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Hollywood Reporter (Purposely) Misses Point on Drag Queen Outrage

Far-left site ignores reasons why conservatives suddenly slam drag art form

Tom Hanks’ show biz beginning couldn’t be more humbling.

The two-time Oscar winner broke out via an ABC sitcom where he spent much of his time wearing women’s clothing.

“Bosom Buddies” wasn’t sexual in nature. The show featured two men (Hanks and the late Peter Scolari) dressing as women in order to live in the only affordable apartment in town.

The show proved a modest success, running for two seasons and nudging Hanks into feature films like “Splash” and “Bachelor Party.” The rest is Oscar history. Hanks became this generation’s Jimmy Stewart, the Everyman able to anchor everything from war films to tales of men left behind by time and memories.

Now, The Hollywood Reporter is using Hanks’ breakthrough series to mislead its audience about the latest culture war fight:

Drag Queen Story Hour and related events.

The far-Left outlet brings back “Bosom Buddies” to suggest that conservatives are suddenly, inexplicably outraged by drag performers.

Why do they hate people who are different? Why can’t they leave drag performers alone? That’s not written in the piece, but it’s implied from start to finish.

In doing so, the site ignores the key reason for the Sturm und Drang.

Some drag queens are performing highly sexual material for very young children … even toddlers. It’s being encouraged across the culture, including by New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James.

The media is downplaying this element of the story as much as possible, but platforms like Twitter abound with footage showing drag queens interacting with children in highly sexual ways.

Hanks and Scolari did no such thing. Nor did other famous drag performers like Milton Berle, Flip Wilson and, famously, Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

They dressed in drag, while drag queens add more dimension to the art form. It’s often sexual in nature and has been aimed directly at adult audiences for decades. The practice has had its detractors, but their voices were small and on the boundaries of the culture.

That’s no longer the case.

In fact, in recent years the Left has been critical of drag comedy. The New York Times ran an article in September asking, “Are Men in Dresses Still Funny?” Even RuPaul, arguably the most popular drag performer of the modern age, has come under fire from the Left.

A 2015 Slate piece raised significant questions about drag with no pat answers.

Those critiques weren’t framed by the press as hateful, nor should they be. Now, anyone criticizing drag is considered a bigot, or worse.

That’s no accident.

Stars like Cyndi Lauper have similarly slammed drag critics in recent days, ignoring the core arguments in play. The press, in turn, minimize, or ignore, the overriding concerns in play.

The Billboard article in question is cartoonishly one-sided and doesn’t allow the critics in question a fair chance to expound on their arguments.

Again, that’s no accident.

One thing is clear from both the current kerfuffle and past attacks on drag performers. The art form is both complicated and best suited for adult audiences. If drag performers kept entertaining adults exclusively, the current culture war battle would have never begun.

15 Comments

  1. ” It’s often sexual in nature and has been aimed directly at adult audiences for decades.”

    That, I think, is the crux of the current kerfluffle

    Various things are not appropriate for children in general. The highly sexualized actor is one of them.

  2. This is why “live and let live” will never work as a philosophy, because it’s never good enough for the Left. They demand conformity and indoctrination, not tolerance. They shove deviant sexuality down our kids’ throats, and then when we complain they act like they just want tolerance. We need to stop falling for this.

  3. I love it. As a man, we just keep on winning!! Now we can take over women’s sports and they’ll let us, and applaud is for doing so! We are taking over sexualizing children from the women with our highly popular Drag Queen Story Hours. Men dressing up like women and women applauding us! I love it!! We win again! We’re beating the women at everything and they are helping us. It just keeps on getting better – it’s a man’s world out there, ladies. Thanks for making it easier for us. ❤️

  4. Men dressing as women for performance art goes back thousands of years. It’s nothing new. What’s new is getting kids into the act. What’s new is transgender surgery for kids. What’s new is revealing sexual genitalia in front of kids. I never seen such a display for drag shows in previous time periods. Today’s drag is on a whole new level.

  5. Drag is not an “art form”. It’s men playing out their fetishes in public. And those that do it for children should be investigated.

    I have no idea why the left is so excited about men dressing in provocative outfits to dance for children is their thing. It says far more about that side of the aisle then we probably want to know. The left is pretty sick, that’s for sure.

    1. How is it any different than a minstrel show? It’s someone pretending to be something they are not, using over the top theatrics and costuming . It diminishes women, just as minstrel shows diminished the black community.

  6. The left-wing media understands modern conservatives about as well as I understand nuclear physics. The difference is that nuclear physics is far too complicated for a mind like mine, whereas modern conservatives are easy to understand – to anyone willing to actually sit down and listen to them for about 30 minutes. That’s too much to ask for today’s media.

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