I just want to say that this writing is brilliant. It is compassionate, it is true, it is celebratory of a great young life gone too soon and honoring to young lives continually thrown on the fire of hate. It's deeply insightful. Thank you.
Pat - a truly remarkable piece. I have just finished reading a detailed piece on Theodore Hertzl and his efforts with early Zionism. There was HOPE, but the Jews worked for their dream and realised their hope. Hope in action. I read this at exactly the right time. Your writing made something "Click" into place. Thank you for lighting all the candles on the 🕎 menorah for me.
Excellent piece of writing, and spot on. Thank you!
This paragraph sums it up, "Giving Palestinian people hope would undermine the strategy of the Palestinian movement. People with hope do not self-detonate. People with hope do not lose their humanity to the extent that they can decapitate babies and immolate families alive. People with hope cannot raise their own children to kill and be killed. People with hope teach their children to advance a future of coexistence and peace."
I have voiced this opinion for many years, but I’ve never seen it expressed so logically and brilliantly. Kudos to Pat Johnson. This should be the centerpiece of every Rosh Hashanah sermon this year. Spectacular opinion piece. Thank you!
Wow, so astute. I wish our political leaders had a clue about this. They keep harping about a two-state solution that the Palestinians keep saying they don't want. What do you think it would take to get hope back to the Palestinian population, and the Lebanese population under Hezbollah? New leadership, obviously, and new leadership that doesn't get executed, but really, how could this be achieved? Do you (or anyone) have any ideas?
I'm afraid I do not have the answers. What I do remember, in times of bleakness, though, is that we of a certain age never dreamed that the Iron Curtain would fall peacefully and that apartheid would end without revolution. Things CAN change, often when we least expect ti. That's about all I've got, I'm afraid!
I have a thought. I am old enough to remember when police periodically raided the gay bar in Providence, RI because it was illegal to be queer. I remember when Matthew Shepherd was murdered and when someone picked off a lesbian couple in a Vermont state park with a high speed rifle and no one ever suffered any consequences for violence against queers. I remember seeing a queer guy bleeding and stumbling around in a ripped raincoat on Atlantic Avenue in Boston sometime in the early 90s, having apparently just been beat up. I remember all that. Yet things changed, and I think it's due to decade upon decade of positive coverage of queers in film and TV. A concerted effort to normalize homosexuality. People felt the queer on the screen was their friend, in the way we have one-way relationships with celebrities, and over time, that created a sea change.
If Palestinians were able to watch films that could give them hope and also get them to hate less, decade after decade, we could see a way out of this. The problem, of course, is that such films would be verboten.
A great piece. And this is where Greta Thunberg fits right in as the movement’s mouthpiece - no hope, only anger; no solutions, only empty slogans devoid of the desire to create something better, something new for all involved.
Good piece but later nooz 'bout Milk colors him a little "curdled." Whereas Milk was once indeed a good fella ta look up to (for gays an' friends of gay folks which would be me--in the thee-ate-'er biz there's a lotta friends of Dorothy!) I fer one was greatly disturbed 'bout his relationships with underage boys--some of which were coercive (takin' advantage of poor kids) An' yes, I know many others whose work I admire did the same (Michel Foucault fer one).
Saddened hearin' this stuff--just as it saddened me to learn MLK was not just unfaithful (they all are) but that he was abusive to multiple female partners includin' those "hired." But as a supporter of many things LGB (I don't include the rest of the alphabet soup it's baloney), hearin' this kinda stuff doesn't sit right with me...
"...sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure...“…sixteen-year-old old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure…within a few weeks, McKinley moved into Harvey Milk’s Upper West Side apartment…and settled into a middleclass
domestic marriage.. At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him." (pages 30-31)
Coldly agreed with a former lover’s suicide threat “…the phone rang. As soon as Harvey heard the voice, he rolled his eyes impatiently at Jim. ‘It’s Jack McKinley,’ he said. He paused and listened
further. ‘He says he’s going to kill himself.’…‘Tell him not to make a mess,’ Harvey deadpanned. Jack hung up.” (Source: Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, p. 126)
"It would be to boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20's that Milk would be attracted for the rest of his life." (page 24)
"Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems." (page 180)
"Harvey confided one night that at twenty-four, Doug was the oldest man Harvey had ever started an affair with." (page 237)..
So... if Harvey wanted ta offer hope that's all good BUT I'm not so sure he'd be a good example fer young'uns just comin' outta the closet as I'd think they kin now hope fer a lot better than trollin' their juniors (yuk). I know back in the day nobuddy knew this stuff... many idols have fallen...
How 'bout Jerry Herman instead? -- such talent! He wrote "Milk & Honey" about Israel too! ;-)
I just want to say that this writing is brilliant. It is compassionate, it is true, it is celebratory of a great young life gone too soon and honoring to young lives continually thrown on the fire of hate. It's deeply insightful. Thank you.
