Why, that adorable Michael Alig is almost out of the clink! It seems like only yesterday he was convicted of the manslaughter of Angel Melendez, whose dismembered body washed up on the shores of the Hudson River in 1996.
But I have an even fresher memory. It is of two filmmakers – and full-on Friends of Alig – named Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. In this memory, they jovially submitted to Q&A after a screening of their Party Monster documentary at the Inside Out festival years ago. “I’m conflicted!” one or the other of this interchangeable starfucking pair blurted. What Alig did was horrible, he admitted, but he’s my friend, he said. (Strongly implied: And he’s such a little rapscallion!) “I’m not conflicted,” a guy in the audience loudly countered.
I asked why the proceeds from the feature film the duo made of this kooky klub kid eskapade, also entitled Party Monster, couldn’t be directed to Rodriguez’s family. There was a nonanswer in which one or the other of them thought I was talking about the documentary we just saw (I clearly said “feature film”).
If you’re keeping track, then, Bailey and Barbato have profitted twice off the story of a killer who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1997.
In response to recent questions, Barbato refused to comment, but Bailey wrote: “I feel he deserves a second chance…. [T]he cinematic treatment of what he did in both the documentary and the film neither minimized [n]or downplayed his actions. Both focussed on it and tried to paint a fuller/broader picture of his life. I guess I’m not completely understanding your perspective.”
I guess you aren’t, Fenton! Because I don’t excuse, appease, apologize for, and minimize the harm done by killers just ’cause I think they’re adorable! or for any fatuous reason.
And the hits just keep on coming!
A site curiously named the New Gay conducted a breezy interview with Alig. Writer Jeremy Gloff admits “I… found myself enraptured by his story. Murder aside.”
Because why let something as trivial as manslaughter get in the way of a fun night out on the town in the very near future with somebody who really knows how to party? (“Here, Michael! You can use my iPhone to Google Gaga!”)
When right-wing assholes lambaste us for hedonism and amorality, sometimes they’ve got a point. They’re just looking in all the wrong places. Public Enemy Nº 1 is clearly Michael Alig, who will soon have done his time. Occupying the next slots on that list are his many supporters. Just as rich men thought Conrad Black had contributed too much to society to actually go to jail (one rich man told me that to my face), klub-kid manqués think Alig was just too fabulous to hit the slammer. (What are you waiting for? Like him on Facebook!)
What about Angel Melendez? How fabulous is he right now?
It’s trendy for gays to think gays who are menace to society should get away with it.