"The Stonewall Uprising"..American Experience on PBS - 9:00 p.m.

[monmouth]

I think this is new programming..

[Warpy]

1. They've done one of those before and it was very good

with lots of narration from people who were there. I can't believe they've improved on it much.

[monmouth]

2. On the listing it said "new"...of course that could mean anything. I

saw programming on this a few years back and it was a great history lesson. I do wonder if it's the same one.

[closeupready]

3. I'm going to watch, but I'm not optimistic that I'm going to enjoy it.

I'm probably going to come away from it being angry with the Vatican, heterosexuals, all kinds of people. And then there is my fear that the producers will 'pony' the topic making it seem like it was just a bunch of silly queens, and wasn't it incredibly unpredictable that a minority group could one day fight back against persecution, and gather freely just like everyone else rather than be thrown into jail and have their careers ended overnight, blackmailed, etc. I better stop, but I'm going to watch.

[thanks_imjustlurking]

5. Argh, I hope you're wrong. (No bets.)

And I, too, am going to watch it anyway. I appreciate the reminder - I might have missed it.

[defendandprotect]

4. Good time to credit the homosexual community with running a terrific revolution -- !!!

Highly intelligent, informative campaign to end intolerance and hatred --

and to shift the burden onto the true abusers of human rights!!

But, once again, another example of the most persecuted among us rising up

and freeing themselves!! Amazing!!!

[closeupready]

6. While Sean Penn totally deserved his Oscar, I have to say, that was better than "Milk".

Wow. I loved that. I am pleasantly surprised. What a powerful documentary.

[thanks_imjustlurking]

16. It was.

I was fascinated by the interviews with people who were there. Almost made me remember what it was like to be young, except I'm too old.

[TalkingDog]

7. I watched it. I was transfixed.

I was only 10 when Stonewall happened and I didn't hear about it as a historical event for another 18 years.

You listen to people talking about the repressive, abusive crap they had to put up with and you just can't fathom it....

[The Philosopher]

8. You can't watch it and not feel proud

Being in the closet, being forced into silence, and then watching someone like you being so powerful, more powerful than those who are oppressing you. It just screams "You can have a real life."

If it was possible back then, it's possible right now.

[Smarmie Doofus]

9. Good stuff. Powerful stuff. 'They done good.'

I liked the very last line. The retired police commander says: "They were breaking the law; but what KIND of a law was it?"

Very 60s-ish ethos. Right on the fucking money.

Too bad a lot of people missed hearing and seeing that. We're making a lot of avoidable mistakes as a society as a consequence of that. Post baby boomers don't quite have the necessary visceral distrust of authority that was peaking right around '69.

It's hard to shake the feeling that the world would be a much better place if Obama, for example, were 10 years older.

[The Philosopher]

10. I loved that line, too.

I loved that they interviewed him, so you heard about the police experience that night. That was awesome.

I'm not sure the President's age would matter. I often wonder in a post-revolution age where a world is changed people often become soft in their approach. After all, homosexuality isn't illegal anymore; so why have that anger from that night? Gays have power now, we can fight discrimination like everyone else. I see that sort of thinking in the Democratic Party itself, I think. We had that big liberal moment in the 60's; why do we need it again? It's really sad, because we need those angers, we need those uprisings.

One thing in the documentary that irritated me is at the beginning, you saw all those films telling people that the homosexual was sick and you had cops telling SCHOOL CHILDREN to not be gay, to stop being gay, etc. Why do they get to tell school children about homosexuality when it was illegal, and we can't talk to them about homosexuality when it isn't?

[Smarmie Doofus]

11. I think we have anger commensurate with our current status.

We're quasi accepted in most regions. (At least in a LEGAL sense. Socially there is still stigma, isolation and marginalization... esp for the young and esp in rural areas. Legally, we've achieved near fully equal status .... except full marriage equality.... in many states. (Anti-discrimation protections lag as well.)

One thing Stonewall created was accelerated growth in the urban gay-ghetto phenomenon. That's a a mixed blessing legacy if there ever was one. Yes ,there are now places where adults can go and live more or less in an open and civilized manner but the same ghettos permit the larger society to continue to ignore our existence.... as much as they can. ( Technology innovation has made it impossible for anyone to COMPLETELY pretend we don't exist, as was the case in the old days.) The result is: small towns, outlying suburbs, red states, rural areas.... they're still pretty miserable places to be gay. All of the glbt adults are in the city. Whoever's left behind is easy to marginalize and is gonna have it rough.

