So It's Really A Fag Hag Thing
We’ve gotten to the bottom of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent appearances on Glee. I draw your attention to this little item in Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com, in which show creator Ryan Murphy outs Gwyneth for who she truly is to him. For those too lazy to click, I refer you to the following quotation:
“Gwyneth is sort of the muse of the show,” Murphy said. “She’s somebody who I write on the weekends and say, ‘What do you think about this for an episode even if you’re not in it?’ She has opinions. She’s great.”

Like in "Avatar," "How to Train Your Dragon," and "Eragon," where the dragon chooses the rider who will fly her, a Fag Hag chooses her Ghey and they bond for life.
Murphy is hiding behind subtleties that many creative Gheys might not see themselves, which is why Dr. Killough is here to explain. He uses the word “muse.” But a muse is distant, an inspiration, someone the artist aspires to commune with, a siren who unblocks the creative flow just by being there. Gwyneth is the muse transformed, the mermaid wrenched willingly from the sea and forced to walk on land. She has become Murphy’s Fag Hag.
Apparently she has been this since they worked together on Running With Scissors, Murphy’s decidedly unfunny adaptation of Augusten Burrough’s exceedingly funny memoir. He should have gone with archly flip for RWS’s tone, not with sincerity and contrition. I’m sure he knows that now with the tone he established in Glee, which would have served RWS better.
A true muse is someone like my creative partner, Rain Li, who basically ignores you, making you desire his or her company and the inspiration that it gives you all the more. Rain and I hardly ever speak on the phone; I’m lucky to get a text-based Skype session once a quarter, during which she types one line every ten minutes until I just give up at 2 a.m. I won’t hear from her for months, but then a single “You aw-right, dahling?” in that mockney Beijing accent and my entire career path becomes clear to me. That’s a muse.

Me and my girl Rain in our apartment in London. Note how we are both talking at once, but she's louder and will get her way in the end.
When I was growing up, the phone was the fag hag’s all-purpose magic conveyor, her wand/broom stick/crystal ball. You would spend hours with your hag murmuring into the phone until she allayed your anxieties, dispelled your demons and you fell asleep. Now it is the email/text message; “[Hag Gwyneth] is someone I write to on the weekends,” as Murphy put it. The hag uses these magical devices to soothe the hysterical Ghey, who might be panicked that, for instance, he has blazed through his budget for the entire year midway through the season. She will say or type things in a calming, authoritative Spence School-infused voice like, “Fuck the network. You’re too special for them. They’re so lucky to have you.”
“You know, Hag Gwyneth, you’re so right,” you will reply, feeling fortified. Indeed, the fag hag is always right. Hers is more than just the oblivious, passive inspiration of the muse. This is a dialogue you are having with an uncertified psychologist who is always on your side.
Here I have to say, Well played, Gwyneth. Teaming up with Ryan Murphy as your Ghey is a strategic move that Madonna, who built her entire career on the backs and bucks of many a Ghey, would surely envy.

A pic of Hag Gwyneth as a teen. Such a cut-up with that bubble gum. Someone said to her, "Youll be Madonnas best friend one day." And she went, "Shut up! I will NOT! " And then she blew that bubble.
Lest anyone think I am dissing Ryan Murphy, please don’t. Of course, I’m a human homo: I have healthier levels of schadenfreude than I do testosterone. But I am only teasing him; it’s good to tickle people at the top. Even if the creative content of Glee isn’t entirely my cup of tea, ideologically it is a powerful show. It is changing the way people perceive Gheys and the American culture of bullying, which is a more endemic problem in this country than most Americans think; I’d say it’s up there with obesity. Again, the DH Lawrence quotation: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Well, it certainly seems to have started melting in recent years, praise cheeses.
Glee is doing more to normalize us Gheys than the repeals of a dozen morally opprobrious legislations. This interview with Murphy really made me like him:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35mBnR8yRlU&w=640&h=390]
The character of Kurt deserves further musing. Murphy is quite right in the above clip: there are lots of fagelehs just like the Kurt character, especially in musical theater. In recent years, Gheys have been portrayed as overly normal and masculine in order to make us more acceptable and PC-neutral. The Kurt type, a.k.a. the flaming queen, is the Ghey who throughout history could never hide in the closet. He basically straddles the two sexes, one foot in each. It is because his type couldn’t hide themselves with wives and other beards that the stereotype of the homosexual became the camp, wrist flopping, lisping Nancy. Kurt is an Old School Ghey, the kind who is so super girly that he becomes a Fag Hag himself.
