I don’t find it bizarre. I find it appropriate given his views on the subject.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how I see it. What’s ‘has-been’ is the rising of her starpower; it’s already risen. She’s established so she’s doing lots more roles but her starpower is already secure and it was during the periods that it was still on the rise that she would have been able to do the most ‘good’ by coming out (if you’re inclined to think it would do any good). While the iron was hot and all that.
The fact that many seem to think that it’s sensationalistic and unreasonable to conclude that she’s gay based on her remarks, living with a woman, raising 2 kids from a donor father, her entire life biography taken as a whole and her silence on the issue (not any one of those things by itself) seems to me to be evidence of how ‘unlikely’ some people still hold the idea of a celebrity being gay (amazingly), which itself serves to explain why she’s felt there’s a value in not coming out. It’s not in Hollywood social circles that being out is a risk (obviously), it’s in gaining roles that allow for suspension of disbelief by the public about her sexuality.
That way, those that ‘know’ can just know and there will still be others who don’t ‘know’ and will surmise that those that feel they know are being scandalous.
I think there is an effect on roles if you come out as gay, as opposed to simply being known to be gay but not officially coming out.
I think Luther Vandross was an example of that in music. His music was all ballads and love songs for (presumably) heterosexual romances. Assuming he was gay, as is generally assumed, he nonetheless would have possibly been harmed by officially declaring it because now it’s ‘in your face’ so to speak for those for whom it matters.
Oddly enough, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ zeitgeist that was formalized into law by Clinton seems to be a pretty accurate reading of the pulse of the country (rightly or not).
It seems to me that her donations to that gay teen suicide group might have been a private penance for trading her closeted status for her assured starpower.
So, I agree I think he had a point.
Whether or not a star has any moral obligation to come out is a whole other issue.
Are there “many”? I doubt it.
What? Jodie Foster is gay? Oh, good lord spare my soul. You cannot possibly mean this. Little Jodie Foster who made those funny , offbeat Disney movies.
Why, you people are downright perverted to think just because she proposes her best girlfriend as an inspiration that there is something unworthy. Our bestest friends are always there for us in times of need without having sexual liasons. Do you think we can’t shampoo up in the shower to remove blood and body parts without any sexual thouhgts. With Cristina and Izzy scrubbing all of our cares away. Deeply carressing, rubbing the soap in, oh and the lather , yes the lather ooh it carries our fears away.
Oh, for God’s sake what is next? Are you going to tell me Barry Manilow is gay?
What? Barry Manilow is gay? I’m shocked! Shocked and appalled! :rolleyes:
Now you see what those heteros have started?
It makes you gayer than a sunny April morning.
Seriously, why is this an issue for anyone, and how has she been “chickenshit” about not flaunting her private life all over the entertainment press like Brad and Angelina, or whatever publicity whores are currently in limelight?
Ms. Foster is one of the rarest types of personalities in her profession–a genuine professional.
Stranger
WHA?!? Really?!?
I think Luther announced his gayness in the same, coy manner that Jodie Foster did by recording “Killing Me Softly” without changing the sex of the, er, murderer.
I thought Luther Vandross was roughly the black gay equivalent to Judy Garland.
I don’t know, but there’s a greater number of them in this thread than I’d have expected (that is, a number greater than zero lol)
But who is treating this as sensationalistic? We are discussing something that was in the (entertainment) news. No one’s calling for a public burning of Panic Room DVDs or anything.
Public burning of DVDs? I think I might have spoken in a blurry fashion. I’m not saying that there are folks stating that “oh my god she’s gay burn here dvds!”; what I’m saying is that there are people acting as if STATING / BELIEVING she is gay is an inherently sensationalistic thing to state/believe. Why would it be sensationalistic?
As if it couldn’t just be true or a reasonable thing to suspect. In my experience, people that feel it’s sensationalistic to state/believe such things seem, to my ear, to imply that being gay is something scandalous. Reminds me of Kerry referring to Cheney’s daughter as gay and the Cheneys and others acting as if they’d been insulted. To me, acting insulted implies that you think being called gay is an insult even when it’s plainly not intended that way.
Is that what you understood me to mean? I may not have made myself clear.
I don’t see that in this thread at all. Can you point to some specific posts?