Thank you Bari!
“It’s that Palestinianism is not a nation-building endeavor.” You have summarised the whole charade so perfectly
Pat - a truly remarkable piece. I have just finished reading a detailed piece on Theodore Hertzl and his efforts with early Zionism. There was HOPE, but the Jews worked for their dream and realised their hope. Hope in action. I read this at exactly the right time. Your writing made something "Click" into place. Thank you for lighting all the candles on the 🕎 menorah for me.
Thanks Sylvan!
Excellent piece of writing, and spot on. Thank you!
This paragraph sums it up, "Giving Palestinian people hope would undermine the strategy of the Palestinian movement. People with hope do not self-detonate. People with hope do not lose their humanity to the extent that they can decapitate babies and immolate families alive. People with hope cannot raise their own children to kill and be killed. People with hope teach their children to advance a future of coexistence and peace."
I have voiced this opinion for many years, but I’ve never seen it expressed so logically and brilliantly. Kudos to Pat Johnson. This should be the centerpiece of every Rosh Hashanah sermon this year. Spectacular opinion piece. Thank you!
Thank Steve. Incredibly kind.
Wow, so astute. I wish our political leaders had a clue about this. They keep harping about a two-state solution that the Palestinians keep saying they don't want. What do you think it would take to get hope back to the Palestinian population, and the Lebanese population under Hezbollah? New leadership, obviously, and new leadership that doesn't get executed, but really, how could this be achieved? Do you (or anyone) have any ideas?
I'm afraid I do not have the answers. What I do remember, in times of bleakness, though, is that we of a certain age never dreamed that the Iron Curtain would fall peacefully and that apartheid would end without revolution. Things CAN change, often when we least expect ti. That's about all I've got, I'm afraid!
I have a thought. I am old enough to remember when police periodically raided the gay bar in Providence, RI because it was illegal to be queer. I remember when Matthew Shepherd was murdered and when someone picked off a lesbian couple in a Vermont state park with a high speed rifle and no one ever suffered any consequences for violence against queers. I remember seeing a queer guy bleeding and stumbling around in a ripped raincoat on Atlantic Avenue in Boston sometime in the early 90s, having apparently just been beat up. I remember all that. Yet things changed, and I think it's due to decade upon decade of positive coverage of queers in film and TV. A concerted effort to normalize homosexuality. People felt the queer on the screen was their friend, in the way we have one-way relationships with celebrities, and over time, that created a sea change.
If Palestinians were able to watch films that could give them hope and also get them to hate less, decade after decade, we could see a way out of this. The problem, of course, is that such films would be verboten.
A great piece. And this is where Greta Thunberg fits right in as the movement’s mouthpiece - no hope, only anger; no solutions, only empty slogans devoid of the desire to create something better, something new for all involved.
Good piece but later nooz 'bout Milk colors him a little "curdled." Whereas Milk was once indeed a good fella ta look up to (for gays an' friends of gay folks which would be me--in the thee-ate-'er biz there's a lotta friends of Dorothy!) I fer one was greatly disturbed 'bout his relationships with underage boys--some of which were coercive (takin' advantage of poor kids) An' yes, I know many others whose work I admire did the same (Michel Foucault fer one).
https://www.amazon.com/Mayor-Castro-Street-Times-Harvey/dp/0312560850
Saddened hearin' this stuff--just as it saddened me to learn MLK was not just unfaithful (they all are) but that he was abusive to multiple female partners includin' those "hired." But as a supporter of many things LGB (I don't include the rest of the alphabet soup it's baloney), hearin' this kinda stuff doesn't sit right with me...
"...sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure...“…sixteen-year-old old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure…within a few weeks, McKinley moved into Harvey Milk’s Upper West Side apartment…and settled into a middleclass
domestic marriage.. At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him." (pages 30-31)
Coldly agreed with a former lover’s suicide threat “…the phone rang. As soon as Harvey heard the voice, he rolled his eyes impatiently at Jim. ‘It’s Jack McKinley,’ he said. He paused and listened
further. ‘He says he’s going to kill himself.’…‘Tell him not to make a mess,’ Harvey deadpanned. Jack hung up.” (Source: Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, p. 126)
"It would be to boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20's that Milk would be attracted for the rest of his life." (page 24)
"Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems." (page 180)
"Harvey confided one night that at twenty-four, Doug was the oldest man Harvey had ever started an affair with." (page 237)..
So... if Harvey wanted ta offer hope that's all good BUT I'm not so sure he'd be a good example fer young'uns just comin' outta the closet as I'd think they kin now hope fer a lot better than trollin' their juniors (yuk). I know back in the day nobuddy knew this stuff... many idols have fallen...
How 'bout Jerry Herman instead? -- such talent! He wrote "Milk & Honey" about Israel too! ;-)
Yes, he was problematic in many ways. No doubt.