S
Sup H
Guest
May 15th, 2008
Three Dollar Bill
Happy birthday, Hour!
Richard Burnett
[email protected]
You may think I'm loony tunes but I'm convinced Bugs Bunny is a big ol' fag," I wrote right here back in July 1997.
After Hour's current editor-in-chief Jamie O'Meara cracked in the newsroom that my byline should be "by Bugs Buggery Burnett," Hour's then-news editor Lyle Stewart slugged exactly that on the cover.
My nickname Bugs has stuck ever since (not to mention my life is a veritable cartoon).
But before I joined Hour in 1995, the paper already had a gay-beat journalist, and when she moved to B.C., that beat became mine.
Then, in the proud advocacy-journalism tradition of alt-weeklies across North America, Hour began to push hard for gay civil rights in stories about HIV/AIDS, workplace discrimination, same-sex marriage and gay bashing. Hour even wrote up non-PC stories about domestic violence and racism within the gay community, topics no one else - not even the gay press - wanted to deal with. Hour also stood by me when I tackled yet another sacred cow, publicly coming out in these pages against gay men donating blood.
Back in the mid-'90s Montreal's gay community was also still fractured along linguistic and gender lines.
But we've come a long way, baby, and in the process I've been taken to the Quebec Press Council more times than any other reporter at Hour (I won all but one of the complaints against me, and I took four of five points in the one case I "lost").
Among the gay stories we've run, there was the time I outed former Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair 1997 when he was a 31-year-old minister responsible for the Quebec Human Rights Commission.
We did so - after discussing the ethics of outing at an editorial meeting - because Boisclair reneged on his promise to give $20,000 to Montreal's cash-strapped anti-gay-bashing support group Dire enfin la violence. Boisclair can't stand me to this day.
There was also Hour's regular coverage of the string of anti-gay murders in Montreal in the mid-'90s, not to mention gay bashings throughout the city, estimated by the now-defunct Dire enfin la violence at an average of two per week.
Hour also launched Montreal's first-ever Divers/Cité Gay Pride issue on July 27, 1996. That was also the issue that launched this column, as well as many other gay writers and - to make a bigger splash - I suggested the paper also run a big Gay Pride supplement.
Sales and marketing loved the idea so much they signed on as Divers/Cité's first-ever media sponsor, and Hour modelled its Pride issue on the Village Voice which launched its own annual Pride issue back in 1978.
Coincidentally, in Montreal's post-gay world, Divers/Cité dropped its parade and became strictly an arts and entertainment festival in 2007. As Divers/Cité co-founder Suzanne Girard once told me, "Pride organizations must redefine themselves or become obsolete."
The same can be said about covering gay issues in newspapers.
Today, readers can now find coverage and analysis of gay issues and interviews with gay celebrities and newsmakers every single week in Hour, the only mainstream or alternative weekly in Canada to do so in every single issue. Not to mention Three Dollar Bill is now the only gay column in the entire country.
Hour has stood proudly by the gay community over the years and taken quite a few hits for the community too, notably when Hour put anti-gay dancehall don Sizzla on the cover in August 2004.
"We won't tolerate homosexuals, we won't tolerate lesbians," Sizzla told Hour. "It is wrong! Wherever I go it is the same thing - burn sodomite, burn battyman!"
That cover story made national newscasts and international headlines. Lawyers were consulted when Montreal's Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations unsuccessfully tried to stop Sizzla for breaching Canada's hate-crimes legislation.
I was then vilified in the op-ed pages of The Gleaner, Jamaica's national newspaper of record, and Sizzla hated me so much he wrote the 2005 chart-topping hit song Nah Apologize in which the gruff-voiced toaster repeats over and over in the chorus, "Rastaman nah apologize to no batty bwoy!"
Then, in a story Hour broke earlier this month, activists have now convinced Canadian music retailers Archambault and Apple's iTunes to remove some anti-gay dancehall songs from their catalogues.
And on May 25 I'll be taking part in the Sound of Hate workshop - "where sexual orientation, race, dancehall music and human rights collide" - at Ethnoculture's second annual queer Catharsis conference at UQAM (Pavillon Sherbrooke, 200 Sherbrooke W.). Admission is free. Check out the program at www.ethnoculture.org/03_ENG_Cath01.html.
Over 15 years these are just some of the issues that Hour's advocacy journalism has put on the front burner.
And for helping change the face of this nation, I can only say, "Thank you, Hour, and happy birthday!"
