Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Gaga Over Gaga



Her music is catchy, her style outlandish and her attitude brash. Now add political ball-buster to pop sensation Lady Gaga's impressive list of attributes.

Speaking at a rally in Maine Monday, Gaga officially threw herself front and center into the military's 17-year-old "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy which allows gays to serve but not disclose their homosexuality or act on it.

Gaga growled, "Doesn’t it seem to be that DADT is backwards. Doesn’t it seem that we’re penalizing the wrong soldier? Doesn’t it seem to you that we should send home the prejudiced? The straight soldier who hates the gay soldier? The straight soldier whose performance is affected because he is homophobic? The straight soldier who has prejudice in his heart, in the space where the military asks him to hold to our core American values ... he instead holds and harbors hate, and he gets to stay and fight for our country."

Bravo, I say. We need more "voices of a generation" like Lady G to use their massive celebrity to help bring about much needed change in America. To help the small-minded and frightened close the discrimination gap.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Gaga groupie or anything. In fact, she's not even in my iPod. Oh, she's certainly very talented and is a real fav of my 22 and 24 year old daughters. But, at almost 51, my heart still belongs to Madonna, of whom Gaga is a tad derivative. More importantly though, I now have immense respect for her as a person, in particular, a young person, who has achieved gargantuan success so quickly, and who has just as quickly realized how she can use this immense fame to make a difference in peoples lives. She's not just a marketing and branding genius, but one of those rare people who truly have their fingers on the pulse of society and culture. Many more good things to come from her politically I suspect, and hope.


On another note, the Adrienne Shelly Foundation's 3rd Annual eBay Celebrity Auction is live! From now until Sept 30th, you can bid on exclusive, one-on-one lunches with stars like Paul Rudd, Jon Hamm, Cheryl Hines, Michelle Williams, Kevin Smith, Rosario Dawson, Patricia Clarkson, Rachael Harris, Keri Russell, Susie Essman, Bill Hader, Jeremy Sisto, Mark Cuban, Rosanna Arquette, Gina Gershon, Lili Taylor among others? Or how about VIP tickets and meet & greets at Joan Rivers' new stand-up show, Maroon 5, Dar Williams, Semi-Precious Weapons and the hilarious NYC show Celebrity Autobiography? We also have VIP tickets to The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Ellen, Rachael Ray and The View; VIP tickets to Jimmy Buffett; TV show set visits/meet & greets for The Good Wife, Breaking Bad, Castle, United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie, Rachel Maddow and Stephanie Miller.; walk-on extra roles on Community, Hung and Todd Solondz's next film Dark Horse. Mark your calendars for September 20!

The The Adrienne Shelly Foundation is a 501 c 3 tax-exempt, non-profit organization dedicated in my late wife's honor, and with a simple mission: supporting women filmmakers. Adrienne, who wrote, directed and starred in the hit film WAITRESS, was killed November 1, 2006. Through the Foundation, her commitment to filmmaking lives on. We've established scholarships, grants, finishing funds, screenwriting fellowships and living stipends at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts/Kanbar Institute of Film; Columbia University; American Film Institute; Women in Film; IFP; the Nantucket Film Festival; the Tribeca Film Institute; and the Sundance Institute. Your generous contribution will go a long way towards helping us achieve this very important mission. Please click here to make a donation. Thank you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This whole "gays in the military" issue is nothing more than a cynical wedge issue, dreamed up by the Republicans to divide and confuse the working class from focusing on the real major issues facing America. That is, the ongoing looting of our nation by the greedy Top One Percent, who hold all the real levers of power in our "democracy."

Bravo to Lady Gaga for taking some time off from her obscenely wealthy, pampered, privileged life to say a few words on behalf of gay soldiers.

However, it would be nice if she (or any of the other pop mediocrities that clog up the airwaves) would have something to say about an issue of vastly greater importance: the ongoing illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S.

Innocent men, women and children are dying violent deaths daily because of our idiotic wars. And their blood is on OUR hands.

That to me, is a trillion times more important than this whole gays in the military issue.

Still, I suppose it's nice that Lady Gaga took a brief break from her lavish jets & limos & cocaine lifestyle to speaks a few words of wisdom. Given though, that she's nothing more than a cynical media whore, let's face it: she knows damn well that a publicity stunt like this is worth millions, particularly in her profession, where publicity is the oxygen of show business.