The Columnist: Joseph Alsop's Fabulous Gay Life As A 'House Faggot'
The Voice's Michael Feingold already reviewed The Columnist, in which John Lithgow brilliantly portrays columnist Joseph Alsop in David Auburn's new play on Broadway. But, we wanted to share a few thoughts about our experience watching it this weekend, in light of other things we've been writing about lately.
By chance and choice, we've been taking a bit of a wander through gay American history recently. After writing about How To Survive A Plague this week, David France's documentary about the heyday of ACT UP mostly made of home video footage, it was fascinating to watch The Columnist, a completely different, Broadway exploration of a very dissimilar kind of gay life. Both represent gay American history, though from extremely different points of view.
We also couldn't help but think of Dan Savage's recent label of the gay Republican group GOProud as a bunch of "house faggots" when we were watching The Columnist. You don't get much more closeted than Joseph Alsop, and you certainly don't get any closer to the Big House (and, in his case, the White House) than that homosexual did.
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