchte es die Bilder der fassungslosen Eltern und jener christlichen Fanatiker, die ihnen beim Begräbnis ihres Sohnes Schilder mit der Aufschrift "No Tears for Queers" (Keine Tränen für Schwule) und "Matt in Hell" (Matthew in der Hölle) entgegenreckten.

Jedenfalls kam danach die Diskussion um den Hate Crimes Prevention Act wieder in Gang, ein Gesetz zum Schutz vor Verbrechen aus Hass, die als Bundesangelegenheiten vom FBI verfolgt werden können und die harte Strafen nach sich ziehen. Angriffe auf Schwule zählten bis dahin nicht dazu. Und sie tun es bis heute nicht: Nachdem der US-Senat den Matthew Shepard Act nach jahrelangem Hin und Her 2007 befürwortet hatte, kündigte Präsident Bush sein Veto an. Seither liegt das Gesetz auf Eis. "Wir waren so nah dran", sagte Matthews Mutter Judy enttäuscht.

Vor jeder Wahl nimmt die Gewalt zu

2007 war überhaupt ein schlechtes Jahr für Amerikas Homosexuelle. 21 von ihnen fielen nach Angaben des New Yorker Anti-Gewalt-Projekts (AVP) Hassverbrechen zum Opfer. Die verbalen und physischen Attacken auf Schwule, Lesben und Transsexuelle stiegen gegenüber dem Vorjahr landesweit um 24 Prozent auf mehr als 2400.

Dabei reicht die Phalanx derer, die gegen Schwule Stimmung machen, von Rap-Musikern über Politiker bis hin zu bibelfesten Kirchenmännern, die von Bühne, Pult und Kanzel aus zum großen Halali blasen. "Immer wenn ein Wahljahr ansteht, beobachten wir eine Zunahme der Gewalt", sagt AVP-Sprecherin Kim Fountain. Im Frühjahr warnte die Republikanerin Sally Kern aus Oklahoma wieder vor Homosexuellen als Gefahr für die nationale Sicherheit.

Ihr Parteifreund John McCain hält sich alle Türen offen. Mal spricht sich der Präsidentschaftsbewerber dagegen aus, dass schwule Paare Kinder adoptieren dürfen, mal will er die Entscheidung darüber den Bundesstaaten überlassen. Mal stimmt er gegen eine Änderung der US-Verfassung, mit der die Ehe als Bund von Mann und Frau festgeschrieben werden soll, mal attackiert er die Obersten Richter von Kalifornien, weil sie die Homo-Ehe in ihrem Bundesstaat legalisiert haben. "Die Bewegung für Akzeptanz und Gleichheit von Schwulen steckt in einer Sackgasse", sagt Judy Shepard, "trotz einiger Lichtblicke." McCain zählt sie nicht dazu.

"Gott hasst Schwule"

Matthew sei nicht allein gewesen, als er da draußen am Zaun hing, hat Dennis Shepard in der Verhandlung gegen die Mörder seines Sohnes gesagt. Die Sterne hätten in jener Nacht über ihn gewacht. Und am nächsten Morgen die Sonne. "Und er hatte einen Freund bei sich. Er hatte Gott." Die pure Verzweiflung. Vor dem Gerichtsgebäude machten Amerikas Inquisitoren deutlich, was ihr Gott von seinem Jungen hält: "God Hates Fags!" - Gott hasst Schwule. Die Fronten im Land, so scheint es, haben sich seither kaum verschoben. "Zehn Jahre Veränderung und kein Fortschritt", lautet Judy Shepards Fazit.

Sie kann das recht gut beurteilen, denn sie selbst hat in dieser Zeit einen radikalen Wandel vollzogen - von der Hausfrau zur landesweit bekannten Aktivistin. Anfangs hatte sie noch ungläubig verfolgt, wie ihr Sohn nach seinem Tod zu einer Ikone der Schwulenbewegung aufstieg und gleichzeitig zur Zielscheibe homophober Hassprediger wurde. Im Dezember 1998 dann rief sie zusammen mit ihrem Mann die Matthew Shepard-Stiftung ins Leben. Seither reist sie kreuz und quer durchs Land, tritt auf Kongressen auf, hält Vorträge an Schulen, wirbt für Akzeptanz.

Audio-Botschaft aus der Hölle

Doch die Quelle, aus der sich Amerikas Vorurteile speisen, ist tief. Der Westboro Baptist Church etwa, angeführt von einem 78-jährigen Pfarrer mit besonderem Draht zum Herrn, gelten Schwule als gottlose Wertezerstörer, denen ewige Verdammnis droht. Auf ihrer Webseite gibt es bis heute einen Bereich zur Mahnung an Matthew Shepards Schicksal - mit seinem von Flammen umzüngelten Bild und einer Audio-Botschaft aus der Hölle.

Judy Shepard lässt sich davon nicht entmutigen. "Sicher bin ich enttäuscht, dass es so schleppend vorangeht, vor allem in der Politik", sagt sie. "Andererseits können wir heute schon viel offener über Fragen der sexuellen Identität sprechen als noch vor zehn Jahren." Sie hofft, dass sich mit einem demokratischen Präsidenten im Weißen Haus noch mehr bewegt und das Gesetz, das den Namen ihres Sohnes trägt, endlich im Kongress verabschiedet wird. "Es wäre eine wichtige Botschaft", sagt die 56-Jährige. "Man kann damit nicht das Denken der Menschen ändern, aber es wäre ein Signal, dass Gewalt nicht hingenommen wird."

Respekt, keine Almosen

In Barack Obama dürfte sie einen Unterstützer finden. Der Senator aus Illinois hat sich gegen die Diskriminierung von Homosexuellen und für eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaften ausgesprochen. Er war auch der erste Präsidentschaftskandidat, der vor farbigen Zuhörern die grassierende Homophobie in der Schwarzengemeinde thematisierte. Die Ehe aber - von vielen Schwulen-Aktivisten als ultimativer Toleranztest apostrophiert - will auch er als heterosexuelles Refugium erhalten. "Wir arbeiten dran", sagt Judy Shepard und lacht. "Der Mann ist lernfähig."

AVP-Sprecherin Kim Fountain dagegen hält Toleranz eher für einen zwiespältigen Begriff. "Er suggeriert, dass uns etwas aus Großzügigkeit gewährt wird, auf das wir eigentlich keinen Anspruch haben", findet sie. Amerikas Homosexuelle bräuchten keine Almosen: "Was wir brauchen, ist Respekt." Judy Shepard wäre schon zufrieden, wenn sich Amerika wenigstens zu etwas mehr Großzügigkeit durchringen könnte.

GAY PRIDE

2008-06-10T13:53:00.002+02:00

Willkommen zum Gay Pride Monat Juni! Überall auf der Welt starten jetzt wieder die Aktions-Wochen, Feste und Paraden. Bei uns Christopher Street Day genannt, überall sonst auf der Welt Gay Pride Day. Für alle, die es nich mehr so genau wissen, hier noch mal ein kurzer Rückblick auf die Entstehung von Gay Pride:

Am Abend des 27.Juni 1969 hatten sich besonders viele Schwule, Lesben und Drag Queens in der New Yorker Homo Bar Stonewall Inn im Village zusammengefunden.
Dazu muss man wissen, dass es bis dahin dauernd Razzien durchführte und die Community in permanenter Angst vor der Polizei stand.

Doch an diesem Abend, an dem mehr Schwule als sonst im Stonewall Inn rumhingen und sowieso schon ziemlich traurig waren, wurde aus Angst und Trauer plötzlich Wut und Kampfbereitschaft.

Warum die Trauer?
Weil sich die Community ein paar Stunden vorher von einer ihrer grössten Ikonen verabschiedet hatte: Judy Garland starb am 22.Juni 1969 im Alter von 47 Jahren und wurde am 27.Juni beerdigt.
Judy hatte sich mehrmals deutlich zu ihren schwulen Fans bekannt, die ihr bis zum bitteren Ende die Treue gehalten haben.
Deshalb nennen wir Schwulen uns auch bis heute noch gerne Friends of Dorothy (wie in: Dorothy aus the Wizard of Oz)

Mitten in diese Stimmung platzte die Polizei zum xten Male um die anwesenden Gäste des Stonewall Inn zu schikanieren. Aber zum ersten Mal wehrten sich die Schwulen und Lesben. Die Kerle wurfen mit Flaschen nach den Cops, die Lesben und Drag Queens wehrten sich mit Fäusten und High Heels und alle riefen "I'm a faggot and I'm proud of it!" "I like boys!" "Gay Power!". Es entstand eine tagelange Strassen-Schlacht zwischen Homosexuellen und Cops und jeden Tag kamen mehr Schwule und Lesben aus dem ganzen Land, die von der Schlacht hörten, zum Stonewall Inn und machten mit. Das Ereignis ging als Stonewall Riots in die Geschichte der Menschen Rechte ein und plötzlich wehrten sich Schwule und Lesben überall: erst in den USA und dann auch überall sonst auf der Welt entstand die Schwulen Rechte Bewegung, oder schöner: gay rights movement.

