Dana International incident

Dana International, who won Eurovision a while ago (don't look up when, you'll only feel old) has created something of a storm in Israel with her new video.

It's for her song in support of this year's Gay Pride, and judging by the summary, I suspect International was hoping to make some sort of stir with the work:

The video, which was produced by Tel Aviv Municipality, features real Hassidic kids in a bar mitzvah service of International’s supposed son, Raam International. The service goes bad as too many celebratory candies thrown at Raam wound him and draw blood.

However, it's not the content, but the participants, which has caused the kick-off:

According to Ynet, the parents of the kids who participated in the video were invited this week to their children’s religious school for a reprimand about having their kids participate in a Dana International video clip. The parents claimed that they were invited by Tel Aviv Municipality to participate in the video, and it was presented to them as a clip that represents Jewish values, and especially Bar Mitzvah. The parents claimed that they had no idea that it’s a clip for Gay Pride.

The International camp's response is to shrug and say 'well, yes, tolerance and respect is what the Torah's all about, surely?' which manages to be right without actually dirtying hands on the question of if everyone involved knew exactly what they'd signed up to. Because - even if the parents are homophobes, or transphobes, or hate Eurovision - respect also involves being upfront with people. Surely?

Brighton Pride loses Burke as cops lose their temper

Alexandra Burke was supposed to play Brighton Pride yesterday; however, she didn't show up, issuing a statement instead:

“Brighton Pride, I am so sorry to disappoint. I'm really disappointed too. I wasn't taking a fee for the gig.

"I really wanted to perform for you all, however the promoter did not meet the production or technical requirements needed to make the show work.

“It was sadly out of my hands.”

Pride organisers issued a pithy statement which basically said 'nobody else seemed to have a problem making their show work':

“Pride Brighton & Hove would like to thank Fatboy Slim, the Freemasons and all of the performers who waived their fees to perform at Preston Park for their support of Pride Brighton & Hove 2012 and the LGBT community at large.”

The Argus is convinced that Pride goers would have been disappointed, but with the heavy-handed tactics which saw Sussex Police kettling Pride marchers, they might have had other things on their minds.

Gordon in the morning: George Micheal pops into Snappy Snaps

Back - I'm afraid - to Cheryl Cole's sick bed this morning, as Gordon reveals that when he told us yesterday she was suffering from exhaustion-oh-no-it's-gastroenteritis he actually meant to say malaria.

Which, just in case you don't know:

in extreme cases can KILL

Is that right, Sun doctor Carol Cooper?

MALARIA can kill

Blimey.

but Cheryl looks to be lucky. There are four forms of the bug, and in Tanzania, where she picked it up, the milder ones are most common.

I'm not sure I have any faith in a doctor who calls malaria "a bug".

What can you add to the story, Gordon?

Sources also revealed Cheryl - whose spokesman confirmed she has malaria - had secretly battled painful stomach cramps while filming the ITV talent show.

But I'd imagine that's normal for anyone working on the X Factor, the way miners used to have scabs down their spines.

In other news, George Michael has had another car crash. Jess Rogers has the details:

GEORGE MICHAEL has been arrested after his car crashed into a SHOP on the night of a gay festival, The Sun can reveal.

The troubled singer, 47, was held on suspicion of being unfit to drive after he lost control of his Range Rover and it smashed into a Snappy Snaps.

I'm not entirely sure why it happening on the night of Pride is in any way relevant, but Jess seems convinced it is:

The singer - who only last year ended a two-year ban for drug driving - was held at 3.35am on Sunday after London's Gay Pride parade.

It's almost as if Rogers is trying to suggest there's some causal link between celebrating homosexuality and not being able to drive a car, or perhaps just that simply being gay is liable to make you incapable of steering. I'm sure that wasn't the intention, though.

Breaking: Police break up gay pride march

The BBC is reporting that the Moscow police have broken up the Gay Pride march ahead of tonight's Eurovision.

Earlier in the week, the Dutch entry had threatened to pull out if this happened - it'll be interesting to see if they stick to their promise, and if anyone follows them.

Eurovision: Gays go home

If you don't want your city to be visited by large numbers of gay men, Muscovites, it's probably not a good idea to host the Eurovision Song Contest.

