‘I want to be a one-hit wonder': Comedian Margaret Cho releases first album in 8 years
Comedian Margaret Cho sat down with NBC News' Joe Fryer to chat about 'Lucky Gift,' her first music album in 8 years and her ongoing stand up comedy tour, 'Live & Livid.' Cho also spoke about her advocacy for LGBTQ rights and the importance of empowering female comedians.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Pete Hegseth's war on gay icon Harvey Milk backfires as even his fans call him 'idiotic'
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 's attempt to erase LGBTQ + icon Harvey Milk's name from a US Navy ship has backfired spectacularly with widespread backlash, including from some of his own supporters. The controversy erupted after reports surfaced that Hegseth, 44, proposed renaming the USNS Harvey Milk - a vessel dedicated in 2021 to honor the slain gay rights pioneer and Navy veteran. Milk served four years during the Korean War before being discharged due to questions about his sexual orientation. He went on to become the first openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and was assassinated in 1978. Hegseth and the broader Trump administration are now facing criticism from veterans' groups, high-profile public figures and former DoD Secretary fans, including Newsweek's political editor Carlo Versano, over the controversial renaming effort. 'I've never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer,' actor Sean Penn, 64, who portrayed Milk in the Oscar-winning 2008 biopic Milk, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. Dustin Lance Black, the film's screenwriter, also criticized the move as politically divisive. 'This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,' Black, 50, told The Hollywood Reporter. 'It's meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It's divide and conquer.' The progressive veterans' group VoteVets also condemned the move. 'At the start of Pride Month, Pete Hegseth ordered the Navy to strip Harvey Milk's name from a ship,' the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 'A man who served with honor - erased to send a message. This is a deliberate insult to LGBTQ troops and Americans that weakens our force and shreds the values we fight for.' Versano, who was once a cautious supporter of Hegseth's Pentagon appointment, has since turned sharply critical. In a column titled 'Now Boarding the USS Idiocracy,' the Newsweek's political editor wrote, 'I cannot believe I once wrote here that I was cautiously optimistic about Hegseth as someone who could shake up the Pentagon. Was I on drugs?' He added, 'This guy is such an embarrassment to be leading our military… this is what the Defense Department is sitting around worrying about right now?' Several public officials have also voiced their outrage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X: 'Erasing Harvey Milk's name is disgusting, blatant discrimination - and during Pride Month to boot. He served the U.S. Navy and his country honorably... Hegseth should be ashamed of himself and reverse this immediately.' Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added, 'The reported decision... is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American dream.' Former Pentagon official Alex Wagner, who helped lead the department's first Pride event in 2012, said the decision was 'disappointing, but no surprise.' Wagner noted, 'When I served... we prioritized building and resourcing a ready force capable of deterring, denying, and - if necessary - defeating the People's Liberation Army. We sought to harness one of our greatest strategic advantages - the diverse experiences and expertise of all Americans.' In defense of the renaming initiative, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell stated, 'Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities, our nation's history, and the warrior ethos.' According to CBS News, an internal Navy memo cited the renaming as an effort to ensure 'alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.' The document also indicated that other Navy ships - named after historical figures such as Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez, and Medgar Evers - are also under review for potential renaming.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Shock update in King of the Hill star Jonathan Joss murder investigation as police backtrack on hate crime statement
Police investigating the senseless murder of King of The Hill Jonathan Joss have apologized for a previous statement denying his killing was a hate crime. Joss, 59, died in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday after a reported altercation with his neighbor Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja outside his home. Ceja was captured by law enforcement and has been booked on suspicion of murder. He was released on $200k bail this week. Joss' husband Tristan Kern de Gonzales claimed the shooting that claimed his spouse's life was carried out as part of a homophobia hate-fueled attack - although the San Antonio Police Department later issued a statement dismissing this theory. In a press conference Thursday, San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus walked back the statement and said it had been issued 'way too prematurely.' He said: 'We shouldn't have done that, it was way too early to make a statement of that nature, we didn't have information to make that statement. 'We understand the LGBTQ+ community are feeling anxious and concerned, a lot of it has to do with that stayement, we're sorry.' 