Seitdem erinnnert weltweit im Juni die Community an die Helden der Stonewall Riots mit den Gay Pride Wochen. Bei uns Christopher Street Day genannt, weil das Stonewall Inn in der Christopher Street stand.

Trailer: After Stonewall - MyVideo

1978 tauchte beim Gay Pride in San Francisco zum ersten Mal die Regenbogen Fahne als Symbol für die Schwulen Bewegung auf. Jede Farbe der Flagge, die Gilbert Baker designed hatte, bekam eine andere Bedeutung zugeteilt:

ROT = Leben

ORANGE = Heilung

GELB = Sonne

GRÜN = Natur

ROYAL BLAU = Harmonie

VIOLETT = Geist

LESEN!

NY Daily News Artikel vom 6.Juli 1969 über die Stonewall Riots

NY Times Artikel vom 23.Juni 1969 zum Tod von Judy Garland

amazon.de Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter
amazon.de Stonewall by Martin Duberman

"I Was Miscavige's Favorite Boy"

2008-04-19T14:08:00.006+02:00

Scientology's First Celebrity Defector Reveals Church Secrets

by Tony Ortega

Veteran television actor Jason Beghe tells the Village Voice that the Church of Scientology will be feeling blindsided by the YouTube video of him that hit the Internet on March 14.

Long-held frustrations with the church motivated Beghe to leave Scientology seven months ago, after he had spent about 12 years in the organization as one of its most celebrated success stories. Over the course of about a year, he negotiated his “disassociation” with the church, trying to give every indication to church officials that he was parting on good terms.

In reality, he says, he was already planning to go public with damning allegations about L. Ron Hubbard’s controversial religion.

Beghe most recently appeared in the CBS series Cane, and he’s been a regular television presence since the mid-1980s, showing up in series like Everwood, JAG and Numb3rs. Overnight, however, he’s becoming much better known for being the first Scientology celebrity to come out against the church. Hubbard’s minions covet celebrities like no other religion, and although some, like Nicole Kidman, have only temporary affiliations with it, none with Beghe’s experience has ever been so public in denouncing it.

Jason Beghe - Scientology Aussteiger - MyVideo

Speaking on the phone from his home in Malibu, Beghe, 48, says the 3-minute video is part of a much longer session. After leaving the church, Beghe had reached out to a Norwegian man, Andreas Heldal-Lund, who runs Operation Clambake (xenu.net), probably the most comprehensive anti-Scientology website on the Internet. Heldal-Lund convinced him to meet him along with another of the church’s most well known critics, Mark Bunker, known as “wise beard man” to the “Anonymous” movement that in recent months has organized worldwide protests against Scientology.

“They came to my place out here, and we spent the day together. They set up a camera and I blabbed. And I barely scratched the surface,” Beghe says.

Originally from New York, Beghe turned a modeling career into television acting with relative ease. “I’m one of those guys who works. I never had a problem getting a job,” he says. “I never became a huge star, but I never stopped working.” While taking an acting class from Scientologist Milton Katselas in 1994, Beghe says he decided he wanted to learn more about the religion.

So he decided to hit up another student in the class, Bodie Elfman, then boyfriend (now husband) of Jenna. Elfman, he says, gave him a copy of What is Scientology, a lavishly illustrated hardback that introduced him to the idea that L. Ron Hubbard had come up with a “technology” of the mind that supposedly enables the devout to achieve superhuman capabilities. The purification rundown, a detoxification ritual, caught his eye, Beghe says. “This clear thing sounded good, too,” he adds.

Hubbard’s followers believe that if church members go through an increasingly complex (and increasingly expensive) process known as “The Bridge,” they may unlock the capacities of the mind so completely that they become a clear, and have total recall, have the ability to leave their bodies, and are impervious to disease.

After reading the book Elfman gave him, Beghe says he was ready to go whole hog. “Give me some Scientology, man,” he remembers thinking.

And it didn’t take him long to get hooked. In his first training session, doing something that, in typically arcane Hubbard argot, was called ‘OT TR Zero,” he had to learn to “confront.” Which, oddly enough, meant sitting motionless with his eyes closed.

“You sit three feet from someone with eyes closed, relaxed. You sit there and confront someone, unflinching, until you have a ‘major, stable win,” he says. Translation: after trying to hold perfectly still for twenty minutes, he had an epiphany.

“I kind of left my body, and realized, in a new sense, who I was. And it was like, ‘Oh, shit.’”

He explains that as a child, he realized that he was someone who had a deep curiosity about spirituality. He remembers that he would turn to another person, look into their eyes, and feel that he was able to learn something essential about them. But when he looked into the mirror, he didn’t get the same feeling. “Who am I?” became his mantra, he says, probably far younger than it does for, say, most college freshmen. It led him to have a sense of adventure about things spiritual.

Now, suddenly, he seemed to have an answer. “I’m not Jason Beghe. That’s just a body, like a car. And I’m the person driving it. I felt like for the first time I felt like I knew who I was.”

But now that he’s left the church, does he still ascribe that feeling to something L. Ron Hubbard had discovered, or some other psychological phenomenon? Only seven months out, he admits that it’s not really a question he’s been asked before.

“There seems to be a level of hypnosis or brainwashing or whatever you want to call it, and this training is a way of getting people hypnotized. And there’s a lot of patter that you’re constantly hearing that helps you get in that state,” he says.

But at the time, he was hooked. He remembers thinking, “Let me do this clear thing,” figuring that it might cost as much as $10,000. Instead, he was asked for $50,000 to start his progress on the Bridge. “I probably had $60,000 to my name. But I plunked it down.”

Over the next year, Beghe says he rocketed through Scientology’s expensive levels like no one else. Along the way, he got plenty of special treatment. “Celebrity Centre. My own private sauna. Everybody kissing my ass, which I was uncomfortable with. But nice people. Couldn’t be nicer,” he says.

His move to clear was so rapid, Beghe was told that diminutive Scientology leader David Miscavige considered him a “poster boy” for the religion.

“I was Miscavige’s favorite boy, so they were doing all kinds of things to keep me happy,” he says. “I moved up the Bridge faster than anyone in history. I went at it 24/7 for about a year. I went clear. Got to OT V. I was a trained auditor.” (OT stands for “operating thetan,” and the highest level in the church is said to be OT VIII.)

“I’m farther up the Bridge than Travolta, and he’s been in there a thousand years. He’s not a trained auditor.” To Beghe, some of the celebrities “seemed like dilettantes,” enjoying the perks but not really working hard at being Scientologists.

“I was on a spiritual journey. I wasn’t trying to make money, or influence people. I just wanted to try it.”

His wife also trained as a Scientologist and, like Beghe, reached OT V. Over his twelve years in the church, Beghe estimates that he gave Scientology about a million dollars.

Only about three years after joining, however, he says he started to have major problems. He had reached OT IV and was doing some special auditing, something referred to as “L Rundowns” or “L’s.” Beghe says the rundowns cost $150,000 to $160,000, but the payoff was immense: successfully completing the series would give someone serious juju. “You’re supposed to have the power to like take over a country,” he says.

Beghe says that others also getting the training would be asked what they wanted from the experience, and some would say “ten times my income.”

“I didn’t like that question. I was just experimenting.” Beghe went through daylong sessions in which he was peppered with questions about his ethics and behavior while holding onto an “e-meter,” a device that tests have shown simply measures skin galvanism, but that Scientologists believe reveal deep secrets in the mind. Beghe had used the e-meter many times before. But these sessions were a disaster for him. For six hours at a time, he’d be hit with questions (Is there an upset? Did you commit a crime? Did someone almost find out something you did?). “But I had nothing to say. I wasn’t hiding anything.” His auditors weren’t satisfied. They were waiting for a “floating needle” on the e-meter to show he was in the right state of mind, but it kept spiking.

“I was sitting there for hours, at $1,000 an hour. It went for weeks,” he says. And it cost that much, he says, because L’s required a “class 12 auditor.”

“A class 12 auditor has more training than a brain surgeon. They’re the cream of the crop. They’re the only ones who can deliver the L’s. And they were making the biggest fucking mistakes,” he says.