Eurovision is being used as a focus for a day of gay rights activity in the capital - you'll recall the last major music-related gay rights event in Moscow didn't end well - and the Russian bigots are out in force:

Just across the road from a statue of Pushkin, a handful of demonstrators have put up a modest sign. It reads simply: "Moscow is not Sodom." As a cold wind whips through the Russian capital's Pushkinskaya square, activists hand out leaflets showing two men kissing, crossed out in angry red ink with the slogan: "Say no to spiritual terrorism."

Ah, it does say much about the family of man that Russian homophobic right-wing nutjobs are almost indistinguishable from American homophobic right-wing nutjobs. Under the skin, we're all the same. Apart from homosexuals, of course, who are different and wrong.

The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, is proudly homophobic, but is faced with damage to the city's expensive investment in Eurovision if he stops the planned pride march - the Dutch have already said they won't sing if the march doesn't go ahead, and given they're one of the better entrants for the contest, an awkward, attention-drawing gap on the Saturday evening television across Europe might be a little too much attention.

On the other hand, maybe the mayor wouldn't want to ban the march, given that the likely painful results don't seem to be anything he worries much about:

Few are optimistic the rally will go off without trouble. "Groups of fanatics and extremists will be roaming the streets in the centre of Moscow looking for people to beat up," Nikolai Alekseev, the organiser of the Slavic Pride rally, told the Guardian. "Nobody will care. Moscow police will do nothing to protect them." Asked whether gay British fans should avoid travelling to Moscow this Saturday, he warned: "Everybody has to make their own choice. But they won't be safe."

Well, that's cheery then. The thought of gay people being beaten up by police is quite grisly, and the Guardian is quick to put it into some sort of context:

Nonetheless, there is now a distinct possibility that Russian nationalists and neo-Nazis will once again beat up gay demonstrators – as well as visiting Eurovision fans – in what would be a severe blow to Russia's international reputation and to Eurovision, already reeling from eastern European bloc voting scandals.

Yes, it's almost as bad having a secret policeman crack your skull open because you love other men as it for Terry Wogan to have to watch Bulgaria and Romania awarding each other twelve points each.

Rufus Wainwright lines up on Elton's side

Et tu, Rufus? Wainwright has attempted an explanation of why he isn't interested in helping the pro-Gay marriage campaign:

"Oddly enough, I'm actually not a huge gay marriage supporter. I personally don't want to get married but I think that any law or amendment to the constitution that deals with sex and love should just be banned in general."

So you personally don't want to get married, Rufus, so there's no need to support the rights of those who do. You don't think that, perhaps, many of the freedoms we enjoy have been fought for by people who are not personally going to benefit from the victory, but do it because it's right?

It gets worse, though:

"I don't think any government should encroach on what goes on in the bedroom at all. Frankly, if you want to marry a dog, why don't you go ahead and marry a dog, I don't care. I'm a complete libertarian and so I really disagree with it".

This is a gay man, lazily comparing gay marriage - which is about the state valuing a relationship, and one of the few times the government has to encroach on affairs of the heart - with marrying a dog. Although, confusingly, Rufus seems to think that marrying a dog is fine, but marrying someone of the same sex is a right you shouldn't even need to have. And if he is a "complete libertatian", then shouldn't he be campaigning for those beliefs, rather than just doing nothing and trying to claim that his apathy is somehow noble?

John Lydon burns the last of his bridges, fills river with petrol, sets it aflame

There are many who find it hard to believe that John Lydon could have been involved in a racist scuffle the other week, and who will be looking to their hero to prove that he's not the sort of tiresome old twit who attempts to defend unpleasant reactionary attitudes by pretending he's just so refreshingly anti-PC.

He's had his chance, in an interview with the Daily Record.

He starts off having a go at Pete Doherty for being a "coward":

"Doherty's got trapped in a publicity campaign that has run out of order.

"Another fool who is given a golden opportunity to do something wonderful in his life and he'd rather be selfish and cowardly. Drugs are the modus operandi of the coward.

