Manifesto

The last time I attempted to write a manifesto was in graduate school, and it was not by choice. I was a first-year grad student in the Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (which basically means I was undertaking an MFA in Homosexuality, but that’s neither here nor there). In our Art & Culture lecture, our professor asked us to craft manifestos laying forth what we hoped to accomplish as writers. Partly because I knew I was acquiring a truly shocking amount of debt for a truly shockingly non-practical degree, but also partly because I didn’t like the idea of manifestos, I kept mine simple and straight-forward.

“As a writer, I aim to create dramatic material for whoever pays me the most. Additionally, I will only write for Disney if they give me a cut of merchandising rights in lieu of the standard 3% of the gross ticket sales.”

My professor was somewhat unamused.

As I look back on that, I am able to revise my opinion of manifestos. I do not dislike them in general, but in specific. Especially as they relate to art. As a writer, I do not sit down to tell a story and ask myself, “What do I hope to accomplish with this?” or “What agenda am I going to push with this tale?” but instead…”How do I tell this story?” It’s not about the politics. Stories and characters are messy, they’re disagreeable, often I find myself loving most the ones I disagree with the most, and while the finished products often reflect an aspect of my personal belief system…I do not always see that myself until someone else points it out to me. Dramatic writers have never responded well to manifestos. We don’t do well with “isms,” and God knows we’ve tried. The biggest joke of the Red Scare and resulting Blacklist in Hollywood was that there were no Communist scripts! They sucked too badly to ever get produced! It’s better to let storytellers be storytellers, I still firmly believe that.

Editorialists, however, are a different bird altogether. As I contemplate the future of this blog, which will be a mixture of my personal beliefs (political and otherwise), my observations about the beliefs and actions of others, and occasionally random useless anecdotes and/or things I’ve encountered online and was simply amused/horrified by…I thought, perhaps now would be a good time to lay out a manifesto. It will also give those of you who choose to read it a good idea of what you can expect from the blog in the future and whether you should even bother.

So. To the manifesto. In no particular order, things I believe, think, am, like or dislike:

I believe that the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth. Point blank. There it is. Everything else that follows…follows distantly.

I believe that the government has no business in the bedroom, or the boardroom; that it in fact has no right to dictate what can go into or come out of the body of any individual citizen, and that while no specific section of the Constitution lays out the individual right to privacy, every single section of our most sacred document implies that such a right exists.

Needless (but important) to say, I believe that the government cannot restrict who I am able to marry.

I believe that with every law that’s passed, we lose a little freedom and we should spend a little more time making sure those laws are worth the loss and a little less time solving every problem by passing a law.

I like boys. And I am one. But I don’t think I’m a typical gay guy, if there even is such a thing anymore. I don’t like dancing (in clubs, or in public; in my underwear at home, big fan of dancing). I don’t like parTying. I enjoy a little Lady GaGa from time to time but usually just on my iPod at the gym. I don’t live at the gym. Well, that’s not true, I sorta do right now but that’s only cause I’m unemployed and figured I might as well use this time to get abs. I don’t really know all that much about fashion, I’ve had pretty much the same “style” or “look” for the past decade or so and possibly always will. I don’t go out to the bars, I’ve been sober for three and a half years and intend to remain that way. I refuse to watch Logo. I’ve never been to Fire Island and I’m not exactly itching to go. I don’t like Speedos.

I do like guns. And hunting. Not so much fishing, I don’t like slippery things, it’s a texture issue. And I hate bugs, so bait would be a problem for me. I don’t use an AK-47 or hollow-point bullets so it’s of little consequence to me if they’re illegal but I think it might be better if the gun industry took such measures on its own, without government intervention. Can’t we all agree that no one needs a bazooka to hunt pheasant?

I like cars, especially older ones. The 1965 Mustang in particular is a work of art. I like looking at cars, but I really like driving them, and it’s the only thing I miss about living outside New York. There is almost no better feeling in the world than a supercharged V8 engine rumbling underneath you.

I like watching baseball, but only in person. I don’t like playing it. And that’s for the best, since it’s not one of the four or five things in the world that I’m capable of doing.

I like Ayn Rand’s novels, but have issues with Objectivism outside the books.

I love Barry Goldwater, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, and Hillary Clinton. With the possible exception of Gerald Ford, I find nearly every other politician in the modern era to be miles below these few men and women in stature.

But I’ve got my eye on Sarah Palin. And I’m absolutely not kidding.

I’ve spent some time in trailer parks. I’ve spent some time in the suburbs. I’ve spent the past seven years living in New York City, and I’m pretty sure it’s always going to be home regardless of whether or not I live there. My favorite thing about New York is how easy it is to find the best elements of trailer parks and the suburbs without leaving the city. It would shock you how easy it is to be poor white trash here.

As a child, my imaginary friends were Daphne from “Scooby-Doo” and Nancy Reagan. Sometimes I still miss them a little bit.

I respect Ronald Reagan’s accomplishments immensely while still holding him accountable for the governmental failures in the early years of the AIDS crisis, and I have to wonder if they weren’t big enough to almost cancel out everything else he did. And since he won the Cold War, those are some pretty big accomplishments to cancel out…

I’m very, very Meredith Grey. Every mistake she’s ever made, I’ve made first. I’m also, so I’m told, Samantha from “Sex and the City.” Minus the sex.

I have a cat named after an Ayn Rand character. Before him, I had another cat named after a different Ayn Rand character. Before him, I had one named after Zelda Fitzgerald.

I love scripted television, and refuse to watch any reality program. Ever.

I refuse to “tweet.” I don’t necessarily think we’re being desensitized by all of this technological communication, I just don’t think I’m interesting enough to merit that kind of online network. I also don’t think anyone else is interesting enough to merit it, either.

I picked the blog title knowing full well that while some people will understand it as a political reference, many will assume it means I actually think I’m never wrong. And that’s not true. I have been wrong. At least once. Twice, technically, but we all have first marriages we don’t like to talk about.

I love everything ever written by Joss Whedon and Aarok Sorkin, and almost everything by David Mamet. Even pinko commies occasionally get it right.

I staunchly support Israel, and will continue to do so almost irregardless of their actions. I’d like to see them exchange land for peace in the long-term but as long as shrapnel-rilled rockets are being launched at them every single day by the people supposedly responsible and stable enough to govern their own country, I’m not too concerned about how soon that day comes. Plus, most Israeli’s are hot, they’ve never lost a war, and they’ve killed a lot of Arab terrorists, which endears them to me.

Speaking of, I’m not opposed to preemptive strikes given conclusive evidence. I support fully the military measures taken against Afghanistan. I wish they’d gone further, and I wish our military had not become distracted by a misguided and possibly unlawful war in Iraq.

Now that we’re in Iraq, however, I fear what will happen if we pull out to the degree that has been promised. Fortunately, I do not expect said promise to be kept.

Like most New Yorkers, I like big things. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (where I occasionally spend my Sunday mornings despite the fact that I'm not exactly what you would call an Episcopalian) is one of my favorite places on earth. But so is the Time-Warner Center.

I’ve had hundreds of protestors stand outside a theatre holding picket signs with my name on them. It’s hard to be afraid of anything after that. One of them was Barack Obama’s pastor. It’s hard to have much respect for either of them after that, too.

A United States Congressman once called me the “epicenter of moral decay in America,” and I was deeply flattered. The Village Voice theatre critic once called me “brilliant,” and I was highly skeptical. I think that says a lot.

Like everyone else in the world, and like this blog will be, I am a contradiction.

But Ayn Rand says there is no such thing as a contradiction, so maybe it’s time to examine my premises and find out which one of them is wrong…