Beghe says the proof that Scientology was no longer working for him came when he was almost killed in a car accident. After the L’s, he points out, that shouldn’t happen. “A clear isn’t supposed to have a car accident. You’re supposed to be practically immortal.”

To the Scientologists, the accident was an indication that someone was “suppressing” Beghe. So they pulled him in for more interrogation.

“What about this gay person you’re friends with,” Beghe says one official asked him, implying that somehow the gay friend was causing Beghe’s clear state to be sabotaged. When Beghe objected, he says the official responded, “Well, he’s gay.”

His training, meanwhile, continued to go badly. The next step, OT V, he says, was terrible. “OT V should take 3 to 5 weeks, and it took me three to five years.”

Not only were his auditing sessions grinding on him, Beghe says he was also expected to keep quiet about his troubles, and still make many appearances at Scientology events to keep up the fiction that he was doing well.

“My hat [role] was celebrity and model Scientologist…I couldn’t walk around looking hangdog. I had to go to a lot of events. ‘Hey, Jason!’ I didn’t even know these people, and they were always up my ass.”

Courting celebrities is one of the things that Scientology is noted for, but Beghe says it goes beyond simply a PR tool. Hubbard had made it clear that one way to clear the contents of one’s “ethics file”—the record of misdeeds a parishioner admits to in auditing—was to recruit a celebrity to the fold. Bring in a star, and all crimes are forgiven. So the care and feeding of celebrity members is paramount on everyone’s mind.

Beghe claimst that the religion’s top star, Tom Cruise, was actually mostly separated from the church for several years. Other celebrities, he points out, go through similar periods of no longer auditing or moving up the Bridge, but are still considered members. Bringing Cruise back into a more active role, Beghe says, was a major Miscavige project.

“He was out for like ten years. There are people who just aren’t doing anything Some are out but don’t talk about it. Why? The church is scary. These are bad motherfuckers.”

Once his disappointment was so great he began talking about leaving altogether, Beghe says the church sent people to talk him out of it.

“Big fucking cheeses. At the end, one was David Petit, head of Celebrity Centre International. I’ve known him for a long time,” he says. “He told me: ‘If you want, I’ll make you the president of any Celebrity Centre, anywhere in the world.’

“That’s a sign of the respect they had for me. Petit doesn’t get to make offers like that unless David [Miscavige] knows.”

Now that he and his wife are finally out, Beghe says he wants the world know how unethical and underhanded Scientology turned out to be.

“Not one auditing session—which are supposed to be private—is not recorded on film,” he says, and claims that secret cameras are used at every session at the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, recording sessions that for Scientologists are supposed to be something like confessionals in the Catholic church.

“Will Smith is supposedly dabbling in Scientology. Let Will Smith know that his shit was fucking recorded. And tell him to look them in the eye and see if he believes it when they deny it.”

Even worse, he says, is that behind the backs of celebrities, Scientology officials gossip about what transpires in those supposedly private sessions. “Everything’s supposed to be confidential. But all they do is chat about it,” he says.

At a church center in Hemet, California where the church has movie studios, Beghe helped make videos. “I did movies for them. I remember asking, who do we cast in this thing? How about this dude?” referring to another scientologist actor. “No, he’s been cheating on his wife,” Beghe says he was told.

“It’s just a gossip factory. And I’m not talking about auditors. All over the place. The celebrities don’t know that their private troubles are gossiped about by Scientology employees.”

Beghe says he was also motivated by what non-celebrities are going through in Hubbard’s church.

“Being a celebrity, I got the greatest fucking auditors, case supervisors, all the best trained people. And they fucked me up this bad—and they admitted they did—but what about the poor schmoe at Orange County org? They don’t know what they’re doing. It certainly doesn’t deliver what’s promised.”

Is he worried about what going public will do to his career?

“I’m probably not going to be doing any movies for United Artists any time soon,” he cracked, referring to the Cruise-owned studio. But otherwise, he’s not sure how the publicity will affect his career. After Cane’s cancellation, he’s waiting for word on another deal that he can’t talk about yet. But for now, he’s fielding calls from television talk shows.

“I don’t want to get bitter, and I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he says. But he’s determined to help others by telling them what he’s learned.

“Scientology seduces you into thinking that it’s a process through which you can truly become yourself. But ultimately, what it turns you into is a Scientologist—a brainwashed version of yourself.”

Das 1x1 von Tom Cruise's Scientology

2008-01-15T16:27:00.000+01:00

Das Video, das Tom Cruise am liebsten ungesehen machen würde. In dem Werbe-Filmchen von Scientology faselt Herr Cruise stellenweise total wirres Zeug.

Ich habe mal ein paar interessante, teilweise witzige und meist ziemlich erschreckende Clips über Scientology zusammengestellt.

Scientology - Inside the Cult.
BBC Reportage von 1995

Scientology and Tom Cruise.
CNN Bericht von 2006

Scientology and the Cult Awareness Network (CAN).
CAN wurde 1998 erst von Scientology verklagt und dann aufgekauft.

The Shrinking World of Ron L.Hubbard.
Documentary über den Scientology Gründer.

Scientology and Me Aftermath.
CNN Reportage über die Folgen einer Scientology Doku der BBC.

The Un-Funny Truth About Scientology

2008-01-15T16:00:00.000+01:00

Joan Collins: Why I'll never work with Linda again!

2007-07-15T11:59:00.001+02:00

13/07/07

Why I'll never work with Linda Evans again!
by JOAN COLLINS

Their vicious onscreen catfights helped turn Dynasty into a 1980s TV hit.

Then, last year, Joan Collins, 74, and Linda Evans, 64, reunited to play a pair of feuding former Hollywood stars in a touring play. Now, in an extraordinary one-off extract from her personal diary, Joan reveals the truth about the worst theatrical experience of her life.

Spring 2005: New York

At last - a funny play that has the perfect role for me. It's called Legends, and my character, Sylvia, is a sharp and witty former Hollywood star who's fallen on hard times. She meets up with her rival Leatrice - a drippy type who used to play nuns and nurses - and away we go. Lots of badinage, bitching, insults and all-out hand-to-hand fighting.

But who's going to play Leatrice?

It has to be the right actress or the whole thing could collapse like a tent in the wind.

The idea of doing a tour, culminating on Broadway, comes from a producer called Ben Sprecher - who turns out to be a short, bald man with what I suspect is a bit of a Napoleon complex. My husband, Percy Gibson, will also be onboard as one of the producers.

Summer 2005

Legends was last performed in 1986, so it will need a lot of updating. Percy and I work on the dialogue to try to make it funnier and submit some rewrites.
Ben Sprecher and the director, John Bowab, love all our changes, which are seamlessly incorporated.

Autumn 2005

I'm not thrilled when Ben suggests Linda Evans to play Leatrice. We starred together for nine years in the TV series Dynasty - she played saintly Krystal and I played bitchy Alexis.
However, I'm convinced she's always disliked me, since she rarely spoke to me on set. Ben tells me that he's talked to Linda and "she's (pause) fond of you".
"I don't believe her," I say. "She needs the work, and for God's sake, she's never been on stage at all - and she wasn't even that good on TV!"
"The bookers want Linda," he says firmly, so that's that.
Why do I have this sudden sense of foreboding?
I tell Percy: "I want this 30-week tour to be fun - and I don't think it will be with her."

