The Rainbow Warrior

[illusionofjoy]

I like to think of myself as fairly tolerate. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't really discriminate against people for petty reasons such as skin colour, sexual preference or a nasty wart in centre of the forehead. I think I do a pretty damn good job at being a decent human being. I don't muck about in the affairs of others, and in turn, I expect them to stay out of mine.

In the past couple of months however, there has been one kid who seems to have the hidden agenda of seeing how far my tolerance can be stretched. I've nicknamed him "The Rainbow Warrior." If any of you recall, the actual Rainbow Warrior is the name of Greenpeace's ship - the one that has been sunken at least twice because of the annoying "in your face" methods employed by the members of the organization in the use of the ship. I felt the nickname had a certain appropriate irony to it, given the circumstances.

Yes, this kid is gay. Fine. I don't care where people put their genitals. That's their business. It's not the fact that gay that bothers me, but the fact that he's every gay stereotype that the homosexual community has been trying to dispel for eons now. He queer, he's here and you're going to know all about it within ten minutes. He doesn't just want you to know that he's gay, he wants you to know that he's gay. Case in point, this kid has actually started conversations with, "so I was reading Out Magazine while listening to the Queer As Folk soundtrack..." Need I continue? Suffice it to say, I find his predilection towards bragging about his sexuality just as distasteful as any hyper-hetero frat boy or jock boasting as to how many chicks they scored at last night's kegger.

You may be asking yourself at this point how I met up with such an odious character. The answer is simple: he joined WAIH. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, The Rainbow Warrior infiltrated my beloved college radio station. It was here that I began to get a true distaste for his shenanigans. Barely passing his air test (he was two points above failing - by all accounts he should have failed as I found five CDs not only in the wrong racks after his test ended, but in the incorrect cases), he decided that he wanted to do an "alternative lifestyles" talk show during freeform hours. Fair enough. He then decides to take a slot on Friday evenings - prime time when people tuning in expect upbeat party music (i.e.: techno and hip hop). Efforts to dissuade The Rainbow Warrior from occupying this slot fail and WAIH's program director lets him have the slot, fearing a backlash from SUNY Potsdam's gay community if we don't give him his first choice.

Now the fun truly began. At station meetings, The Rainbow Warrior would ask a plethora of questions - most of which were covered in WAIH's handbook. He would pop in randomly to various e-board members' shows (myself included) to ask inane queries while attempting to engage us in equally inane small talk. When he wasn't speaking, he would stop by with a clipboard, write something down and then leave to the confusion of anyone in the station. The adjectives used by most of staff members at WAIH to describe this kid were "creepy" and "annoying."

His show itself was the most tepid piece of radio I had heard for three weeks running. Here was a classic example of a person who should not speak on the air at all, much less do a talk show. His diction is akin to mine, assuming I suddenly cut out the part of my brain that was able to sound out letters and combinations thereof as I slurred everything together, speaking through my nose while my testicles were slowly crushed in a vice. Yes, people, it's that bad and I did make a recording of it to prove this to my friends. So, for his first show was an hour of "gay news" followed by an interview, which he kept interrupting to play a roster of gay artists (Elton John and Melissa Etheridge, mostly - I doubt the kid has heard of R.E.M. or Hüsker Dü). He second show was a memorial for Matthew Sheppard, wherein he played long clips from the trial for Sheppard's killers, as well as excerpts from the wake itself. I don't know about you, but I can not see myself tuning my radio to something that morose on a Friday night. His third, and final show thus far, was his worst. He interviewed a band via telephone, except that he forgot how to use the "talk back" feature correctly, thus broadcasting large segments of the conversation that should have never hit the airwaves (I must say, I was particularly moved by the band member who commented, "damn, I just need a massive strap-on right now!"). Apparently he had planned that interview to last for an hour, but it fizzled out after twenty minutes when he ran out of questions. The next 100 minutes were spent by him playing showtunes (you read that correctly: showtunes) and begging for someone to be his co-host to the point where he gave out his personal address over the fucking airwaves. The phrase, "asking for it," comes to mind, assuming he had any listeners besides myself and anyone else on the air review committee.

So, I'm disgusted that he's hurting my baby. All would have been well, had he been willing to move his show to a more appropriate time slot. Instead, he buggers up Friday evenings under the misguided notion that he'll get a shitload of listeners by virtue of the timeslot alone. I start to wonder if I'm being unreasonable...if I'm simply angry because of my passion for making WAIH the best it can possibly be. Surely every member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered Alliance (LGBTA) on campus supports this kid. Maybe it would cause a huge stink if we moved his show to a different slot, or just booted him off staff altogether...

Have you ever heard a gay guy say, "Pfft! He so makes me want to go straight!"? Admittedly, I haven't personally been a witness to this, however, a friend of mine who attended LGBTA meetings up until the point where dealings with The Rainbow Warrior became unbearable told me that's precisely what one of the members of that organization said after an encounter with the kid. In fact, most of LGBTA has mirrored the sentiment, going so far as to tell The Rainbow Warrior to stop acting like the posterboi for the organization.

I don't blame them. In fact, given some of his actions, I suspect that The Rainbow Warrior actually wants a hate crime committed against him. Exhibit A: going up to the ultra-hetero fratboy with the skanky cheerleader hanging off of his arm and hitting on him in front of ten of his friends. Exhibit B: grabbing the breasts of a female acquaintance and saying, "isn't it great that I can do this and not get hard because I'm gay!" Exhibit C: being at the station for no good reason while I'm trying to get work done in the back office and hitting on me (mind you, I was especially upset by this because The Asian Goddess had just left recently, so that may have coloured my reaction a bit).

When some redneck finally snaps at this kid and performs a do-it-yourself lynching, I fully expect his dying words to be, "I told you they all hated me because I was gay!" For the record, I dislike this kid because he's an annoying thick-skulled martyr wanna-be.

I probably would have killed him myself by now, had I not the ability to make fun of him to my friends. The Tall Guy came up with the best line, "Dammit! He's the type of fag that makes us fags look bad!" He then said that he fully gave me permission to play the "my best friend is gay card" if the kid gave me any shit.

Honestly, I shouldn't have to play any cards - not the "my best friend is gay" card, not the "the object of my undying devotion is Japanese-American" card nor even the "I'm a freaky black-clad pariah who wears army boots with fishnets, eyeliner and nail polish" card. I think I know just a little bit about diversity, but I don't feel the need to be waving any banners about while shouting from the tallest building. The issues at hand are radio programming and social graces - the fact that he is a homosexual has nothing to do with him stinking on the radio or his inability to respect personal space. Will he turn any jab against him into a "gay" issue? Yes he will, and this is why I do not like The Rainbow Warrior.