'The loss of Jonathan Joss was tragic and felt by the LGBTQ+ community, there's also a concern around circurmstances surrounding that death and the history leading up to that.' The previous statement from a San Antonio PD spokesman had read: 'Despite online claims of this being a hate crime, currently the investigation has found no evidence to indicate that Mr. Joss's murder was related to his sexual orientation.' New details about the run-up to the violent crime recently emerged via a police report, with a unnamed witness stating they drove Joss from Austin to his burned down San Antonio home around 7pm on June 1 to check his mail. The witness said she pulled up and parked in the driveway while she waited for Joss and another witness to check the mail. Joss' husband Gonzales has claimed he was with the actor on this trip and during the murder. Per the report, she said she saw suspect Ceja pull up in his vehicle with a passenger and stop 'directly behind her car.' She allegedly saw Joss and Ceja argue in her rear view mirror, and claimed Ceja told Joss 'he had a gun and would shoot [Joss].' She claims Ceja then shot Joss. Per the report, Joss was pronounced dead at the scene at 7.20pm and Ceja was detained by police and 'immediately told them "I shot him". His weapons were seized. The report states that '[Ceja] intentionally and knowingly discharged a weapon at [Joss] resulting in his death Joss' husband has since claimed the star's death was a homophobia-fueled murder - although in a new twist, police have dismissed this theory. A statement from a San Antonio PD spokesman read: 'Despite online claims of this being a hate crime, currently the investigation has found no evidence to indicate that Mr. Joss's murder was related to his sexual orientation.' Last Saturday, Joss — who boasts 9K social media followers — shared a video of himself in good spirits, urging fans to visit him at Tribe Comics and Games in Austin, TX for a signing.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
King of Dirt by Holden Sheppard review – a grim portrait of homophobia and masculinity
Holden Sheppard made a name for himself in the world of young adult fiction with his debut Invisible Boys, which was recently adapted into a television series. In it, three young men from Geraldton, Western Australia, grapple with their sexuality in a hyper-masculinised environment. Now, in his first novel written for adults, King of Dirt, one young(ish) man who has fled Geraldton after being outed by a mate, returns to rake over his choices and confront the forces that worked against him in his youth. It's almost as if this new novel is an extension of the first, or a more wary, complex reckoning with its themes. Giacomo 'Jack' Brolo is a digger. Not a soldier, but a bloke who drives a mini-excavator for a living, in as remote an environment as he can manage. When we meet him, he's doing his best to resist the gay dating apps while keeping his head down on a job in the Nullarbor. But when an openly gay man, Spencer, joins the crew and he and Jack hook up, things go awry fast. It's not until a wedding invitation arrives, however, that Jack's precarious, isolated and peripatetic way of living is challenged in a serious way: will he spin further from the axis of friends and family, or return to face his demons? From the outset, Sheppard establishes Jack's desperately sad, self-sabotaging behaviour, a consequence of his internalised homophobia; the novel's opening line is: 'All the other blokes in the yard hate Spencer cos he's a homo, but none of them knows I'm secretly a homo too, so I hate Spencer the most.' Jack is an alcoholic, wilfully reckless and suicidal. It's a grim portrait – likely all-too familiar to rural gay boys without solid support networks – of stunted desire and hopelessness. When the novel moves back to Geraldton and the veil is lifted on Jack's backstory, we slowly come to understand what has led him to his current impasse. A fledgling sexual relationship with a boy in his friendship group named Xavier was destroyed by Jack's cousin Rocco, who also outed him to the family and, by extension, the whole town. Jack's return for Rocco's wedding is a way to smooth tensions but also an opportunity to reconnect with Xavier, who now goes by the name Brick – this might bring Tennessee Williams' drunken bisexual protagonist in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to mind but is actually a reference to Maitland Bricks. Before his family can exhume their buried grievances, Jack hooks up with a woman from his mum's choir, Elena. 'Fresh off the boat' from Italy, she takes a shine to him without for a minute swallowing his bullshit, and remains a figure of support throughout. But his parents are taken with Elena, and start to imagine an alternate reality where she and Jack will get together and Jack can 'be normal' again. Sheppard sets in motion a moral choice between full but isolating disclosure and companionable but emotionally exhausting repression. Given the Brolos are Italian, this cultural and familial pressure is all the more acute. Haunting the edges of this novel, and certainly representing an anxiety of influence for Sheppard himself, is the work of Christos Tsiolkas – most notably, his debut Loaded, about the self-destructive nihilism of young gay Greek man Ari. Jack isn't a nihilist, but he is crushed between the rigidity of his concept of masculinity and the insistence of his own desire. King of Dirt is written, like Loaded, in first person, present tense; this gives it a psychological immediacy but also limits its scope. But where Tsiolkas located Ari in a specific cultural milieu, then extrapolated beyond the merely sociological, Sheppard doesn't quite succeed in making Jack representative of anything larger than himself. Cultural markers are strangely thin – the Italian family eats spaghetti under a picture of The Last Supper, while Brick's First Nations heritage is completely unsupported by detail – which undercuts not just the novel's naturalism but also its emotional stakes. While it's refreshing to see a representation of queer men that leans away from cliched urban norms – there isn't a single reference to Kylie or glitter or drag – there is something oddly performative and retrograde about the parameters of Jack's relationship with Brick. They 'drink beer and bourbon. We have an impromptu burping contest. We eat barbecue Meatlovers pizza from Domino's. We bet on the footy together and compare our multis. We give each other bro-jobs at half-time.' It reads like a straight fantasy of gay life, where everyone's a bloke, every ride is pimped and the Pies keep winning. There is a more interesting, more provocative book buried somewhere in King of Dirt – the kind of knowing exploration of sexuality and violence that Bret Easton Ellis interrogates in The Shards, or Adam Mars-Jones explores in Box Hill – but Sheppard seems too content with his contrarian vision of gay life to unearth it. Jack's journey towards self-acceptance might traverse some desolate landscape, but the destination is never really in doubt. At its best, its portrait of taciturn, damaged men trying to connect recalls the work of SE Hinton, flinty and deeply poignant. But Sheppard struggles to move out of the realm of young adult fiction, where the emotional stakes are more simplistic and the resolutions neatly predictable. King of Dirt by Holden Sheppard is out now (Pantera Press, $34.99)