Three Dollar Bill
Happy birthday, Hour!
Richard Burnett
[email protected]
You may think I'm loony tunes but I'm convinced Bugs Bunny is a big ol' fag," I wrote right here back in July 1997.
After Hour's current editor-in-chief Jamie O'Meara cracked in the newsroom that my byline should be "by Bugs Buggery Burnett," Hour's then-news editor Lyle Stewart slugged exactly that on the cover.
My nickname Bugs has stuck ever since (not to mention my life is a veritable cartoon).
But before I joined Hour in 1995, the paper already had a gay-beat journalist, and when she moved to B.C., that beat became mine.
Then, in the proud advocacy-journalism tradition of alt-weeklies across North America, Hour began to push hard for gay civil rights in stories about HIV/AIDS, workplace discrimination, same-sex marriage and gay bashing. Hour even wrote up non-PC stories about domestic violence and racism within the gay community, topics no one else - not even the gay press - wanted to deal with. Hour also stood by me when I tackled yet another sacred cow, publicly coming out in these pages against gay men donating blood.
Back in the mid-'90s Montreal's gay community was also still fractured along linguistic and gender lines.
But we've come a long way, baby, and in the process I've been taken to the Quebec Press Council more times than any other reporter at Hour (I won all but one of the complaints against me, and I took four of five points in the one case I "lost").
Among the gay stories we've run, there was the time I outed former Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair 1997 when he was a 31-year-old minister responsible for the Quebec Human Rights Commission.
We did so - after discussing the ethics of outing at an editorial meeting - because Boisclair reneged on his promise to give $20,000 to Montreal's cash-strapped anti-gay-bashing support group Dire enfin la violence. Boisclair can't stand me to this day.
There was also Hour's regular coverage of the string of anti-gay murders in Montreal in the mid-'90s, not to mention gay bashings throughout the city, estimated by the now-defunct Dire enfin la violence at an average of two per week.
Hour also launched Montreal's first-ever Divers/Cité Gay Pride issue on July 27, 1996. That was also the issue that launched this column, as well as many other gay writers and - to make a bigger splash - I suggested the paper also run a big Gay Pride supplement.
Sales and marketing loved the idea so much they signed on as Divers/Cité's first-ever media sponsor, and Hour modelled its Pride issue on the Village Voice which launched its own annual Pride issue back in 1978.
Coincidentally, in Montreal's post-gay world, Divers/Cité dropped its parade and became strictly an arts and entertainment festival in 2007. As Divers/Cité co-founder Suzanne Girard once told me, "Pride organizations must redefine themselves or become obsolete."
The same can be said about covering gay issues in newspapers.
Today, readers can now find coverage and analysis of gay issues and interviews with gay celebrities and newsmakers every single week in Hour, the only mainstream or alternative weekly in Canada to do so in every single issue. Not to mention Three Dollar Bill is now the only gay column in the entire country.
Hour has stood proudly by the gay community over the years and taken quite a few hits for the community too, notably when Hour put anti-gay dancehall don Sizzla on the cover in August 2004.
"We won't tolerate homosexuals, we won't tolerate lesbians," Sizzla told Hour. "It is wrong! Wherever I go it is the same thing - burn sodomite, burn battyman!"
That cover story made national newscasts and international headlines. Lawyers were consulted when Montreal's Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations unsuccessfully tried to stop Sizzla for breaching Canada's hate-crimes legislation.
I was then vilified in the op-ed pages of The Gleaner, Jamaica's national newspaper of record, and Sizzla hated me so much he wrote the 2005 chart-topping hit song Nah Apologize in which the gruff-voiced toaster repeats over and over in the chorus, "Rastaman nah apologize to no batty bwoy!"
Then, in a story Hour broke earlier this month, activists have now convinced Canadian music retailers Archambault and Apple's iTunes to remove some anti-gay dancehall songs from their catalogues.
And on May 25 I'll be taking part in the Sound of Hate workshop - "where sexual orientation, race, dancehall music and human rights collide" - at Ethnoculture's second annual queer Catharsis conference at UQAM (Pavillon Sherbrooke, 200 Sherbrooke W.). Admission is free. Check out the program at www.ethnoculture.org/03_ENG_Cath01.html.
Over 15 years these are just some of the issues that Hour's advocacy journalism has put on the front burner.
And for helping change the face of this nation, I can only say, "Thank you, Hour, and happy birthday!"