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 Text of Activist's Letter to Editor David Remnick Publication's Treatment of AIDS Crisis Said Poor |
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Compiled By GayToday
New York, New York—Famed activist Larry Kramer has released an
open letter he has sent to Mr. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, criticizing
that prestigious publication's treatment of gay and lesbian issues.
Kramer, who criticized Time magazine following its failure to include the liberation of same-sex love in its issue about important events of the 20th century is adjudged by Rex Wockner, GayToday's syndicated International News reporter, as having successfully moved Time's editor into action. In the wake of a previous Kramer criticism Time has since chosen San Francisco's assassinated gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk, as a 20th century hero. Wockner, in his San Diego Sidewalk column says: "From where I sit, it looks like Larry's message was received (at Time) and amends were made." The text of Kramer's open letter to the New Yorker's editor is as follows: Dear Mr. Remnick,
We don't live there. We don't live there as we live in the city that gives your magazine its name. We never have. From the days of Harold Ross and William Shawn, when to even submit a gay-themed story to an editor resulted in a response of "You must be crazy," to the days of Bob Gottlieb, whose heart at least was in the right place if not his follow-through (there was not one single story or article about AIDS in The New Yorker during his entire tenure: indeed your magazine continues to hold the record, shared with The National Geographic, of writing about AIDS the least of any major national publication), gays and lesbians are people who do not exist for The New Yorker. Surely you are a person who feels a sense of responsibility. An editor is responsible for representing the world as it is composed. Even should you be a bit remiss in this area, as a businessman you must know, do you not, that among your subscribers are a great many gay and lesbians who, like me, truly resent this ostracism? How can you put out an issue of twenty short stories without the inclusion of one single out gay and lesbian author? (I understand that one of the women included is a closeted lesbian, and one could never identify her from her story.) I might just as well ask how can you as a presumably responsible editor put out a magazine that, issue after issue, does not contain any gay anything? Cartoons? Cover artists? Talk of the Town Comment? Indeed I will also ask how can you as a responsible editor, have allowed that hideously homophobic review by John Updike of a perfectly harmless gay novel by one of our leading gay authors, to see the light of print in your pages several weeks ago? And where are those editors you employ who are gay? Have they been so brainwashed that they cannot fight for equal rights? I might point out that of all the short stories that do appear in this issue, the only references to anything gay are negative ones. Two stories climax, if I may use that word in both contexts, with presumably straight protagonists being homosexually… abused? attacked? raped? overcome?—I am uncertain which verb applies to these peculiarly motivated tales. Once again, as with Mr. Updike's slipping through the keyhole, one wonders whether the editorial… vision? supervision? responsibility?—again the precise word for a peculiarly aberrant lack eludes me—even exists, just as one wonders when it will, so to speak, straighten itself out. I close by asking you to put yourself in our shoes. How would you like to read a magazine in which you were not allowed in any way to appear? Larry Kramer Action Alert: Larry Kramer encourages all who agree with him to write to Remnick. His FAX is 212-536-5735 |
