this caught my eye last week ... the tribune review printed an interview with Ben Johnson, author of "57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving" and the forthcoming booklet "Teresa Heinz Kerry's Radical Gifts"
see a theme?
it is a ridiculous pandering interview, but here's how Teresa is advancing the gay agenda:
Q: You say the Heinz Endowments have been responsible for a wide variety of radical or offensive "art." What's an example of that?
A: The most outrageous example of this would be the 2006 Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which screened not one but two films that glorified same-sex statutory rape. One was "Loving Annabelle," which is a film about a Catholic school teacher who has sexual intercourse with one of her underage students. The other one is called "Whole New Thing," which is about a 13-year-old who was formerly homeschooled, raised by hippies, who tries to seduce his gay teacher in Nova Scotia. Both of them present the sex as something the student is actively pursuing and in their own terms justifying and glorifying what's going on. I think that's well beyond the pale.
Q: If someone says, "OK, so Teresa Heinz spent $10,000 or whatever on this film festival. She's basically wasting her money, but is it really hurting anything ?- and who cares?" What's your response to that?
A: I think anytime that we glorify pedophilia that feeds into the victimization of children. Anyone who does that should be ashamed of themselves. They are participating in the glorification of statutory rape. That is one of the most offensive things any human being can do. The fact that her money helped finance this and justify it to a subsection of your readers in Pittsburgh is absolutely indefensible and execrable.
Huh? Well, yeah, the president of the Heinz Endowments didn't take too kindly to being identified as a funder of pedophilia.
One example was Johnson's accusation that The Heinz Endowments fund activities "justifying pedophilia; screening films that are explicitly pornographic."
In these sensationalistic references to the Pittsburgh Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which has been running in this city for 23 years, Johnson manages to leave out other funders, including the Pittsburgh Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the McGuire Woods law firm and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, which the Richard King Mellon Foundation has funded -- hardly a group that would fund "pedophilic and pornographic projects."
Get the connection? If you follow the money -- all the money, not just Teresa's --- you get to the Mellon fortune. Hmmm. Nice riposte. What kind of zealot spends their time writing a booklet about this topic? Not enough material for an actual book, but just enough to distort the picture and feed into the maniacal fanaticism of Pittsburgh's wingnut contingent. In the same interview, John characterizes the Three Rivers Community Fund as a bastion of Pittsburgh's left wing radical agenda. Priceless.
Loving Annabelle -- here's the AfterEllen review if you are curious. Here's one for Whole New Thing. I have not seen either movie and it appears that they are explorations of the typical adolescent/teacher crush convoluted by the process of coming out (for the adults, too). I'm not justifying teacher sleeping with the student, but I imagine that the added layer of cultural homophobia makes for an interesting series of questions about the adults. Frankly, the teacher student issue freaks me out so I probably wouldn't see the movies, no matter how arty they are. But I wouldn't characterize them as pedophilia based on a few paragraphs. I sure wouldn't write a booklet about it. I might twist it to fit my agenda, but hey that's just me.
This is my favorite sentence. Both of them present the sex as something the student is actively pursuing and in their own terms justifying and glorifying what's going on.
Students pursuing sex! You mean like saddlebacking? Ha!
