1305
(2 votes, average 5.00 out of 5)
Written by Jamakaya
Aug 11, 2010
I wrote for the Wisconsin Light from 1988 to 1995. The Light covered many important LGBT stories but was infamous for its typographical errors. I used to get angry by the lack of quality control. Now it’s good for a few laughs.
One of my favorite typos was the headline to a story about a gay editor fired by his newspaper for “outing” a closeted politician. The headline read: “Editor Fried for Outing.”
I wrote a column once about a TV broadcast of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that was so severely edited that the story of George Bailey’s life made no sense at all. I attached what I thought was a clever headline: “I Don’t Think We’re in Bedford Falls Anymore, Zuzu.”
For once, to my dismay, the Light actually used whatever passed for a spell checker in those days. It “corrected” the headline to read: “I Don’t Think We’re in Bedford Falls Anymore, Zulu.”
True to form, in its final issue in 2000, the Light paid tribute to Hilary Swank for “his” Best Actress Oscar!
I covered many hate crimes over the years, which was difficult and depressing, so I enjoyed a case where the victims fought back.
One night in May 1993, patrons stood outside the club La Cage on South Second Street in Milwaukee. Miss Goldie Adams approached a car to see who was yelling, “Hey, baby!” When the driver and his buddy realized they were beckoning drag queens, they shouted slurs, stopped the car and attacked them.
The bashers got a few slugs in before Goldie and her “sisters” gave the bigots a taste of their own medicine. The girls, in full drag, scratched the would-be bashers with their rings and pummeled them with their high heels. The brawl stopped traffic. When cops arrived, the thugs were arrested for battery and one had to be treated at a hospital.
“I don’t like violence at all,” Miss Goldie told me. “But I wasn’t born a punching bag. I have the right to defend myself and my friends. I wasn’t gonna stand there and be a victim like that, and I wouldn’t let that happen to anybody.”
One of the most bizarre things that ever happened to me was being mistaken for the wife of a national conservative leader.
I attended the Wisconsin Conservative Leadership Conference for several years to report on what our homegrown right-wingers were up to. It wasn’t exactly undercover work, because it was a public event and I registered under my own name. But given my radical politics and my mission, I was extremely self-conscious the whole time I was there. I was sure I stood out among the wealthy suburban matrons like the proverbial bull dyke in a china shop.
During lunch, I wanted to get a good seat for the keynote speaker, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. In classic Mr. Magoo fashion, I inadvertently seated myself at the table where Keene and other conference leaders were to eat.
My bigwig tablemates were polite but I have blocked out the conversation, either because I was struck mute or lied through my teeth about who I was and what I was doing there. In the women’s room later, a well-heeled woman asked me in all sincerity: “Are you David’s wife?” Uh, that would be the wife of the chairman of the American Conservative Union.
I have no idea how I kept my composure. It was one of the most absurd moments of my life. My one concession that day was to wear pink, which a friend assured me makes every woman look feminine and would help me blend in. Apparently, it worked.
