1. And this drag queen (the one writing this) is not making any excuses for her but yet she feels, as does her brother, that the anger and charges of racism and demands for apology and indeed the subsequent apology from Miss Kitty Litter are somewhat misplaced or misguided.
2. Drag queens are characters separate from the performers playing them. This line is sometimes blurred by the fact that the performance is often fluid and involves a fair amount improvisation, but they are still characters separate from the (usually) men who play them.
Miss Kitty Litter (MKL) is a character. And from all accounts, she is a character who does not believe in political correctness. Some of us might even call her character racist. She was hired by the Pride Committee to host a show. During that show she was her usual (again as far as has been reported) politically incorrect and/or racist self. A person in the audience complained, loudly and publicly. And now MKL has issued an apology and asked us not to blame the Pride Committee. But you see, I do. I blame them entirely.
3. As far as I am concerned, MKL was hired to do a job and she did it. Indeed going by the passion of the response, she did it very well. She has nothing to apologize for, perhaps hurt feelings, but she should feel absolutely no need to take any of what she said back, because her character is not interested in political correctness. Her character says things that are hurtful, and that was what she was hired to do, play her character.
More than once, in comments on this blog, it has been voiced that it is unbelievable that in 2007, people find racist jokes funny. I disagree, racist jokes can be funny. What is unbelievable is that in 2007, people can’t see why what they are laughing at is offensive.
4. Expecting political correctness from a drag queen is really problematic. More than once now on this blog, a drag queen has been called racist. Yet not once yet have I heard a drag queen called a misogynist. Why Are drag characters always either overtly sexual to the point of being two dimentional or silly? Can women not have a voice as opposed to moving their lips to what someone else is singing? No, and yet I never hear the charge of misogyny. Why do we ignore one kind of hate and oppression but jump all over another? What is really happening here?
I am personally disinterested in political correctness, I find that all it does is illuminate what a speaker is uncomfortable saying.
Now we might say, “but Boston Pride had no way of knowing EVERY thing that came out of her mouth”. To which I can only ask if Boston Pride knew the work of the artist they were hiring.
If they did, then the blame falls squarely on them. They didn’t need to know exactly what she would say. If they knew her work, then they should have known she is not interested in being politically correct.
If they didn’t know her work, then there is a lot more explaining to do. Why would you hire an artist whose work you don’t know? I’m guessing she was paid, it seems like a bad idea to invest in an unknown commodity. If she wasn’t paid, why was Boston Pride shipping a queen in from Rhode Island giving her publicity and prestige instead of supporting one of its own?
5. Why pick a drag queen if you don’t know her work? Certainly there is an appreciation at Boston Pride that all queens are different. Surely there is recognition that every drag queen brings with her something other than color and a dress. Drag queens are not, in fact, an indistinguishable mass of eyelashes, heels and sequins. They are in fact individuals. And ought to be treated as such.
If the Boston Pride Committee doesn’t know that, then I might ask, where have they been every year at well, Pride?
Again I ask, what’s really happening here?