That was my take on the relationship between Kurt and the other more masculine gay character on Glee, Blaine, until this last episode. Up until then, they were best friends and schoolmates, and Kurt had a crush on Blaine. But to me Kurt was Blaine’s male Fag Hag — this was never going to happen because it wouldn’t cross Blaine’s mind. Then, in a delayed coup de foudre that came off more like forced thunder booming from an uninspired writer’s room, Blaine discovered that he was in love with Kurt.
Unfortunately, experience tells me this would be improbable. I am surprised Murphy let this happen, but maybe it was time to show a healthy gay teen romance on network TV, if there has even been one on premium cable. And that definitely trumps the concerns of sticklers for the nuances of gay culture like me; there are always exceptions to these generalizations, anyway. Also, while we can applaud it for social change, nobody is ever going to accuse Glee of social realism; I’ve never been to Ohio, but I have it on good authority that William McKinley nothing like a public high school there.

A midwestern Gleek friend just tried to defend the bizarre plot turn of these two getting together as the Blaine character (left) being desperate for anything in a small town, but Im not buying it. Plus, its so obvious "Glee" really takes place in Los Angeles, come on.
See, the Blaine character always struck me as being a true gay man: he likes men. Remember, these are not real teens playing these roles, they are in their early to mid-twenties, so when I look at Blaine I see a Log Cabin Republican who is being fast-tracked for a partnership at Goldman Sachs, or more likely Morgan Stanley. In my experience, a “masc” Ghey like Blaine would have a fag hag-ish Ghey like Kurt around for the belly laughs (they are usually screamingly funny) and support, for the shopping and fashion advice and, most importantly of all, as a drinking buddy to prop him up in the often oppressive, all-male environment of a gay bar while he cruises men he would rather be with romantically. But he would never sleep with Kurt, just as he wouldn’t touch a female fag hag. In real life, or in my real life, a girly boy like Kurt is likely to end up with a borderline straight guy who likes chicks with dicks, the same purview as trannies.
I had this dynamic explained to me by a fierce drunk black trannie once just after I refused to sleep with her. “You’re a real faggot,” she said. “You know why? Cos a guy like you only sleeps with masculine men, which makes you a complete gay man. I sleep with real men, men who like women.” She wasn’t just drunk, she’d taken a toke or two off that old homo self-hatred crack pipe. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t dead right.
Speaking of black trannies, it looks like Mama Gaddafi from the House of Gaddafi will not be getting her cha-cha shoes for Christmas after all. I am frankly surprised that the UN Security Council voted for intervention; it was generally felt that Russia and China would veto it and we would find a way to worm out of taking a pro-active approach and not bomb the bejesus out of that meshugana cocksucker. Once again, the Obama administration surprises me at the last minute by pulling a probable backdoor deal at the UN and having both Russia and China abstain.
Lesie Gelb has been quite vocal about how we shouldn’t get in on the action in articles that reached the top of the list at The Daily Beast (read them here and here). Whatever Gelb’s reasoning is about how we shouldn’t lead the charge into Libya, how we are getting ourselves into a third war that can and should be taken care of by the adjoining Arab states, the fact is we have no choice. It pays to remember that this man bombed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. World War I was started with the murder of a single man, yes, a royal, but what about a planeload of people?
Forgetting an eye for an eye for a second, the reason we have to lead the charge is simple: we are the good guys. Well, we’re the almost-good guys, we have a long way to go and I will never stop reminding us of that, but for now we still set the moral tone, we carry the standard into battle. If we fight anyone, anywhere at all, this is the good fight. Forget even talking about Russia and China, who cares about them? They’re not even in the same dialogue, so fuck ’em. Russia is a dysfunctional, alcoholic old bear, so flea-ridden with corruption it can’t move; China is like the Catholic Church coming out of the Inquisition, trying in vain to scrub the blood off its hands, still tripping all over itself under the weight of malfunctioning, obsolete ideologies. The world has willingly, rightly submitted to, or is in the process of submitting to, Pax Americana, not Pax Russica or Sinensi (are you impressed with my Google Translate? Hmm?). Ours is a cultural hegemony wrought more by Disney and Facebook than any physical conquering, and that is a good thing; people have for the most part chosen us, not been coerced.
So go get that crazy, rabid bitch, fellas. Hunt her down, shoot her in the head and string her up like Mussolini. YEE-HAW!
