I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! Hewrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
dude had guts, someone needs to update his Wikipedia page
I’m fairly certain America hinges now on propaganda that everything is okay and we’re still a first world nation when actually, our country is slipping further and further, and we’re really just. The best third world country out here. Not even comparable to most first world countries, so we fucking aren’t one anymore
Sounds like we live in a police state where the rich tax the poor not to feed or protect them but to fund programs and legislature that defunds their resources and encourages them to die. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks and suffocates while the entire country falls apart because corporate power greed refuses to see the consequences of their actions.
I wish I had the faith to believe what goes around comes around, but I think it’s time to understand that we’re the ones that need to come around and take action. The rich aren’t going to do jack shit for us anymore. Even the rich that care about people on the bottom don’t have the courage to help people en masse
Economically speaking, one of the foundations of a 1st world country is a strong middle class (source, my BBA in Economics and International Business), and it’s been abundantly clear that America’s middle class has been shrinking. Wages have been stagnant since pretty much the 1970′s, American CEO’s wage disparity is the highest in the world when compared to the average of their workers.
Basically, the us *isn’t* a first world country anymore. Our economy may still be one of the highest (I’m not sure if China has overtaken us yet), but our infrastructure is crumbling. Roads and school and bridges are in dire need of repair, our education system is laughable when you see how much money we have available for it. Military spending is out of control, often on things the military doesn’t even need or want. All in the name of continuously soaring profits for the highest echelon of society, who never needed it to begin with.
Here’s some expresses from a recent article about a UN official investigating poverty in the US:
“A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.
“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.comearlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where “raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.”
“Some might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States,“ Alston said. “But despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and inequality.”
Alston also pointed out that the U.S. “has been very keen” on other countries being investigated by the U.N. for civil and human rights issues.
“Now, it’s the turn to look at what’s going on in the U.S.,” Alston said. “There are pretty extreme levels of poverty in the United States given the wealth of the country. And that does have significant human rights implications.”
“The idea of human rights is that people have basic dignity and that it’s the role of the government—yes, the government!—to ensure that no one falls below the decent level,” he said. “Civilized society doesn’t say for people to go and make it on your own and if you can’t, bad luck.””
“We are more than a bit concerned with the Benihana egg trick called for in the script. I’ve tried it and can only get it 1 out of 4 tries, and I’ve seen Benihana chefs flub the manoeuver when they have an entire grill as target. Mads has to crack his eggs into a 8-inch diameter skillet. The props Master calls his guy. The Production Manager calls in his guy. I call my guy. On the morning of the shoot we have 8 dozen eggs and 3 Japanese chefs with their hands made up to be hand doubles.
I guess I don’t have to tell you that when Mads arrives on set, he just tosses an egg up in the air and the egg breaks on the spatula. No problem. Unbelievable. I insist it was a lucky fluke but he does it again. I accuse him of practicing when I wasn’t looking but he laughs (as if he has time to practise egg-cracking between scenes) and tells me he was a juggler in his youth.” [x]
And here we all thought we’d have a million outtakes of Mads flubbing the egg trick…
What the hell kind of test tube did this man walk out of?
source: screenplays for ‘the maltese falcon’ and ‘the big sleep’
method: 12 word options at each step. stage directions used to write the stage directions. dialogue for the dialogue. arranged and formatted in final draft.
i totally know what people are getting at when they’re like “wow ONE is great because hes not the best artist but they dont let that stop him from storytelling and not giving up” bcuz like yeah ok yes theres nothing wrong with saying this and he does have lots of room for improvement, but on the other hand, i legitimately, absolutely think he’s a good artist??? like besides his storytelling and writing skills which are Fucking Legendary, he actually communicates emotions and imagery suuuuper fucking well. so well that sometimes BONES had a hard time keeping the fuck up, which i find hilarious
when the show started airing, guess which version of this scene most people actually preferred, hands down?
Yep, ONE’s version. It got the emotions and message of that scene across 500% better. To be clear, in n o f cuki ng way am i dissing BONES; god knows they just created an animated masterpiece. but im a little bummed about ONE always getting the short end of the stick on art.
what i find the most impressive about ONE’s art is the sheer MAGNITUDE of emotion and intensity that he can get across through the artwork.
These are great on their own but its a completely unique experience to READ through the story and get to these moments where there’s nothing but pacing and imagery to propel you through these scenes, some of which being the most powerful scenes in the story for those reasons.
like idk damn dude. if i put some of my work next to some of ONE’s work, some people might say i was the better artist, but i would have to absolutely disagree. some of my best works don’t come CLOSE to this stuff. honestly a lot of published graphic novels don’t come anywhere near to delivering a story through the art as well as mob psycho does.
i guess this is a ONE art appreciation post because goddamn dude, look at this.
I think when unexperienced artists/ non-artists see ONE’s art, all they are seeing is the very non-traditional, not “prettied up” style and presume ONE is just not a very talented artist and his popularity must come from his storytelling abilities. But pretty much any artist who knows their shit can see there’s genuine skill in these panels. You have to know what you are doing to achieve an art style that looks naturally messy and loose, while preserving the basic elements that make your art readable (anatomy, lighting, expression, etc). And it’s clear from these examples that ONE knows very well what he is doing, as his art style shifts wildly from moment to moment, evoking emotion from the reader dependent on how detailed, how sketchy, how dark, how flat, etc the drawing is.
More example of this type of purposeful messiness would be artists like Taiyo Matsumoto (creator of tekkonkinkreet and ping pong)
Dave McKean (well known for his illustrations in books such as Coraline)
and my personal favorite, Mortis Ghost (creator of OFF and Dr. Cataclysm)
basically what I’m saying is, do not assume messy and loose automatically equates to unskilled art. Artists like this go so underappreciated because their art isn’t cutesy or realistic like what everyone is used to. If you love ONE’s work, and you find that reading his comics evokes an emotional response in you, understand that is just as much of a result of his art as it is his writing skills, and it’s likely something he’s worked on just as hard!
my mom was talking about how she didn’t like a series of unfortunate events that much because it falls into the “adults are stupid” trope which she doesn’t think is realistic and i… really just don’t know how to explain to her that the point isn’t that adults are stupid, it’s that children don’t get listened to. some of the adults in the series are actually very smart, their problem is that even the good and decent adults in the series seem to staunchly refuse to believe the baudelaire children are just as smart as they are, or that they may know what they’re talking about, out of the sheer fact that the baudelaire children are children. itisn’t always a story of “adults are stupid, kids are smart, kids rule, adults suck,” it’s a story of “children are often mistreated or taken advantage of or at the very least condescended to, and don’t get their voices heard because adults don’t trust them enough to validate a child saying they are in an unfair or even abusive situation”
This is part of my webcomic Postcards in Braille, which you can read on ComicFury or Tapastic. Updates on Mondays!
This comic/guide works well enough on its own, so I thought it’d be nice to post it here as well 😀 Braille is really cool and you don’t need to be blind or visually impaired to learn it – and spreading the use of Braille can help us build a more inclusive society! everyone wins!
Bonus fun fact: Braille is originally based on Night writing (or sonography), a tactile reading/writing system created for soldiers to communicate silently at night. Louis Braille adapted it into easier to read cells, creating the Braille system. Good to know it evolved into something so useful!
Izzie’s tumblr archive 