August 2006: Los Angeles

I arrange an interview on Larry King Live for Linda and me.
When Percy and I arrive at the studio, Linda is already there with her manager/agent, Mike Greenfield. He's a rough man who curses at every opportunity and slinks around glaring at me but not daring to say a word.
He's always disliked me, but I don't know why.
Larry puts us in a tight spot when he asks: "Joan Collins and Linda Evans - who decides who gets first billing?" Quickly and rather diplomatically, I reply: "Oh, Larry, it's simply alphabetical, of course."
As we wrap the interview, I notice Greenfield - whom I've privately nicknamed the Toad - bending Percy's ear about something.
(Much later, after the tour is under way, Percy tells me that the Toad said: "You'd better keep your lady in line and not let her pull any diva s**t, or Linda will be very unhappy." Percy told him: "I've worked with Joan for over five years and she is nothing but professional, punctual and hard-working - but she won't be bullied.")
Late August 2006: New York Linda arrives at first rehearsal with cosmetic-surgery tape over and under her eyelids and underneath her chin.
Naturally, the cast all pretend to ignore this, but it's obvious she's come straight from either the face-lift shop or a car crash.
She also has the weirdest collagen-enhanced lips I've ever seen. In fact, she epitomises the expression 'trout pout', with those huge lips that make her look like a gargoyle when she smiles. It's quite off-putting to have to look at that face, which used to be so pretty, and pretend not to notice.
Everyone who sees Linda is shocked by how she's spoiled her looks.
(Later, one of our reviews even says: "Evans' face, sadly, has undergone the kind of transformation that results in permanently pursed lips and little facial expression.")
In rehearsals, we're now mapping out the fight scenes, during which we rip off each other's wigs, throw them at each other and have a pillow fight.
Linda says: "I love to fight. Barbara Stanwyck taught me to do my own stunts. I don't do car crashes or falling off buildings, but fighting with another woman is not a problem for me."
Well, ha, ha, and thanks, Linda - but this woman was taught by Gene Kelly never to do your own stunts.
"Firstly," he told me, "it's dangerous, and second, you're putting some poor stunt girl out of work."
So I subscribe to the Kelly theory - or have done ever since twice ending up in hospital after an over-enthusiastic bout of cat-fighting with Krystal on Dynasty.
Once, in our infamous lily-pond fight, she pulled my leg so hard that it was practically dislocated; and, another time, I ended up in the emergency ward with a dislocated neck vertebra.
I voice my concerns to the producer and director, but they pooh-pooh them. Still, they do agree to hire the best fight director in NY.
I can't see why we have to run rapidly around the set several times, pushing and shoving each other hard, actually hitting each other over the head with pillows, swatting each other in the face with the wigs. Isn't a fight director supposed to show us how to simulate all this?
I'm starting to feel we won't get to the first performance without an injury, never mind the 300 others we're contracted to do.
A few days later, I discover that the person hired by our esteemed producer is not a fight director at all, but a choreographer.
At this point, I put my foot down: I refuse to let Linda rip my wig off onstage (and vice versa) and insist that this be done off-stage, where we can continue screaming while we carefully unpin our wigs. Otherwise, by the end of the run, we'll have no hair left!
Finally, the moves are restaged so that neither of us will get hurt - although Linda insists on doing a dramatic fall off the sofa on to the floor when I push her. Let's see how sanguine she is about that after 30 weeks!
Over these three weeks of rehearsals, Linda seems sweet and naive and very vulnerable. She's clearly worried about being on stage for the first time and has actually broken down in tears in front of Percy.
I help her with her make-up and hair; I find her an acting coach she can work with after rehearsals; I give her advice on what to expect on tour; and I tell her what she should concentrate on. I keep asking the director to help her with her voice projection as well, as it's almost impossible to hear her on stage.
As time wears on, Linda gets better and grows in confidence - although her acting coach tells me: "Her body language is not good and she has very little stage presence."
To try to boost her morale, Percy and I invite her and her best friend, Bunky, out for dinner several times, but she always declines.

September 2006: Toronto - first preview

Once we're into technical rehearsals, Linda starts pulling herself together and her confidence balloons. Unfortunately, what tends to happen when an unseasoned actor feels comfortable on stage is that they get carried away and lose control.
First preview. Linda's supposed to give me a gentle push, which appears to propel me off a coffee table and on to the floor.
Unfortunately, her confidence has grown so much that she gives me an almighty shove that sends me flying on to my knees. The thud is so resounding that I hear the audience gasp in sympathy.
(For the next six weeks, I need therapy on my left knee for the bursitis and pain caused by the impact of my whole weight falling on it.)
I note that Linda hasn't even asked if I'm OK - it's as if nothing has happened.
More complications: we have to restage the fight scene to cut down on all the running around in order not to aggravate my injury. Then, on the second night, Linda suddenly throws my wig at me with the accuracy of a sniper - I have to duck to prevent it from striking me in the face.
A few days later, she actually steals a piece of comedy 'business' that I've developed.
I've been peeling a banana and then taking a bite out of it while discussing husbands, which gets a big laugh. One night, Linda reaches over and bites the top off the banana herself - which loses me my laugh.
Anyway, the director says it's equally funny, so why don't we just let her do it? And, figuring that a laugh's a laugh, I agree.
I know all these 'accidents' are due to Linda's inexperience, but no one seems to be pointing out to her where she's going astray - so she naturally concludes that it's OK to do these things.
I keep trying to think of new bits of funny "business" because I'm starting to realise this play is not nearly as good as I first thought. John Bowab, the director, isn't giving me any ideas or input - instead, he's putting all his energy into trying to help Linda.
There are still some mind-numbingly awful lines. I'm obsessed with making the play better and funnier. The result is that I don't get much sleep, which is a pain in the ass and I'm sure makes me one as well!

September 14

Linda scrapes a spoon across my chin on stage while I'm speaking. This really p***es me off. You never invade another actor's space.
Towards the end of the month, Linda and I have a couple of verbal battles because the fight scene isn't working. It's being held up because she tries to put her wig back on after I throw it at her.
I keep saying this isn't funny (the audience certainly isn't laughing) and it's holding up the next bit of action - when we hit each other over the head with cushions, releasing feathers all over the stage (totally cribbed from Dynasty.)
One night, I throw her wig off the balcony (which substitutes for a 14th-storey apartment) instead of to her, which gets an enormous laugh from the audience. But she's clearly fuming - which prompts the director and the stage manager to come into my dressing-room at intermission to reprimand me.
In the second act, Linda - obviously still angry - decides to push past me and stalk off stage. That leaves me alone in front of the audience, calling her, until she decides to come back. Afterwards, I don't hear a peep about her actions from the stage manager or the director - only the lame excuse that "she doesn't know any better". Oh, really?
Percy convinces me to call a truce, so I visit Linda in her dressing-room. For several days, we become quite pally. She asks my advice about how to improve things.
I try to help, but it's difficult to improve someone with no stage projection or presence.

October 5

My agent, Peter Charlesworth, sees the show.
Backstage, Linda comes over to him and says: "Are you Joan's agent? I must meet Joan's agent!"
Peter replies: "That's me."
"Well," Linda says, "you must have a strong constitution!"
I can't give Linda points for original wit, since she was quoting a line from the play, but she gets full marks for bitchiness - which she usually keeps well under wraps. I always suspected she was a "closet bitch".

October 8

I send the director and producer pages of suggestions for improving the play.

October 10

Still waiting for either of them to comment on my notes, so feeling rather sidelined and negated.
Ben, the producer, has a dismissive "I-can't-be-bothered-with-this-actress" attitude.
Yet, a year ago, he was consulting me constantly about re-writes and decisions.

October 12: Opening night

It went really well - but things are getting tense between the director and me. John just talks over me in rehearsals and dismisses any ideas.
He's cut one of my lines - when I re-enter holding Linda's wig and laughing: "Plastic hair, plastic face."
No one's ever objected to this before. But, apparently, it's a touch too close for comfort.
Meanwhile, he and Linda have been coming up with the most awful things to say about me on stage, which they throw at me without warning.

October 15

I give a fabulous party after the matinee in honour of Percy and all who share a 'Libra' birthday with him. Linda and I - all smiles - even carry in the birthday cake together.
On Monday, Percy shows me all the stage manager's reports on each performance, and I'm shocked and really, really hurt.
So much so that I start to shake uncontrollably.
"Joan was nervous in the first scene" (untrue), "Joan was testy during rehearsal" (why not mention the director got testy first?) and on and on - made-up statements that are simply untrue.
On Tuesday, the stage manager reports that I've been "paraphrasing" lines.
But I certainly wasn't the only one: both Linda and Tonye Patano - who plays the maid - missed lines tonight. Besides, you could leave the theatre and have a three-course dinner during the pauses that Linda leaves between her lines. Not a peep about that in the report.

October 15

The reviews come out. The critics loathe the script and the direction: "ham-handed, limp direction," "mothballed script" and so on. And they're right.
How am I going to endure another 25 weeks of this? God give me strength.
The stage manager tells me he's been asked by the producer to report on every infinitesimal detail of my performance.
When I ask why I've been singled out and not Linda, he says: "Because there's nothing we can do to improve Linda's performance."
It seems that sides have been drawn, which is so hurtful and upsetting.
Plus, if I don't go all-out on my performance, if I drop my energy by even 10 per cent, Linda slows down even more and then the whole show goes down the tube. And Ben blames me!

October: A few days after the opening

My finger is in agony because Linda kicked it last night.
When I pushed her on to the sofa, her "wicked-witch-of-the-west" pointy boots shot up and smashed into my right hand.
It was just a matter of time. Her enormous feet have hit me in the elbow once before, and they caught my wrist the previous week - but I've just suffered in silence.
The finger's now heavily bandaged. At curtain call, when Linda tries to hold my hand, I whisper through clenched teeth: "I can't."
She asks why. Can't she see my hand is bandaged? Is she really that uncaring and self-absorbed? She shrugs and sails off the set without even asking if I'm OK.
When a reporter asks her about my bandaged hand a few days later, Linda sniffs: "Well, we didn't have to call the paramedics."