Re. Obama: I'm not saying his *age* per se makes a difference. I'm saying the fact that he has no *memory* of the 60's cripples his thinking and his governance. Had he been *through* the VN/Cambodia/Ellsberg/Watergate era ... instead of having just read books about it at Columbia, there is a good possibility that we'd be out of ... or ON OUR WAY out of....Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. And probably less" evolving" ( good god, how embarrassing it is to watch him) over GLBT issues.

He came of age when the media and society was starting to deliberately forget the lessons of that period and discredited institutions like the military and war glorification and mindless flag-wving were being carefully rehabilitated.


Also a period where glbt politics which had been directed OUTWARD became subordinate to glbt celebration and, frankly, commercialism... all of which is directed INWARD.

What were "marches" in the early 70's became "parades" by the end of the decade. That's not without significance.)

[The Philosopher]

14. You don't have to tell me about gay rural life....

That's all I've ever had. I almost found it hard to believe when they spoke about coming to NY from rural areas, other areas of America, and finding a place that's theirs. That's supposed to be a time where you can go to jail for hugging another man! It's just hard to believe people did that, just as it's hard to believe that it exists today. No matter how much has been won, what we haven't won is present everywhere.

I actually wanted to comment on that last night, about the change between Pride marches back then and now, but I thought I was only seeing that. When they talked about the 2nd night and how they were joined by others who weren't gay, because they were taking on the establishment, I thought how ironic that was. I mean, it's great to have someone join you in your cause, strength in numbers and all that; but I couldn't help having this sense that they weren't there for the GLBT community, but rather for themselves. I felt they were using them. And, in a way, that was doing the job of the police and government, to silence the GLBT protesters. If they hadn't suggested a march following the riots, what would it have been? Would it have been another hippie protest? Or would it have been the Gay political/social protest that it was?

And like that man said, if we don't have extremes, we'll never have moderation. If we act like everything is fine, what isn't fine will get ignored. And that will eventually lead somewhere. After all, we've been illegal more than once in history.

I'd like to say, "I don't know if having no "memory" of the 60's is affecting his decisions," because I have no memory of that time either, and I know I wouldn't be making the decisions the President has. Then I remember I often complain about people who won't discover any sort of literature unless there's an audio version of it. So maybe you're right about that. Maybe it is normal for people to be sterile now. Although, I would like to submit a formal complaint about that dis at reading

[Smarmie Doofus]

15. There were a lot of people in the (esp) NYC left who were...

... sympathetic to the nascent glbt movement at that time. There was a lot of overlap: gay people were protesting the VN war and Nixon style quasi-facism in the same proportion as the rest of the population. So there were a lot of personal and political ties. Also between the nascent feminist movement and glbts. I don't think of their support as in any way exploitative.

Two of the recurring interviewees in the film... were well known Village Voice columnists Howard Smith ( rock music) and Lucian V. Truscott ( politics) and... far as I know, both straight. (Truscott's the guy that wrote the "faggotry" reference; probably meant ironically but folks weren't thinking "ironic" right then so he caught hell.)

OK, Tex, I won't tell you about "rural." ( But I'm mostly right. Yes?) And , no, nothing askew about reading books, per se. But I really don't think Obama internalized the lessons of VN no matter *how* intellectually curious he was in the mid 80s. If he had lived *thru* those times, it seems likely our current foreign and domestically policy would both be infinitely less worrisome.

[The Philosopher]

17. Yes, I'm a (native) Texan.

And I'm surrounded by cows, horses and Republicans. I'm not close to any city to get any fresh air, either. So that's foreign to me.

I'm not sure I meant exploitation so much as and overwhelming of outsiders; like, what is a drop of water in an ocean sort of thing. I figure if there was any hardcore exploitation of the moment, they'd get their asses kicked. But there was something one commentator said about the people coming in that second night that made it seem like they were there to challenge the cops, not to defend the LGBTers.

I think that's right, that Obama hasn't internalized those lessons; more so, that he doesn't connect to it. It's like he's come to a decision that things can be done in such-and-such way, and that these other ways aren't needed; but he doesn't understand why, because of the human element or because of history, those other ways are really needed.

[closeupready]

12. I thought the Jewish lesbian's personal story was fascinating.

She didn't realize she was a lesbian until she kissed another girl. And then there was a lightbulb.

I also liked the way they pointed out that heterosexuals had (and still do, IMO) many, many different avenues and forums for sexual expression, whereas gay people were highly restricted in terms of their own expressions (and still are, IMO).

[Rowdyboy]

13. Brilliantly done! It left me awed at the courage...Only 5 years later I went to my 1st gay bar in

Jackson Mississippi-"Mae's Cabaret".

[FreeState]

18. This was amazing, one of the best I've seen n/t

[mahatmakanejeeves]

19. Transcript

Stonewall Uprising Transcript