Not even then, I think. As if the women would stop going - if anything more of them would go, and dream of converting him.
#15 and #20 struck me as seeming to come from that kind of thinking. It seems to me that often when people find it to be an unreasonable leap to speak of someone being gay based partly on something they said (her speech), it comes across like it’s implied that the conclusion being considered (that she’s gay) is somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily want to arrive at unlike, say, making a leap to conclude someone is a great person based on something they said. Just how it seems to me.
Remind me of a Larry David episode where someone mistook his agent’s wife as his own for a moment and he blurts out, “WHAT!? NO!!!” LOL Of course, he could just be upset at being misunderstood with no feeling about the asserted conclusion, but it seems to me that folks have a slightly different reaction when they’re misunderstood about something they consider laudable and something they don’t.
But it’s moot if the studios don’t feel that way since the movie would never get made.
Post #15 was mine. I wasn’t saying its an unreasonable leap to assume she’s gay based partly what she said, I was saying it’s unreasonable to come to that conclusion based soley on what she said. Based on the other facts of her life, I’m sure Foster is gay, it just seems weird to take that sentence as her “coming out” when it isn’t really different then what I’m sure thousands of people (especially woman, I’ll grant straight men don’t refer to eachother as “beautiful” to often) have said about their close friends/family memebers with whom their not romantically linked.
And your arguement that saying its unreasonable to say that someone is gay based on X piece of evidence is somehow equivalent to saying that being gay is undesirable is silly, IMHO.
Okay, fair enough. To me, by the time she made that speech there was no possibility of it being anything other than ‘partly’ evidence since the rest of her life has already been under scrutiny and the other facts were already known at the time she made the speech. So, yes, solely based on that from someone out of the blue, I agree. I didn’t think that much applied in her case as a practical matter and felt nobody could be taking it as ‘sole’ evidence unless that was the first thing they’d ever seen/heard about her, which I doubt.
As for women saying ‘beautiful’ as opposed to men saying it, yes I’d agree but even if a man said it I wouldn’t take it as sole evidence. If Luther Vandross said it towards the end of his career, however, I think it could be taken as evidence that becomes cumulative at that point as opposed to a la carte.
As for whether or not it’s equivalent (in your last paragraph above), I wouldn’t want to quite overstate it that way as pure equivalence but in my experience it’s at least reasonable to suspect that the person protesting may feel that way (in fact, every single time without exception I’ve heard that in RL encounters it turned out they did feel that way). So while it may in fact be overstating it to conclude that without exception every single time someone objects it means that they definitely think that being gay is undesirable, I don’t think it’s completely silly to suspect it either. To say it’s silly, frankly, would make me even more suspicious. LOL
Also reminds me of when Ross Perot said “you people” referring to his audience at a speech to the NAACP. Offense was taken and he had to apologize. It’s not as if the phrase “you people” per se could be seen as offensive, it’s in context and on the tail end of a lot of other apparent evidence culturally and historically for a group of people as where with Jodi it seems to me here statement was on the tail end of a lot of apparent evidence in her life up to that point.
Frankly, I’d find it kind of odd not to take that statement as indicative of her sexual orientation in her case (not the statement by itself, said by anyone). And wouldn’t it be ironic if her intention, as has been reported, was really to come out with that statement? We don’t know of course, but if that was her intention then it would be pretty ironic if some people thought it unreasonable to conclude that’s what she was doing even when it was her actual intent!
What did you make of the Cheneys reaction to their daughter being referred to as gay? That would clarify our different ways of looking at things perhaps.
Actually, as an aside, this was the first I heard about Foster’s sexuality one way or the other, though I went and looked her up on Wiki before I posted so I knew about the context before I wrote anything.
It’s silly because: what do you say if someone suggests something as evidence for a persons homosexuality and you actually honestly think that that evidence is weak? By your argument to say so would be to suggest you think homosexuality is wrong, but surely its not totally crazy impossible to think that maybe you just think a certain piece of evidence for suggesting so is flimsy. As an example, a while ago someone mentioned they thought Ira Glass (NPR host) was gay based on his voice and mannerisms. I’m pretty sure he’s not (turns out I was right), and said so. Was I showing some deep subconcious homophobia, or was I just, well, being right?