October 24: Philadelphia

Linda and I are barely speaking. I still can't believe she's never apologised for almost breaking my finger.
When I tell Ben that Blondie hasn't even asked if I'm all right, he defends her by saying: "A lot of people are like that. I'm like that." No wonder he's on her side.
Tonight, I nip out through the stage door for a quick cigarette with my dresser, and we hear Ben screaming at Percy further down the alley.
Apparently, it's one of the nights when I'm not giving my usual 150 per cent performance and he's beside himself with rage. "I thought he was going to hit me," Percy says much later.

October 30

A new company manager has been brought in to meet Linda, but not me.
And the director came to the matinee and visited Linda, but not me.
What's going on?
I feel tremendous negative vibes, yet I have the hardest role - on stage most of the time and with many more lines than anyone.

November 2

B. H. Barry, a fight director, arrives to re-direct the fight scene. But Linda and I have a verbal fight during the rehearsal.She has no conception that this kind of activity might be difficult for others, so she treats me with contempt because I refuse to get physical with her.She's always talking about "motivation" and the "objective of the scene" - as if she's Dame Edith Evans and the play is Tolstoy.
Tonight, she tries to upstage me by mugging (making faces) during my big speech! Unbelievable.

November 4: Last weekend in Philadelphia

Jerry Zacks, one of Broadway's top directors, comes to see the show.
Backstage, he tells me: "The script sucks, it's not funny enough, the relationship between you and Linda hasn't been explored at all, there are no highs and lows and Linda's weak (couldn't agree more)."
God, I regret being talked into allowing them to cast Linda. Everyone thinks we're just cashing in on Dynasty - and they're right.

Armistead Maupin - Truth Sayer

2007-06-12T07:20:00.000+02:00

Truth Sayer

Author Armistead Maupin cleans out the closets
by Leilani Labong

Looking back on Armistead Maupin’s work, you may recognize a theme of slippery identities—Anna Madrigal, the matriarchal landlady from Tales of the City, was once an Andrew, and the 2000 book (and subsequent 2006 film) The Night Listener was based on Maupin’s real-life telephone friendship with a woman who posed as Anthony Godby Johnson, an imaginary 14-year-old boy dying of AIDS. His fascination with the topic could be attributed to the fact that the 63-year-old Parnassus Heights resident values integrity and candor in his own life—he’s not shy about craving praise, or admitting that he’s an American Idol fan. And, as you will see, one breath is all it takes for Maupin, who was raised in North Carolina, to make a dig at our country for not recognizing same-sex marriages and to condemn two celebs—by name, no less—for hindering the gay movement. The author will receive the Barbary Coast Award at the Litquake festival in October; his new book, Michael Tolliver Lives (HarperCollins)—a present-day tale about the beloved Tales of the City character—hits stores this month. Here, SF’s most-beloved wordsmith speaks his mind.

“When people praise me, they often begin by saying,
‘I know you’ve heard this a thousand times.…’
I tell them, “It doesn’t mean I don’t want to
hear it again! "

Your name is interesting.
The BBC did a documentary on me they called Armistead Maupin is a Man I Dreamt Up. “Is a Man I Dreamt Up” is an anagram of Armistead Maupin, so that promulgated the notion that I was a work of fiction. I am technically Armistead Maupin Jr.—it’s two family names stuck together. Southerners have a way of doing that.

Was Tales of the City meant for San Franciscans, or for outsiders?
When I was writing it, I thought it was a total in-joke. I had no idea it would have such global appeal. Many people around the world see San Francisco as their last great hope, full of possibilities and experimentation and earthly pleasures.

Tell us about Michael Tolliver Lives.
I’ve been reluctant to call it a continuation of Tales of the City because it’s in first person and it focuses on one character. The people who’ve read it say, “Stop being coy—it is a continuation.” It’s Michael at 55; he’s an HIV-positive gardener living in San Francisco with his husband of three years—they got married at City Hall—still friends with 85-year-old Anna Madrigal and a number of other characters from the old series who pop up. I told myself I was going to limit the cameos to only one or two, but they all came back and haunted me.

Your partner, Christopher, is 28 years younger than you are. What are the benefits and drawbacks of the age difference?
Believe me, it’s mostly benefits as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never been this happy in a relationship, and that has more to do with Christopher’s character and kindness than it does his age. But it is tough sometimes when I make ’60s cultural references—I end up becoming a sort of a boring tutor. We just got married in Vancouver, BC, in February. We had to become expatriates to have our union recognized.

Are there any negative gay stereotypes in pop culture today?
The negative influences on the gay culture are being promulgated by people who are widely known to be gay and who continue to act as if it’s a topic of non-discussion. I’m thinking specifically about people like Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper. They’re gay, but never talk about it. Go ahead and print that in 7x7!

No problem.
They are perpetuating the notion that being gay is a secret shame. We still respect closets far too much in this society.

Have you ever been interviewed by Anderson Cooper? Would you turn the tables on him?
No, I haven’t been interviewed by him. And now I probably never will. I’d turn the tables on him. I’ve had a fair amount of success there, you know. I’m very proud of the fact that Ian McKellen once asked me if I thought he should come out, and I said yes—and he’s credited me with that. I tend to be a little cheeky about this topic because I think it’s important—there are teenagers still committing suicide over their sexuality.

Had you ever met or corresponded with JT LeRoy?
No. But I had a similar experience with Anthony Godby Johnson, essentially JT’s predecessor. Even when I was suspecting Anthony Godby Johnson, I never doubted the stories I heard about JT LeRoy. JT showed up in public places, and of course the people who saw him said without a doubt that they thought it was a woman, but were too embarrassed to ask because they thought there was some politically correct transgender thing going on.

Litquake is honoring you in October ...
That’s what I understand.

... do you like the limelight?
When people praise me, they often begin by saying, “I know you’ve heard this a thousand times.… ” I tell them, “It doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it again!” Writers are very insecure creatures, and praise is always welcome.

What’s your most cherished possession?
Ian McKellen gave me a 16th-century clay pipe that he dug out of the mud at the Rose Theatre in London. Apparently, traces of cannabis have been found on a number of those pipes. There may have been a lot of high people watching those early Shakespearean productions [laughs].

Do you smoke dope every day?
Yes, ma’am, I do.

Find out what your favorite tales of the city characters are up to in Armistead Maupin’s new book, Michael Tolliver Lives (HarperCollins).

Stonewall Riots

2007-06-03T12:53:00.000+02:00

Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad

New York Daily News, 6.Juli 1969
by Jerry Lisker

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday

Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power

The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of "C'mon girls, lets go get'em," the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. "If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war."

Bruce and Nan

Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20's. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

"I don't like your paper," Nan lisped matter-of-factly. "It's anti-fag and pro-cop."

"I'll bet you didn't see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn't have a liquor license."

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan's trembling hands.

"Calm down, doll," he said. "Your face is getting all flushed."

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

"This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too," Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

"What wedding?," the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. "Eric and Jack's wedding, of course. They're finally tying the knot. I thought they'd never get together."

Meet Shirley

"We'll have to find another place, that's all there is to it," Bruce sighed. "But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later."

"They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular," Nan said bitterly. "I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that's the real reason. It's a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn't they leave us alone?"

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

"Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there," she said. "The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don't know what they did inside, but that's their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies."

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premises.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. "They had the tightest security in the Village," a First Division officer said, "We could never get near the place without a warrant."

Police Talk

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, "it hit me right above the temple."

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall's cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

Grand Prix Classics

2007-05-14T20:59:00.000+02:00

A Birthday Card from Chuck Palahniuk

2007-05-13T20:34:00.000+02:00

You wake up in a cheap hotel on a mattress still sticky with the night before. Sweat. Booze. Semen. Vomit. Blood, maybe. You roll over and try to bring a name to the tip of your tongue before the other person wakes up.

These are your memories.

You wake up on your Simmons BackCare Advanced mattress with foam core and pocketed springs, underneath your Ralph Lauren SuPima cotton, 350-threadcount sheets, to the full-range, high-fidelity sound of your Sharper Image Sound Soother alarm clock with aluminum-cone speaker technology.

These are the things that make up your life.

Wake up.

Go to work.

Come home and fall asleep on the couch to game shows or infomercials. Wake up the next day and start the cycle over again.

Celebrate your birthday. Drinks with friends, coworkers—what’s the difference really?

Cake at the office.

Your mother calls.

You are a special person and this is your special day.

You blow out the candles and secretly wish for a car accident, a heart attack, colon cancer. A home invasion. Anything to shock you back to your senses. You close your eyes and visualize a plane going down in the Atlantic, cutting your trip to the Virgin Islands tragically short.

