We’ve had a vivid illustration over the last few days of how Leftists live in a narcissistic bubble of their own making, and imagine that the wide world is just filled to the brim with men who think they’re women and people who are deeply concerned about pronouns and microaggressions. Bud Light was apparently so sure that we are all so thrilled with attention-thirsty pretend women that they could make one of them the face of their product and suffer no ill effects. And now the co-creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race is on a “mission” to take his drag exhibition to countries that are notably hostile to such displays, such as Russia, Uganda, and even Iran. Great idea! What could possibly go wrong?
The UK’s iNews introduced us on Monday to Fenton Bailey, whom it described as “one of the most influential people in the world you’ve (probably) never heard of.” Bailey’s production company, World of Wonder, is responsible for inflicting RuPaul’s Drag Race upon the world, but iNews evidently thinks is something to be proud of, as it describes RuPaul’s Drag Race as “the now global force in television that over the last 14 years has catapulted a once niche form of entertainment right into the mainstream.” Now drag is as American as baseball and apple pie, if not more so.
The bad old days were actually quite recent: “Not so long ago, to see a drag queen perform (aside from Lily Savage or Dame Edna Everage), you’d have to schlepp down to a smoky gay bar and clutch an overpriced pint, but in 2023, drag queens grace prime time TV from Britain to Thailand to Argentina. They’re being invited to the White House, hosting drag brunches and drag bingo from major cities to small-town suburbia, while many of the biggest names in entertainment desperately jostle to be part of the action — to be drag-adjacent. That trajectory can all be traced back to RuPaul’s Drag Race.” So apparently all the mainstreaming of drag shows even to the youngest children these days can be traced back to the efforts of this Fenton Bailey. Quite a legacy indeed.
Not that Bailey’s transformation of our society has been smooth and easy. The man has suffered, gosh darn it: “the backlash to drag has been explosive, fusing with online conspiracy theories, political scapegoating, and the ever-widening anti-trans movement.” Horror of horrors! Parents don’t want their youngest children sexualized, mutilated, and condemned to a lifetime of dependence on pharmaceuticals and war with their own nature? Why, those bigots!
Instead of savoring his total cultural victory, Bailey in his later years has to contend with a tidal wave of backlash against perversion and grooming: “Gender expression is the new front line in the culture wars. Republicans are banning LGBTQ books; mobs are protesting drag queens reading stories to children; and hundreds of anti-LGBTQ laws are being introduced in America — with even worse ones in Russia, Hungary, and Uganda.” But whatever else he is, Fenton Bailey is no shrinking violet. So what is he going to do? Go to such places. It’s a mission, which is religious language because this is his religion.
Related: Can Anyone Explain the Appeal of Drag Queens and Why Lib Parents Bring their Kids to Watch Them?
Bailey himself asks the forbidden question: “Sometimes people say, ‘Isn’t there too much Drag Race?’” Yeah, buddy, there’s way, way too much Drag Race, but Bailey isn’t interested in such perspectives. He continued, “I say no because even though drag has always existed there are still countries where it is oppressed or forbidden. And so to me, what’s worth getting out of bed for, is to figure out how to make Drag Race China, or Drag Race Russia, or Drag Race Iran, because — although not didactically a political show — the message of Drag Race, of individuality and self-invention, of live-and-let-live, is what we need.”
Drag Race Iran? Really? Talk about living in a bubble. Iran has frequently executed homosexuals, and doing so is in line with Shi’ite Islamic teaching about homosexuality. A Shi’ite hadith has Muhammad saying: “If a man engages in sexual intercourse with another male, Allah’s throne trembles because of it. A man who allows anal sexual intercourse will be held by Allah on the bridge over the hell until he will complete the accounts of the creatures: then he will command to send him to hell in the levels of which he will suffer one after the other until he arrives in the lowest level from which he cannot come out.” (Al-Kafi H10151, ch. 186, h 2) Such people are simply to suffer in the next world, but in this one as well; hence the executions.
And so once again we see it: Leftists have no idea how different the rest of the world is from their own experience. They rail against Republicans and think that in Iran, they’ll face Republicans with turbans and beards. If Fenton Bailey and company ever do go to Iran, they will long for the days when Republicans were all they had to deal with.
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