THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

I usually put the Schizo of the Week at the end of my Friday roundup, but I keep getting bombarded with trade news about how Hollywood Gheys still don’t feel comfortable coming out of the closet, a topic that has been spearheaded by Rupert Everett’s lament on the BBC a couple of weeks ago about how being out has destroyed his career.  I have known (which is distinct from being friends with) Rupert since he was in Another Country, so I can say with some amount of assurance that he is delusional, and therefore a classic narcissist, which finally explains why I’ve always thought he was such a frickin’ weirdo.

Just to reiterate—in case you haven’t read every word of every post I’ve written the past year—when I say narcissist I don’t just mean someone who is vain and has a healthy amount of confidence (like me).  I mean someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, who suffers from the delusion that he is something more than he is, or even more delightfully thinks he is someone else entirely, like Napoleon or Jesus Christ.  In Rupert’s case, he thinks he’s a leading man who could have passed as straight had he never admitted he prefers cock to vag.

First of all, Rupert is not some Scientologist on whom billion-dollar franchises are riding, to whom discreet male hookers will be provided if he can no longer keep it quiet between himself and his right hand.  This putative “leading man” career, which Rupert thinks he fucked up by coming out, was never really an option because, contrary to what he thinks he sees in the mirror, American men don’t identify with him, and would never have pinned their hopes and aspirations on him, even when he was younger.  He looks and sounds like the archetypal British villain because in many ways—and I base this on firsthand impressions—that is exactly who he is.

Rupert’s first role was in the aforementioned Another Country, in which he played a predatory young homosexual British villain, and this wasn’t a stretch.  Indeed, none of his roles have been stretches, and that’s fine; he is no Daniel Day Lewis, and shouldn’t try to be.  We like Rupert because he is so unapologetically louche, so much the disdainful, arch, gorgeous aristocrat who eats a dozen scrambled egos for breakfast every morning.  But unlike that other unapologetically louche character of equally dubious sexuality, Robert Downey Jr., Rupert isn’t likable in an Iron Man sort of way.

Rupert has always been flagrantly out socially, sexually very active, and that’s fine, too; he is a great-looking man, might as well reap the benefits.  But when you have sex with half of Hot Homolandia in bars, bathhouses and backrooms, it is no longer an option to keep it under wraps like the Scientologist franchise-maker, or RDJ, or even Kevin Spacey.  You’d might as well make being out part of who you are, and in that respect Rupert’s decision was right, and right by his fellow Gheys.

Despite the fact that he is very good at what he does, the real issue isn’t homophobia in the industry, but the fact Rupert is now in his fifties, and even when jobs were more plentiful, they were never for that age group.  He’d might as well blame the fact he’s 6’4”, which is an awkward proportion for a leading man on film, especially when he’s paired up with a leading lady who is invariably going to be a Hobbitess.

In fact, there is lots of hope for Rupert’s career if he dropped the leading-man delusion, stopped mouthing off to the world press so deliriously and didn’t treat his colleagues so capriciously, which is another textbook NPD trait: one day you feel you’re his best friend, the next you’re checking your armpits for a decaying dead rat.  Fellow British gay actor Ian McKellen blossomed later in his career as a character actor.  Again, the difference is McKellen is very well liked in the business, and the sad reality is Rupert isn’t, and the business is very small.

Oscar-nominee Viola Davis likewise lamented in a taped roundtable for The Daily Beast TV last week how difficult it is for minorities in Hollywood, citing what a hard time Halle Berry is having.  Again, the problem isn’t homophobia, or racism, or ageism, it’s the lack of work for everyone, in general.  The hardest obstacle to surmount seems to be the whining and the blaming.

If you aren’t involved with one of the wannabe billion-dollar franchises, and they are few and far between, might I suggest television, which is now cooler than film, anyway.  But at the end of the day, if you’re an NPD who has burned his bridges with so many of his colleagues, there’s not much you can do on the big screen or small.  Maybe therapy and a great life coach?  A personality readjustment via a jolly good cleansing in Scientology?  Just saying.