If you tell anyone your wish, it won’t come true.

This is the life you chose. Happy birthday.

2007-05-12T16:42:00.000+02:00

Hepburn, Revisited

By WILLIAM MANN

KATHARINE Hepburn, who demolished brontosaurus skeletons and male egos in “Bringing Up Baby” and held her own with the King of England in “The Lion in Winter,” would have been 100 today. When she died four years ago at 96, she was hailed as an American icon, celebrated for her strength and independence.

But there was another side to Hepburn, too — more vulnerable, conflicted and ambitious than we knew. Though she liked to appear indifferent to vulgar stardom, she worked hard — very hard — for fame. And she never stopped, enduring fickle tastes and changing times because her desire to be great never waned. While she made us believe she was somehow above Hollywood hoopla, the truth was that long before stars employed staffs to micromanage and refine their public images, Hepburn was inventing a path for others to follow.

The extraordinary enterprise of her life is revealing. Never just the suitable-for-framing, one-dimensional heroine of legend, Hepburn learned early on that if she wanted to maintain both a career and a private life, she was going to have to play the game — and she played it well, perhaps better than any other star of her generation. She milked her romances with Howard Hughes, Leland Hayward and, at times, Spencer Tracy for coverage as shamelessly as Bennifer or Brangelina. When compromises were needed — for an independent woman in Hollywood, that was just about all the time — she was prepared to make them.

For all her alleged iconoclasm, Katharine Hepburn was an exquisitely tuned balancing act who toed the line between rebellion and pragmatism. She did what she had to do to win and survive. Consider a night in December 1935, when the distraught 28-year-old actress paced the parquetry floors of the director George Cukor’s house in the Hollywood hills. She’d just flopped in Cukor’s “Sylvia Scarlett,” for which she’d spent most of her time masquerading as a boy. She hadn’t feared rocking the boat, but now the boat was sinking. “Oh, George,” she said (pronouncing his name “Jo-udge”). “We’ve got to cook it up for ourselves, really cook it up.”

According to Cukor’s friend Michael Pearman, who witnessed the exchange: “What she was saying was that they had an image problem and they had to fix it. They had to make it up to the public somehow.”

Hepburn, who brought a fair share of East Coast entitlement to the film colony, had seemed at first to believe herself immune to the rules that governed other stars. She lived openly with a woman widely assumed to have been her lover, wore men’s trousers and aired unfashionably left-wing opinions that scandalized the fan magazines. One critic sniffed that Hepburn had been “stirring up trouble” ever since she’d arrived in Hollywood. Lessons like the “Sylvia Scarlett” debacle finally convinced her to start following the Hollywood playbook. And so began her metamorphosis from tomboy to glamour girl, from subversive to perpetual honoree.

Through it all, flashes of the original rebel still flared: In May 1947, an “angel in a red dress” (as one audience member described her) made a surprise appearance at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles to deliver a fiery speech in support of former vice president (and liberal hero) Henry Wallace. Hepburn lambasted the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “The artist, since the beginning of time, has always expressed the aspirations and dreams of his people,” she said. “Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.” The appearance led critics to brand her a “Red appeaser.”

Still, she was shrewd enough to gauge what the traffic would allow: Eventually she would claim that the red dress (“flaming” in some accounts) was really “pink,” and certainly not worn to make a statement. Ultimately she offset all the negative publicity by making “The African Queen.” As the Eleanor Roosevelt-inspired preacher’s daughter, she extolled God and country, chasing from collective memory the fact that she’d barely escaped a summons from the House committee and her career had almost imploded.

In this manner, Hepburn would “cook it up” over six decades — there was a Kate for every era. Remaking herself as a classic movie star, she had Philip Barry tailor “The Philadelphia Story” for her so she might, as spoiled rich girl Tracy Lord, be brought down a few pegs for all her previous “uppity” behavior. Indeed, her stylish career women — so popular during the war years — were never as independent as we like to remember them, and she usually submitted to some kind of onscreen drubbing from her male co-star. Those memorable battles of the sexes with Spencer Tracy? Hepburn always ends up on the losing side. She seemed to understand that her culture extracted certain forms of payback from the independent females whom it occasionally celebrated ... and kept reining in.

Hepburn became an American Rorschach test, mirroring the ways we wanted to see ourselves. Each generation redefined her, rubbing out and adding to her myth. In the ’60s, she fell into step with the counterculture, promoting interracial love in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and exposing the folly of war in “The Trojan Women.” When the times took another rightward lurch in the 1970s, she made “Rooster Cogburn” opposite the conservative icon John Wayne, and told the press how refreshing it was to work with a “real man.” Hepburn had remade herself from a sexually and politically suspect outsider into an exemplar of true-blue Americana.

By the time of her death, Katharine Hepburn had come to stand for Yankee common sense, Emersonian self-reliance and an all-American ethic of hard work. There’s no question she possessed all of those things. But there was so much more.

It’s taken 100 years to see Hepburn in all her complexity, and we are still trying to figure her out. The limited fictions used to elevate and sell the lives of public figures often form a cloudy chiaroscuro that covers their true humanity. Like many men and women of her time and every other, she had to deal with being different.

Hepburn’s drive for fame meant she would spend her life struggling between the demands of “the creature” (what she called her public image) and the more bohemian, unconventional life to which she was drawn. She was forced to invent a role for the kind of woman she was — her own kind. Labels — sexual, political, artistic — hold little meaning when talking about her. Sex, love and marriage were only the beginnings of the things she had to learn, re-make and often reject.

Hepburn was human, a fact we sometimes forget about the very famous. Too often our public figures remain wrapped in unchallenged “truths,” the cheap garments of hacks and press agents who keep their wayward charges safely moored to the boundaries of convention. But this gives only a partial glimpse into Hepburn’s life, and a distorted one at that. Only the whole truth can do credit to what our heroes did with the actual challenges they faced. People who live worthy lives can stand up to scrutiny. In Hepburn’s case, the real woman makes the icon seem like a bo-ah, bo-ah, bore.

Happy birthday, you old troublemaker.

New York Times vom 12.Mai 2007. William Mann ist der Autor von “Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn.”

Feeling Good!

2007-04-17T18:58:00.000+02:00

Q&Q Angelina Jolie in Newsweek

2007-03-11T18:59:00.000+01:00

Q&A: Angelina Jolie on Refugees and Fame

Angelina Jolie discusses celebrity, refugees and her life in New Orleans.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Christopher Dickey

Newsweek

March 11, 2007 - Angelina Jolie began traveling as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations some six years ago. She has visited the victims of violence in Africa, Pakistan and Cambodia—first as an observer in the background, then using her fame to draw attention to the plight of the helpless. The movie star spoke to NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey about her recent trip to a camp housing Darfur refugees in Chad, her response to critics of 'celebrity tourism' and why she and Brad Pitt like their current home in New Orleans. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What was your original motivation for working with the UNHCR, for doing these kinds of trips?
Angelina Jolie: I started traveling about seven years ago with film. I would go to places like Cambodia and hear about the many refugees in Thailand and hear about the land mines and hear about the history....I remember sitting up for two days straight and reading everything obsessively. I read about the UNHCR and I realized it was an agency that I didn't know anything about: that they were taking care of 20 million people. ... And I remember realizing that I couldn't understand how I had not known that my whole life.

When did it occur to you that you could do something about this directly? Did people approach you or —
I approached them. I think they thought I was a little crazy.

When was this?
Six years ago. I was very nervous to call the U.N. agency at the time. I [was] considered a rebel in Hollywood. At the time I was also a bit of the wild child. So first I went to Washington [to the UNHCR office] and I sat with everybody there and said, "You know, I know you don't know me. You might have heard things about me… And I don't want to bring negative attention to your agency. If you could just help me, I'll pay my way."

I spent the next year and a half going to, first, two camps in Africa, and then Pakistan and Cambodia. And with no cameras and with no press and had the opportunity to have this great education before I spoke at all…. I was transformed in such an amazing way.

But you do have photographers following you now.
It took me a while to agree to do it. I guess I saw that so many times the picture comes before the knowledge and the substance and I certainly didn't want to do that to myself or the organization. And also, I really just was shy. I was shy about sitting on the floor and talking to a woman and having a camera take a picture because I thought it was making less of my conversation with her. But… I was changed by the faces of the people I saw. "It is something that I am incapable of describing...those faces and that place and those people. And so I think it's just—let the people speak for themselves through the camera. And if I can draw you in a little because I'm familiar, then that's great. Because I know that at the end you're not looking at me, you're looking at them.

I think it's fair to say people start out by looking at you, Angelina.
As long as they end up looking at them, that's the point.

