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By Jesse Monteagudo
Savage's sex-advice column, "Savage Love", begun in an obscure Seattle weekly in 1991, now appears in 28 newspapers across the U.S.A. and Canada. Savage added to his popularity with a second, on-line column, "Ask Dan", and two best-selling books: Savage Love (1998), a collection of his best columns, and The Kid (1999), the story of Savage's successful attempt to adopt a baby. Like every good columnist, Savage has the ability to make his ordinary life seem extraordinary. Born in Chicago (1964), Savage grew up in a family he described as being "loud, argumentative, and very Catholic. . . . Of my parents four kids, I was the 'sensitive' one, and as sensitive boys were unwelcome at the neighborhood boys' reindeer games, I stayed close to home: in our apartment, on our back stoop, in my grandparents' apartment." Savage was working at a video store in Madison, Wisconsin when he met the prospective editor of The Stranger, the Seattle rag, who was looking for columns. Savage convinced the man to publish "a sex advice column for the '90s", one "written by a fag for breeders, about breeder sex". "It pisses straight people off when I mention this, but the simple fact that I'm gay - the blessing of my homosexuality--was all the preparation I needed to give sex advice", wrote Savage, a bit smugly. "Gay people know more about sex than straight people do, have more sex than straight people do, and are better at it than straight people are." The editor took Savage's advice, and hired Savage.
As an advice columnist and openly gay parent, Savage attracted a small but faithful band of followers (and some critics). What made Savage a household name was an article he wrote January 25 for the on-line magazine Salon.com. In "Stalking Gary Bauer", Savage writes about his successful infiltration of the Bauer campaign during the Iowa caucuses. Bauer has been a leader of the homophobic right since the early 1980's, when he was Ronald Reagan's domestic policy advisor. (Many activists blame Bauer for the Reagan Administration's cruel and neglectful handling of the AIDS epidemic.)
Savage had the flu, which only made him less tolerant of Bauer's bigotry. "In my Sudafed-induced delirium I decided that if it's terrorism Bauer wants, then it's terrorism Bauer is going to get - and I'm just the man to terrorize him. Naked, feverish and higher than a kite on codeine aspirin, I called the Bauer campaign and volunteered. My plan? Get close enough to Bauer to give him the flu, which, if I am successful, will lay him flat just before the New Hampshire primary. I would go to Bauer's campaign office and cough on everything - phones and pens, staplers and staffers. I even hatched a plan to infect the candidate himself. I would keep the pen in my mouth until Bauer dropped by his offices to rally the troops. And when he did, I would approach him and ask for his autograph, handing him the pen from my flu-virus incubating mouth." If Savage really wanted to influence the elections, he should have tried to give the flu to Texas Governor George W. Bush, but here I digress. According to Salon, Savage licked every doorknob, stapler, phone, computer keyboard and coffee cup in Bauer's Des Moines headquarters. He then got Bauer to sign a photograph of his son, using Savage's own pen. Savage followed his brief encounter with the candidate with a visit to the G.O.P. caucus, where he registered to vote in spite of the fact that he was not an Iowa resident. "In the five days I'd spent throwing up in my hotel room, and the two days I'd spent at the Bauer 2000 headquarters making phone calls and licking doorknobs, I'd fallen in love with Iowa. In fact, at the moment I was filling out that voter registration form, I could honestly say I would never want to leave Iowa. I'll send for the boyfriend and baby later in the week." Adding insult to injury, Savage proceeded to vote for Alan Keyes. Salon readers were outraged. Savage "accomplished something that I thought impossible: He's made Bauer a sympathetic figure", wrote one reader. "I'm sure all of your compassionate liberals are just snickering away at this cute little article. But I'm sure you would be OUTRAGED if some mean-spirited conservative used biological warfare against Al Gore or Mr. Charisma. BTW, Savage, you might have exceeded your own expectations - you might have infected them with AIDS as well. Have you had a blood draw recently?", wrote another.
Many gays objected to Savage's article and its impact, as if Savage could single-handedly
destroy the movement. "If instead of deep-throating an inkpen, a sniffling Savage had
kissed Bauer full on the lips on national TV--he'd be getting a ticker tape parade down the Castro",
noted the editor of the gay Web site, datalounge.com.
As it turned out, Loras Schulte, Bauer's Iowa campaign manager, got the flu (from a doorknob?) and was understandably upset. Schulte threatened to sue both Savage and Salon and to press criminal charges of assault and voter fraud against Savage. Voter fraud in Iowa, by the way, is a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment. Salon defended the article. "It was savage (no pun intended), powerful writing, Swiftian in its desperate, satiric outrage at anti-gay discrimination. . . . We still believe publishing the article was the right choice, but we also feel compelled to say: We didn't assign Savage to infect Bauer. We don't condone or endorse what he says he did." Savage himself responded to all the ruckus by admitting to the Des Moines Register that his campaign to infect Bauer was a "joke" and a "satire". "At that stage of the campaign, Bauer had probably been exposed to everything - shaking hands with thousands of people and picking up babies . . . He was probably more of a threat to me", he added. Responding to possible action against him, Savage hoped "that Iowa has better things to do than prosecute me." Though Savage's "plot" to infect Bauer was within the bounds of satiric license, he went too far when he voted in the Iowa caucus, thus breaking the law. Still, I think gays should know better than to take Savage seriously. (Bauer's people don't know better.) Savage is just a sex columnist, for crying out loud, and those who think Savage is a lavender David Broder gone wrong only gives Savage more credit and influence than he deserves or has. As any fag in Seattle could tell you, Savage is a controversial figure, even in his own community, and many gays would be just as happy if Savage would fade and go away. I hope he doesn't, if only because I enjoy his biting wit and clever take on gay and straight politics, lifestyles and sex. But please, Dan, stay out of Iowa |
Dan Savage 
Gary Bauer was the target of Savage's germ-warfare political campaign 
© 1997-2000 BEI