Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The 2014 Gay Olympics, or A Reporter Goes in a Russian Gay Bar ...

And you thought the Olympics was about athletic competition.

As we all know, the Sochi Winter Olympics, which feature competition in figure skating freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, speed skating, ski jumping, snowboarding, bobsledding, short track speed skating, and speed skiing is primarily about ...

... Gay rights.

In fact, everything is now about gay rights. Education is about gay rights. International relations, says Hillary Clinton, is about gay rights. Football too, I just found out, is about gay rights.

It is all gay rights all the time.

In fact, there has been so much press interest in the plight of gays in Russia—and so little to actually report on—that reporters are now reporting on each other reporting on it.

What started it all out was that the international media was outraged that Russia had passed a law that prohibited gay propaganda directed at children. As we all know, access to gay propaganda by children is a basic human right. I think it is in a United Nations' declaration somewhere.

And this must all mean that gays are being beaten and killed in Russia. It logically follows. Trust me.

So, as a result, multitudes of international reporters show up is Sochi looking for gays who have been mistreated. People with gun shot wounds, bruises, or other disfigurements are to be chased down and interviewed, likely having been the victims of anti-gay violence.

But the only thing journalists can find is Olympic athletes who are clutching their throats and gasping because of the bad water in their hotel rooms. But after determining that they are only heterosexuals, the reporters leave them writhing on the ground to continue their search for persecuted gays.

They discover that Sochi has one gay bar, called "Mayak." So they go there, knowing that here there will be gays willing to talk about how persecuted they are. But when they get there, they find out that all the gays have fled and the only people at the bar are other reporters looking for gays who might be willing to talk about how persecuted they are.
“We’ve given over 200 interviews in the last month,” says Mayak owner Andrey Tanichev. Every country has sent its correspondents, he says, “except the Spanish, God bless them.” The Americans have sent the most reporters, but the BBC has set a record: they came by four times. 
As it turns out, most of the gays have fled the bar because they heard that reporters were descending on the bar to interview them about how persecuted they are and they don't want to talk to reporters about how persecuted they are. Largely because they are not being persecuted. And also because they don't want to talk on camera because the whole reason they come to this bar is because its private and other people won't find out about it.

They figure its safer to go somewhere else even if they are killed by the drinking water.

"The bar owner," a Danish journalist told a New Republic reporter, "was busy giving interviews in a private room. “We called last week to schedule an interview and we got 15 minutes between the Finns and the Swiss.”

In fact, they consider all these journalists with their note pads and cameras to be a positive nuisance and the closest thing they have experienced to persecution since the last time the bar was raided by the Soviet Secret Police.

Which is a long time because the bar has never been raided by the Soviet Secret Police.

When the New Republic reporter asks the cashier how many foreign journalists have come through here, she answers, “Questions, cameras. And always with the same questions.” Are they being persecuted or beaten? she is asked. “I always tell them that we observe all the laws. No one bothers us and we don’t bother anyone.”

Well, no one used to bother them, anyway.

4 comments:

KyCobb said...

Speaking of gay rights, on the subject of Kentucky's ban on same-sex marriage, I am quite happy to say: I told you so.

Martin Cothran said...

Yes, I think my readers are familiar with your view of morality as "what people will consider right in the future."

But I'm still waiting for a reason to think that this is a coherent moral philosophy.

KyCobb said...

Martin,

What I was referring to, of course, was the unconstitutionality of Kentucky's same-sex marriage ban, for which Judge Heyburn recognized no rational basis exists, as I have pointed out numerous times here. This isn't a moral question, since same-sex marriage harms no-one.

Singring said...

'But I'm still waiting for a reason to think that this is a coherent moral philosophy.'

This from the guy who derives his morals from what 'most people' thought was right in the past as well as personal 'intuitions'. The guy who wants to tell everyone that using organ x for activity y is wrong because he's 'looked at it' and it seems to him that x shouldn't be used for y.

Precisely the reason these laws get laughed out of court.