"Pete is a fine lad that needs to sort himself out. This is Mister Rotten telling you I waltz on stage sober because no drug in the world is as good as being absolutely 100 percent honest with your audience. Nothing compares to that emotion. People like him and Amy Winehouse are getting it wrong as usual."

Given that the Sex Pistols' fame is built, to a large degree, on Sid Vicious and his heroin habit, while Lydon might have a point, you could perhaps fill a couple of sides of an ethics class exam asking if it's more cowardly to be addicted to drugs, or to allow your band to carry on exploiting someone addicted to drugs until they die.

Still, a bit of low-grade hypocrisy is only to be expected. Lydon seems to blame Sid's death all on the record company and the stress they put the band through - although didn't Johnny brag to the Star the other week about how he'd never danced to a record label's promotional schedule? - and says that he still misses Sid, so that's alright then.

However, having had his thoughts turn to Winehouse, he decides he's got more to say:

"Poor old Amy. Aimless Winehouse would be a better term."

Aimless Winehouse! Oh, how amusing.

"I love all kinds of music but the one thing I have never done is imitate black music in her idiotic way."

Excuse me?

"I don't like pale imitations and shades of things and I am always wary when people go jazzy because jazz is the best cover up for a lack of talent the world has ever known. It don't wash real with me.

"And the cover up for her which is probably the guilt trip is that she requires vast amounts of drugs to hide the fact that she is fake."

There's just so many reasons why he's wrong, but let's just take the implicit suggestion that white people shouldn't play jazz, and the explicit statement that jazz (which Lydon identifies as a solely black form of music) is "a cover for a lack of talent." Ghettoising and damning an entire genre just to stack up a weak pun based on Amy Winehouse's name.

As if there was any point, he then goes to have a pop at gays as well:

I felt the same way playing at the Isle Of Wight. It is orchestrated deck chair seating and gay rainbow flag waving. It's very, very absurd.

Lydon doesn't explain - and the Record doesn't seem bothered to ask - why waving a gay flag is in some way absurd, or, indeed, if the freedom to wave a flag that reflects your sexuality wasn't meant to be one of things that punk was supposed to have been about in the first place. Lydon doesn't explain if he's uncomfortable with having gays in his audience (although we bet he'd respond that he's got several good-ish gay friends), or merely he thinks that gay pride in itself is absurd. To be honest, I don't much care. I can't wait until the US economy stabilises and he can go back to selling flats to the retirement market or whatever his day job is meant to be.

History is in the hands of the revisions

Victoria Newton is doing well this morning - unlike a lot of journalists, she's not fallen for the 'Shar Jackson pregnant with Kevin Federline's baby' story. In a report datelined June 14th, Newton reports the denials:

KEVIN FEDERLINE'S ex SHAR JACKSON has laughed off claims that she is having his fifth child.

Reports in the States suggested that BRITNEY SPEARS’ estranged husband was having a baby with Shar, already mum to two of his kids.

But today she joked: "I didn't know I was pregnant until this morning when I watched it on the news.

"I want to thank the news for telling me what's going on in my uterus.

"It's not true unfortunately."

This might come as a surprise to, erm, Victoria Newton's readers, who the day before had been told that Jackson was pregnant with Federline's baby. How can Newton explain this positively quantum pregnancy?

She doesn't need to - the paper has simply replaced the original 'she's pregnant' story with the current 'she's not pregnant' one
All that remains of the original story is a Google News search result, pointing now to a story which says the opposite of what it said twenty-foru hours before.

There's an interesting BBC Editor's Blog entry on the problems of this sort of tidying up of history, by the way.

Still, this isn't the worst thing in the The Sun this morning. Instead, that honour goes to one of the papers' unfunny Photoshop mock-ups. By way of illustration of a story that the Doctor Who finale will be shown at Gay Pride, they run a 'gay Dalek' picture.
We say 'gay dalek', what we meant was some lazy homophobia.

Just for the benefit of any Sun illustrators who might be around, and who seem to get their impression of gay men from 1970s sitcoms:

Being gay doesn't mean you like pink
Being gay doesn't mean you're going to dress like a leatherman
Being gay doesn't mean you have a limp wrist
Being gay doesn't mean you're effeminate
Being gay isn't a punchline in itself.