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Studies have been coming out for a few years now that show how liberal and conservative brains differ.  The former uses the more artistic, emotive left side while conservatives use the more analytical right side, which isn’t why they are called left and right wing; there was a fifty-fifty chance of that happening and it just landed up that way.

It’s been known for some time that conservatives scare more easily, which is why they tend to be so paranoid and fearmongering, big on defense spending and wall building.  According to Wired.com, now it turns out they hate more passionately, too, especially their political enemies, which comes as something of a surprise to me because from my perspective it seems the liberals are so much more fervently vocal in their dislike of right-wing politicians, especially in my politically divided family.

I am a big believer in Socionics, which isn’t some level of Scientology where they pump you full of niacin and lock you in a sauna for three days to sweat out your social dysfunction.  It is a psychological theory of personality types that grew out of Carl Jung’s archetypes.  Basically, there are sixteen different types of personality, and you can run your own test online to see which one you are if you don’t already know.

The reason I’m such a big believer is I’m the poster child for ENTP personality, the most godlike after ENTJ, I reckon.  But that’s just my healthy self-confidence kicking in again.  One of the ENTP’s more Apollonian traits, aside from assiduously marching to the beat of our own drummer, is we are the only personality type to use both sides of our brain equally.  Or, as I like to put it with all of my tall, dashing leading-man modesty, I can command an army in battle while painting the Sistine Chapel.

All of this goes a long way in explaining why I am neither too fearful nor overly compassionate.  I am a different thing: a LibCon, which is why PFC should be your one-stop shopping site for political opinion over the upcoming election year, rather than having to wade through all of those spider-eyed, multi-viewed commentaries by lesser personality types flooding the media.

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It would appear there is one thing conservatives don’t fear, however, and that’s reprisals from the afterlife by the outraged ghosts of orthodox atheists who have been posthumously converted to Mormonism.  If I believed in an afterlife, this would be one of my greatest right-brained fears, but luckily I know no Mormons and am unlikely to vote for one, and frankly I don’t give a shit what happens to me after I die because nothing will.

In the most galling violation of supernatural human rights, Mitt Romney and his wife converted his late atheist father-in-law, Edward Davies, to Mormonism fourteen months after he passed away.  Davies explicitly, rightly believed that all religions were “hogwash,” and that their adherents were “weak in the knees,” which would explain their tendency to grovel and kneel.

All of this would just seem plain meshuga-nuts silly and not worthy of comment if Romney weren’t the Republican frontrunner.  I can’t think about it too much or it causes my equally balanced brain to seesaw back and forth between despair and shuddering with giggles.

As we have learned from the release of his tax returns, Romney is also extremely rich.  And heterosexual.  If I thought like Rupert Everett, I might suspect that my lack of financial success is due to the fact I’m not just gay, but also not a bat-shit crazy religious freak.

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I do feel sorry for Demi Moore.  She’s lost Ashton Kutcher, who as readers of every word of this blog know is my ideal younger man.  I would be inconsolable myself, but I’m not sure I’d resort to overdosing on laughing gas to cheer myself up.  I’d probably actually start watching the Republican debates and visualize Romney in white robes at the Salt Lake City Temple dragging the frothing ghost of his father-in-law kicking and screaming into Mormon heaven.

Demi, you’ve had a good run with Ashton.  It was unrealistic—yes, one might almost say delusional—to think it would last forever.  You’ve already lost the role of Gloria Steinem in the Linda Lovelace biopic to Sarah Jessica Parker, of all people, which is a shame because this project has been nothing if not fascinating thus far just in terms of the game of musical casting couches it has been playing, like Lindsay Lohan being replaced by Malin Ackerman in the title role.

Cheer up, old girl, you still look great.  But if you ever feel inclined to pull a Rupert Everett and team up with Lohan to blame your lack of work on Hollywood’s intolerance towards women having drug-induced meltdowns, I have one word of advice: resist.