On the Rag, Vol. 928

This week's rag 'n' mag roundup features Joey Pollari, Michael Johnston, Tom Hopper, Bruce LaBruce, Nicholas Hoult, Anthony Ippolito, Andrew Garfield and more BELOW.

Remains of the Day (10/07)

Dan Callahan: Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-winning star of "On the Waterfront" and "North by Northwest," dies at 102

Gr8er Days: Every one of Alfred Hitchcock’s still-living leading ladies

The Hat: As the midterms approach, off-Broadway tackles democracy, authoritarianism and resistance while larger theaters shy away from political risks

W42ST: Michael Musto shares his picks from the New York Film Festival, from must-see movies to the films that left him cold

Wrestle Wednesday: VPL in yellow

NYT: Long Island congressional candidate Chris Gallant is making the most of an unexpected tabloid reveal -- bondage photos from his past

Advocate: Samuel Alito blames marriage equality for America’s "decisive" turn "against religious liberty"

Attitude: Alfie Watts, winner of the British reality show "Race Across the World," comes out as bisexual, just like me in 1987(!)

BBC: Three arrested in a crackdown on a suspected criminal network accused of helping Bangladeshi migrants pretend to be gay to win asylum in Britain

PinkNews: Nyle DiMarco joins "All's Fair" for season two in a recurring role originally written for a hearing actor

Creepy Catalog: The story behind the haunting opening credits of "Rosemary's Baby"

HuffPost: Andrew Scott looks poised for an Oscar nomination thanks to his chilling performance in "Elsinore"

Out: Why Chris Colfer says a "Glee" reboot would be really hard to do

Greg in Hollywood: Van Hansis marks two years as Lucas Jones on "General Hospital," a role that turned a short-term gig into a life-changing move to Los Angeles 

RIP: Looking back at the life and career of soap stud Robert Kelker-Kelly, who starred on "Days of Our Lives" and "Another World" before leaving Hollywood behind

Hot Cat of the Day: A change of seasons

RIP: Remembering Michael Kearns, the fearless gay actor, performance artist and AIDS activist who came out when it was career suicide and later became one of the first actors to publicly disclose he was HIV-positive

Messy Debra: Bleeding-heart liberal Debra Messing pulls a Roseanne Barr. 

Someone really needs to conduct research on how a single topic can overtake a person's entire life and personality, which also makes me think of Messing's counterparts on the other side -- I'm looking at you, #FreePalestine loons -- who act as though the story began in 1948. You can condemn the suffering and displacement of Palestinians without acting as though Israel was created in a vacuum. Its founding came after centuries of antisemitic persecution, expulsions and pogroms across Europe and elsewhere, culminating in the Holocaust, when six million Jews were murdered and much of the world had proved unwilling to protect them -- or even, in many cases, to give those fleeing persecution somewhere to go. 

None of that erases what happened to Palestinians -- or what is happening to them now. But neither does Palestinian suffering erase the history that made the idea of a Jewish homeland seem not merely desirable to many Jews, but a matter of survival. Chanting "from the river to the sea" isn't the uncomplicated call for liberation some people seem to pretend it is: no matter what the speaker intends by it, many hear a demand for a future in which the Jewish state no longer exists.

(And if Egypt and Jordan controlled Gaza and the West Bank for nearly two decades before Israel captured them in the 1967 Six-Day War, which followed escalating threats to Israel's security, why didn't they establish an independent Palestinian state when they had the chance? The horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, certainly demonstrated that Israel's security concerns haven't disappeared.)

My husband made a good analogy at dinner the other night: the Crusades are now largely remembered as a bunch of fanatical Christians invading Muslim lands and slaughtering people in the name of religion. And plenty of that happened. It's a version of history that also fits rather neatly with the kiddies' fondness for bashing "Christians" writ large. But the Crusades didn't spring from nowhere, either. They came after centuries of conflict between Christian and Muslim powers, including often-violent Muslim conquests of formerly Christian lands, and were sparked in part by a Christian emperor's plea for help after Turkish forces seized much of his empire's territory. None of that excuses the slaughter and brutality of the Crusades. Still, starting the clock at 1095 strips away everything that led to 1095 -- just as starting the Israeli-Palestinian story in 1948 strips away everything that led to 1948.

The point being that once you become so consumed by a cause that you can no longer see its history, complexity or the humanity of the people on the other side, you've lost all perspective -- and that's what troubles me about people like Messing and every Queer for Palestine on my social media feeds, who post about nothing else. Are we sure this isn't a mental illness? 

Wait till I start basing my entire life around the reunification of Ireland!

#My9Albums

 

The instructions say: "Pick the 9 albums that made you. Search more than two million albums, put your nine in order, and share the poster," and so I did. Obviously, it's impossible to narrow it down to nine -- the first five Blondie albums all deserve to be on here -- and it was only after I'd finished that I realized I'd completely forgotten about "Beauty and the Beat" by the Go-Go's, although I don't see where I'd swap it in. But like most time-wasting social-media trends, it's fun. Tell me yours in the comments -- or make and share your own HERE.

Weekend Tennis Roundup

Titles for Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz. Full report plus all the ATP beef that's fit to post BELOW.

Purrfectly Served

 

Tennis Tuesday

 

ScottRileyXX swears he knows "SO much" about the sport. Judge for yourself BELOW.