The AP wire service was recently dropped by some papers because they can't afford it anymore, the stories are already posted on the AP site, and besides, they obviously leave shit out! As my friend, the gay watchdog Rex Wockner, points out, the AP obit for acerbic fashion critic Mr. Blackwell curiously omitted the fact that he was gay and had a partner for 60 whole years! Yes, the Mr. was a total Miss Thing! Maybe they thought it was so obvious that a man who would say Madonna is "the bare-bottomed bore of Babylon" simply had to be a queen. Yeah, it IS obvious--so why not just say it? Are we back to the dark ages where Liberace was simply flamboyant and Rock Hudson was just a well groomed divorcee?

Lord knows the article's photo caption points out that Blackwell once kissed a well-dressed dog. Why not go a step further and say the man did all kinds of things with actual menfolk? Interestingly, the obit notes that Blackwell was a "prostitute" at one point, but it won't go near the g-word or the partner thing. I bet if he were alive, Blackwell would curl his lip and snarl that AP is "an over the hill Cruella DeVille." After all, that's what he called Sharon Stone.