You know, I never thought about the fag hag thing from the gay man’s point of view. It never occurred to me what HE gets out of the relationship. I just thought women liked having a guy friend who can be honest with her because he has no desire to have sex with her. Hence, no need to seduce her through bullshit.
Because, let’s face it (speaking to imagined hetero men in the audience), we want to sleep with our female friends. At least some of them. We don’t, usually, because various life circumstances make it impossible. But our female friends know it. They tease us just enough to stir the pot a bit. A touch here. A flirtatious glance there. It’s part of the unspoken thrill. After a while, they become comfortable around you and start talking about their breasts and what they like in oral sex and so on. Then you look at their chests (not that you haven’t been for months) and think, “You mean those?”
Sometimes, a super attractive woman can’t find her gay, so she’ll settle for a straight guy who could never, ever get a shot at her and knows it. He’s her shoulder to cry on and her perpetual ego boost, because he’s madly in love and continues to hang onto the desperate one-in-a-billion hope that she’ll somehow fall for him. Despite the fact that she looks like a goddess and he looks like Patrick from Spongebob.
I wouldn’t mind having a gay. I can talk about guy stuff with him but also get relationship advice. Do the gays watch star wars and sports and stuff? What would he get from me? Advice on finding a fag hag? It’s all so complicated.
I had a gay for a couple of weeks once but he moved out of state. We talked mostly about art and where he and his partner got their plates and decorations. Then I went over my straight friends’ house and watched racing and talked about guitars and going to see metal bands. It’s good to have a mix of friends.
I’m not so sure I can trust a log cabin republican. If you have to suppress your identity to the point that you have to be politically affiliated with people who want to kill you because Jesus said so, you must be a real self-loathing individual.
Then again, I’m am extremely liberal socially (up with marriage equality, women’s rights, gay rights, cultural diversity, religious freedom, yada yada) but like the idea of a national sales tax to replace income tax and think the democrats want to run a nanny state. What am I? A demolibertarian?
Re: Your comment that posts about celebrities get more hits than posts about serious topics.
When I started my blog last year, it was political satire and pretty much got no hits. Then I started doing straight comedy (celebrities, zombies, aliens, etc) this year, and, bam, my readership quintupled. But this week, I did two politics-themed stories and… crickets.
I guess it’s back to Charlie Sheen next week.
Yes, gheys have been known to not only watch sports, but play them. They also do military things. The military ghey is a very, very strange breed; it is generally advisable to steer clear of them and let them bump nasties with each other, which is what they prefer anyway. Very touchy and, of course, combative, like dating a grenade. But that’s pretty much the “masc” ghey subculture of the subculture, the ten percent of the ten percent. I either engage in sports or I do something else; I’m not one for watching anything that doesn’t have a narrative.
No, of course you can’t trust a Log Cabin Repube. They are well loathed in homolandia; were we not starting to own Abe Lincoln as a fellow ghey, they would be more honest calling themselves the Benedict Arnold Repubes. Except they did lead the charge against having DODT repealed, and they are politically probably the best organized of our extremely fractious sub-culture. Mainline Repubes in general don’t own the haters in the Party, they just sort of aristocratically ignore them and hope they’ll go away. It makes absolutely no sense to the Repube leadership to even acknowledge these people exist, any more than the Democraps should be expected to own the Red Brigade, from their point of view.
Yeah, I’m getting the hang of this: movie review and/or celeb gossip, then finish off with a political diatribe. Although my Spitzer piece didn’t suffer too badly.
I hope you realize when I refer to a gay person as “a gay” or more than one as “the gays,” I’m playing a character for a moment, like when I call the internet, “the internets.” As if I’m someone who is far removed yet tries to sound like I’m in the know. Sometimes I get my own jokes and forget that most people probably don’t know I’m messing around.
I actually don’t care about sports very much. I’d much rather go to an art museum than a football game and couldn’t tell you the first thing about what’s going on in college basketball. I minored in Art History, in fact, with a focus on 16th and 17th century Italian religous art , despite my atheistic leanings. I also like indoor gardens. I shave my head and wear a leather jacket and played drums in a heavy metal band throughout most of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Some people say I look like a skinhead white supremacist, despite being in an interracial marriage.
The point to all that is labels can be stupid and nobody is any one thing. Lest I give an impression that I think otherwise.
You’re flirting with me. Keep going.
Ahahaha!