Do you worry about people who say this is celebrity tourism?
I don't know if anybody saying that has spent the last six years of their life going to over 30 camps and really spending time with these people. I can't care. At the end of the day, I'm sure a lot of criticism could keep a lot of people from doing this kind of work…

If someone had a direct criticism of my opinion on the issue, if someone had a direct criticism of the image shown because they think it hurts somebody then I will take that into consideration. But there are a lot of people that simply have an immediate gut reaction and they just don't want to combine artists with foreign policy. And hey, I understand. I get it. I know where you're coming from. And to each his own. … You know, I was more shy when I first went into a camp that other field officers would not want me there.

You were worried that you'd get in the way.
Yeah. That's why I brought no media, it's why I sat back. That's why I just helped them load things. And if I felt that I was ever getting in the way, I wouldn't do it. Because I do care about the opinion of the aid worker, I do care about the opinion of the refugee. I care less about the opinion of the person who's never been in the field but has an opinion about celebrity.

Do you still go with so few people? I can't believe you take no one with you…
I take no one. I [go] by myself on a commercial plane and into the field with my backpack.

You still do that?
Yes, I just did that on my last trip. I met the photographer there.

In the camp?
No, in the airport. We didn't even realize we were on the same flight. We landed at like midnight and got up at like 5 in the morning to catch the WFP [World Food Program] plane [to a town near the camp].

When you got there, what were the people saying about their situation? There are several photographs with this boy tied to a tent pole, and there's also another photograph of a group of women near some tents, and one of them has her ankles chained.
The first time I saw that in the camp [it was] obviously really shocking. They are people who are traumatized by the bombing [by Sudanese government forces attacking villages in Darfur] and by war. The old woman may have had some dementia before. The reality is there are one or two aid workers for every 2,000 refugees. The same with the doctors, the therapists. The basic need there [is] to just try to keep these people safe. To keep the tents up in all the sand storms, try to get the food distributed and basic health-care needs. The [chained] woman started to beat her daughter with anything she could find. She kept hearing voices of the people yelling at her. So she feels constantly under attack. I'm no therapist, so I don't understand all the details. But when I did try to talk to her, she seemed pretty rational. But then she started aggressively telling me that I had to stop them from putting snakes on her. And for the people to stop yelling at her and for the bombs to stop dropping.

And the little boy?
The little boy was a normal 3-year-old [now 7] who disappeared for 48 hours after [his village was bombed]. I can only imagine what he saw. Sure he saw death. And when found, he was found in a state…

As a first reaction you want to remove [the rope]. But the mother, she has four other kids, she's by herself. Therapists visit him, but if [he's] left alone he will disappear or bang himself. I talked to him for like half an hour and just kind of looked at him for a long time before he touched me and there was a little boy in there who was open to a kind sound.… There's a normal little kid right there, but he's got a look of fear. He's nervous to touch. And you can feel that need for safety. The mother unfortunately can't not go work for the other children and can't sit with him all day long and hold him, which is probably what would do some good. But what he needs is probably some serious therapy. [There are] lots of children like him there. Lots of victims of war. [It's a] whole other thing that you usually don't get to address because they have to be so focused on the basic needs of survival. These are the many other casualties of the kind of war that is happening in Darfur.

Do you despair?
Certainly, at times. The first two years I just cried constantly like a woman does.

Oh, like anybody does.
Yes, like anybody does, thank you. I couldn't really talk about the situation without being emotional. And I went through a period of just complete lack of hope. Just feeling like it was way too overwhelming and feeling like I wouldn't be able to make a dent. And then I went through a period of anger that smart, articulate people in power have not been able to answer these issues quickly and clearly and define ways of intervention. And that it just keeps going on. About a year ago, I got a lot of books on international law and I tried to study what was going on—just out of a curiosity about what was this bigger picture. I don't want to have to keep going back to camps, five different times, over the next 30 years of my life, [for situations] that there are no solutions for.

People will look at these pictures of you in Chad and ask, “What can I do?” What should they do?
There are great NGOs like SOS [Austria's SOS Kinderdorp] and there are great NGOs inside and under the U.N. that you could send aid to. It's important for the American people to know that a lot of people believe—I certainly believe—that it has been their outcry and their interest that has motivated our government. I think that the American people have paid attention to Darfur—a really amazing groundswell of people that really care, and are moved and emotional about the things they've seen when it is brought to their attention.

Where would you take the spotlight next?
I want to go back to Cambodia. I would like to understand and see what I can find out about what's happening inside Burma.

You're living in New Orleans right now. Is that just because you like the city or because you wanted to bring attention to New Orleans, too?
A bit of both. Brad was doing a film here and so we were going spend a month here. [We] realized it was a place we liked, we liked the people, I liked the school for the kids. They're very diverse. I liked the other parents. I feel very comfortable with them. We're happy having our children here. Brad is working on rebuilding here.... But for me, just as a mom, I love the other parents and the kids and the schools. I'm starting to work on the education here and the school system here. There's a lot of work to be done.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17540069/site/newsweek/

Nicht auf nüchternen Magen anschauen

2007-01-21T11:42:00.000+01:00

Gesindel! Gesindel!

UK Top 100 Best Selling Albums

2006-11-19T01:21:00.000+01:00

1) GREATEST HITS, Queen, with 5,407,587 sales

2) SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, The Beatles, 4,811,996

3) WHAT'S THE STORY MORNING GLORY, Oasis, 4,314,715

4) BROTHERS IN ARMS, Dire Straits, 3,956,704

5) GOLD - GREATEST HITS, Abba, 3,943,950

6) THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, Pink Floyd, 3,781,993

7) GREATEST HITS II, Queen, 3,644,619

8) THRILLER, Michael Jackson, 3,578,107

9) BAD, Michael Jackson, 3,554,301

10) THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION, Madonna, 3,402,160

11) STARS, Simply Red, 3,361,115

12) COME ON OVER, Shania Twain, 3,344,280

13) RUMOURS, Fleetwood Mac, 3,135,844

14) URBAN HYMNS, The Verve, 3,054,374

15) NO ANGEL, Dido, 3,002,194

16) BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER, Simon & Garfunkel, 3,001,062

17) TALK ON CORNERS, The Corrs, 2,944,547

18) SPICE, Spice Girls, 2,920,669

19) BACK TO BEDLAM, James Blunt, 2,895,874

20) WHITE LADDER, David Gray, 2,851,429

21) BAT OUT OF HELL, Meat Loaf, 2,837,285

22) LIFE FOR RENT, Dido, 2,789,719

23) BUT SERIOUSLY, Phil Collins, 2,737,932

24)1 (Anthology), The Beatles, 2,690,318

25) THE MAN WHO, Travis, 2,669,825

26) THE JOSHUA TREE, U2, 2,665,553

27) GREATEST HITS, Abba, 2,598,576

28) TUBULAR BELLS, Mike Oldfield, 2,575,099

29) A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD, Coldplay, 2,574,249

30) I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU, Robbie Williams, 2,556,042

31) JAGGED LITTLE PILL, Alanis Morissette, 2,551,238

32) SCISSOR SISTERS, Scissor Sisters, 2,535,983

33) LEGEND, Bob Marley & the Wailers, 2,520,486

34) HOPES AND FEARS, Keane, 2,498,950

35) WAR OF THE WORLDS, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version, 2,452,236

36) THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Original Soundtrack, 2,438,695

37) DIRTY DANCING, Original Soundtrack, 2,435,109

38) LADIES & GENTLEMEN - THE BEST OF, George Michael, 2,408,810

39) GREASE, Original Soundtrack, 2,373,621

40) COME AWAY WITH ME, Norah Jones, 2,369,847

41) X&Y, Coldplay, 2,345,126

42) TRACY CHAPMAN, Tracy Chapman, 2,342,506

43) ROBSON & JEROME, Robson & Jerome, 2,336,086

44) TANGO IN THE NIGHT, Fleetwood Mac, 2,333,819

45) PARACHUTES, Coldplay, 2,324,783

46) AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE, REM, 2,270,332

47) WHITNEY, Whitney Houston, 2,237,603

48) THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP, Eminem, 2,233,158

49) SWING WHEN YOU'RE WINNING, Robbie Williams, 2,205,028

50) GRACELAND, Paul Simon, 2,203,381

51) SING WHEN YOU'RE WINNING, Robbie Williams, 2,182,097

52) SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, Original Soundtrack, 2,151,142

