Wow

I'm on record as being very dismissive of Larry Kramer, but wow!

Kramer makes a number of excellent points in this interview with Alisa Solomon in the current Village Voice. More importantly, he is the first gay person anywhere near the mainstream press to strike anything like the right tone about the recent debacle.

I even admire, while I disagree with, his refusal to follow Solomon's invitation into mouthing hollow solemnities about coalition politics. Kramer tells Solomon at one point "But when it comes right down to it, it's about power, and power is money. Money buys you the power, and power gets you the rights. The hope is that will include poor people. You've got to keep your eye on the prize."

Haphazardly, Kramer here alludes to the very example -- civil rights -- that refutes his syllogism that money=>power=>rights. And one that put poor people first. But what I admire about Kramer's honesty is that, at this point, we really need to lay all our cards on the table and let each other know where we stand, because part of the current tragedy is that we have let ourselves be swayed by "the going thing" as long as we kinda supported it, because it was the lesser of two evils, etc. I think now is the time to really figure out what, if any, our actual principles are.