Special Episode: Liza’s Bad Gays
The one and only Liza through the stories of the bad gays who shaped her life.
Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first husband Peter Allen to her diabolical fourth husband David Gest. Liza learned on her (and our) mother Judy Garland's knee how to survive by appealing to gay guys. Gay guys used Judy, then Liza to self-fashion. None of it is particularly healthy, and yet we love it so.
Our main source for this episode was Liza's new memoir, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, and Cameron's newsletter Cooked, with monthly essays and regular music playlists for pop culture obsessives, can be found here.
Mandelson: A Homosexual History
Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last forty years. Our five-part miniseries breaks it down.
They call him the prince of darkness.
Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last forty years. He's a spin doctor, a sometime minister, and a networker whose downfall through the Epstein files now threatens the survival of the British government. This miniseries examines his gay life and times, tracing the collapse of mass politics, the emergence of neoliberalism, and the political history of homosexuality in the UK, from decriminalisation to Section 28, from Sleaze to Gay Marriage. A Faustian story, Mandelson: A Homosexual History plays out on a world-historical scale, but at its heart is driven by the failures and compromises of greed and lust.
Stay a week ahead by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.
SOURCES:
SOURCES:
Mandelson and the making of New Labour, Donald Macintyre
Mandy: The Unauthorised Biography of Peter Mandelson, Paul Routledge
Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT Education, Paul Baker
Tory Pride and Prejudice: The Conservative Party and homosexual law reform, Michael McManus
The Rivals : the intimate story of a political marriage, James Naughtie
Bloody Nasty People, Daniel Trilling
Clampdown: Pop-Cultural wars on class and Gender, Rhian E. Jones
1997: The Future That Never Happened, Richard Power Sayeed
Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and the New Seriousness, Joe Kennedy
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