53) THE BODYGUARD, Original Soundtrack, 2,138,030

54) THE VERY BEST OF, elton John, 2,134,524

55) SIMPLY THE BEST, Tina Turner, 2,121,000

56) KYLIE - THE ALBUM, Kylie Minogue, 2,105,698

57) FALLING INTO YOU, Celine Dion, 2,093,363

58) LIFE THRU A LENS, Robbie Williams, 2,074,860

59) GREATEST HITS, Eurythmics, 2,055,996

60) ESCAPOLOGY, Robbie Williams, 2,037,380

61) GREATEST HITS, Robbie Williams, 1,998,668

62) LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE, Celine Dion, 1,984,152

63) DANGEROUS, Michael Jackson, 1,983,954

64) TRUE BLUE, Madonna, 1,961,164

65) APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION, Guns N' Roses, 1,945,240

66) NO JACKET REQUIRED, Phil Collins, 1,934,912

67) ABBEY ROAD, The Beatles, 1,925,783

68) A NEW FLAME, Simply Red, 1,923,366

69) BY THE WAY, Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1,915,008

70) CAN'T SLOW DOWN, Lionel Richie, 1,891,896

71) SONGS ABOUT JANE, Maroon 5, 1,868,548

72) CROSS ROAD - THE BEST OF, Bon Jovi, 1,867,427

73) STRIPPED, Christina Aguilera, 1,850,852

74) GREATEST HITS, Simon & Garfunkel, 1,840,454

75) CARRY ON UP THE CHARTS - THE BEST OF, Beautiful South, 1,828,890

76) PLAY, Moby, 1,819,938

77) THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE, Celine Dion, 1,816,915

78) BORN TO DO IT, Craig David, 1,816,781

79) THE GREATEST HITS, Texas, 1,809,480

80) NEVERMIND, Nirvana, 1,807,142

810 SOUTH PACIFIC, Original Soundtrack, 1,803,681

82) JUSTIFIED, Justin Timberlake, 1,802,172

83) AMERICAN IDIOT, Green Day, 1,800,144

84) BE HERE NOW, Oasis, 1,799,784

85) BACK TO FRONT, Lionel Richie, 1,793,978

86) OUT OF TIME, REM, 1,786,954

87) CALL OFF THE SEARCH, Katie Melua, 1,780,817

88) EMPLOYMENT, Kaiser Chiefs, 1,772,936

89) BY REQUEST, Boyzone, 1,770,728

90) BAT OUT OF HELL II, Meat Loaf, 1,745,974

91) DEFINITELY MAYBE, Oasis, 1,740,386

92) JUST ENOUGH EDUCATION TO PERFORM, Stereophonics, 1,731,863

93) INTRODUCING THE HARDLINE ACCORDING TO…, Terence Trent D'Arby, 1,721,685

94) MISSUNDAZTOOD, Pink, 1,712,173

95) LET GO, Avril Lavigne, 1,711,088

96) PERFORMANCE AND COCKTAILS, Stereophonics, 1,710,522

97) OLDER, George Michael, 1,708,555

98) PARALLEL LINES, Blondie, 1,694,353

99) FEVER, Kylie Minogue, 1,682,387

100) 10 GOOD REASONS, Jason Donovan, 1,680,651

Madonna im TIME Interview

2006-11-05T13:38:00.000+01:00

TIME: Why do you think people are so upset by the fact that you adopted a Malawian child?

Madonna: People or the media? Because I don't think people really give a shit. But when you throw in things like, I'm a celebrity and I somehow got special treatment, or make the implication of kidnapping, it gets mixed into a stew and it sells lots of papers. But care? People don't care and the media certainly doesn't care. What they should care about is that there are over a million orphans in Malawi, and following me around is just a gross misappropriation of attention and money. But I do think there's a certain amount of nationalism and racism thrown in there. I mean, there's a lot of Brits�reporters on the street�who've said, "Why don't you adopt a kid from Britain?" Or, "Why did you adopt a black child?" So a lot of people's hangups and 'isms' are sort of mixed into this, too. It's just kind of a cocktail for disaster in terms of media perception.

One of the 'isms' that you're frequently accused of is dilletantism. You're new to Africa and these issues and there's a perception that you're jumping on a bandwagon, and bringing a child into it, too.

Well that's not my problem. I don't care. I could know about the situation for two weeks and want to do something about it or I could know about it for years and deliberate on a plan of action. Which is better? That I found out about an issue and instantly wanted to take action, or that it took me years to get my shit together? Look, I could have joined the U.N. and become an ambassador and visited various countries and just kind of showed up and smiled and looked concerned. But that's not getting to the root of the problem�and by the way, neither is building orphan care centers and giving people food and medicine. But it's a start. I'm saving people's lives. And whether I have earned the right to do it, or the respect of people who think I may not have the right to do it, is completely and utterly irrelevant. And in any event, no, I'm not interested in going in there like a dilettante and being an idiot and going 'Ok, I'm going to build 10 orphanages and I'll see you guys later!'

So this is a lifetime commitment?

Absolutely. I'm starting with Malawi. It's a small, peaceful country, so I feel like it's a safe place to start. And if it works, I'll expand. But it is the beginning and I know I'm going to get a lot of criticism and take a lot of shit for it, and it's kind of like, Go ahead, haze me, have a laugh, and come back and talk to me in five years.

You've been through other hazing periods in your career. Is this one different than...

Yeah, because a life is at stake. And in all those other hazing periods people were just trying to fuck with me. Now they're going into a village and terrorizing innocent people who live simple lives, terrorizing the father, terrorizing the children that I already have. There are a lot of people who are indirectly being effected by it. That's the difference.

You met Mr. Banda once, in a courtroom. What did you say to him?

Obviously when you're sitting across from the father it's really heart wrenching. He was looking down at the ground all the time and I felt so bad for him. I said, 'I feel for you and I want what's best for David. So if you want him, I don't want to take your son from you. I just want to save his life. I can't live in Malawi. I can't move my family here. He would have to come and live with me and I would raise him as a son. But there's another option. I can just give you money, and you can raise him.' And he said no. But he still had a very hangdog expression, which crushed me. It was very confusing, and I'm sure he was very confused. Look, his wife dies, his other three children die, the guy's been grieving and been through hell. He gives his last son to an orphanage at the age of two weeks... to a certain extent he was ready to move on with his life. Then suddenly I show up and someone from the village says 'Hey, this white woman'—he didn't know who I was—'wants to adopt your child!' And once the press got involved everyone said Oh God, now we better cross our t's and dot our i's to make sure we actually aren't jumping queues, because we're going to be scrutinized. So the process became extremely tedious and the court dates kept changing and we kept getting conflicting information. It became so difficult that every day I thought, 'Ok, forget it. We'll find a family here to look after him.' Meanwhile I had been given permission to take him to my hotel because I had to take him to a clinic to get chest x-rays and a proper medical examination to see why he wasn't breathing properly. And I just keep thinking, 'Oh god, I don't want to get too attached because what if it doesn't happen?' It was all very strange and weird, and I'd go to bed every night and think ok, whether someone else ends up looking after him or you end up looking after him, he's better off now than he was. But it was one fucking thing after the next, everywhere we went. So the idea that people think I got a shortcut or an easy ride is absolutely ludicrous. I have never worked so hard for anything in my life, and I've never been given such a hard time. And my celebrity has worked against me in every way... And by the way, say I did cut the queue? Say I did cheat and not have to wait two years to adopt a child? Well good for me! Do you know how many children are going to die in the next two years? It's a stupid law. Change the law.

Do you worry at all that you've saved this child from physical misery...

From death. Death. He would not have lived.

Ok. But do you worry that you've saved him only to introduce him to a much more abstract kind of misery? There were hordes of photographers documenting his arrival in England.

Well my other children are exposed to that and they're not miserable. I think I have a very good life, and a good life to offer David. You know, it's like the old saying, civil rights don't mean shit if you're dead. Even if I'm the worst mother in the world, I'm still better than death! [laughs]

Is being Madonna still as fun as it used to be?

Fun? Oh, I don't know. Fun. [Several second pause] Fun's kind of an overrated word. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do I enjoy aspects of my life? Because what being Madonna is�are you talking about my professional career?

All of it.

Well, I do get joy out of it. It's not smooth sailing by any means, but I enjoy a great deal of it, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But I also know that if you're going to try and change things�change anything really�you'd better be prepared to find yourself in the headquarters of hell. That's just how it works. But with resistance comes growth. If you go to a gym and lift weights and its easy then your muscles aren't going to grow. Your muscles grow because you're struggling against something.

Do you enjoy the resistance as much as you used to?

Sometimes. Sometimes I do. There is a part of me that is secretly enjoying pissing people off, because I know that when you're pissing people off you're often doing the right thing. What I hope I'm doing better now than I used to do is picking the right battles to fight, and not just being provocative for the sake of being provocative.