Why are some critics surprised that President Trump wants to honor Gloria Gaynor?
Chris Vognar of the Boston Globe writes that he was surprised that the first crop of Kennedy Center honorees in Donald Trump’s second term includes Gloria Gaynor:
But the name that jumped out at me was Gloria Gaynor. In a sense, Gaynor passes the theocratic MAGA litmus test. As a born-again Christian, she has said she wants to lead her sizable LGBTQ fan base to Christ. She generally refuses to say if she thinks homosexuality is a sin. She dances a fine line.
Gaynor is best known for her 1978 megahit “I Will Survive,” which became an anthem for those dancing the night away in New York discos during the ’70s. Disco itself remains widely misunderstood. It wasn’t about “Saturday Night Fever.” It was an after-hours scene of cultural and social tolerance, where everybody — Black, white, Latino, gay, straight — was welcome as long as they liked to dance (and, at some of the harder doors, as long as they were dressed well enough). Disco was multi-ethnic, pansexual, and progressive in nature. This, as much as anything, helps explain the white working-class backlash that reached its apotheosis with Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.
Vognar is surprised that a performer best known for an allegedly gay anthem is being honored by Trump, who said yesterday, “I would say I was about 98 percent involved. They all went through me.”
Apparently, Vognar never noticed the current Secretary of the Treasury, or the presidential envoy for special missions, or the current State Department spokesperson, or the current undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, or the current nominee to be ambassador to Belgium and Austria.
Donald Trump has all kinds of flaws, but there’s little sign he has any problem with gays or lesbians or animus against them. He had an infamous mentorship with Roy Cohn, dramatized by the film The Apprentice.
Way back in 2000, Trump told The Advocate:
I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It would be simple. It would be straightforward. We don’t need to rewrite the laws currently on the books, although I do think we need to address hate-crimes legislation. But amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans — it’s only fair.
He celebrated Elton John’s wedding, way back in 2005, seven years before Barack Obama announced he supported gay marriage. Back in 2011, he told The 700 Club, “First of all, I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people. And to be honest with you, as far as civil unions are concerned, I haven’t totally formed my opinion. But there can be no discrimination against gays.”
Donald Trump does not evaluate people and draw opinions about them based upon whether they are gay or straight. He evaluates people and draws opinions about them based upon whether they say nice things about him, which involves its own flaws. But Trump is a thoroughly non-discriminatory narcissist and egomaniac.
The president honoring the performer of a song beloved by the gay community is just about the least surprising development of his second term so far. The fact that some people are befuddled by it says something about progressive misperceptions about Trump, and how they feel he must be “bad” in every possible way in their worldview.