The Gazette’s new “gay columnist,” Richard Burnett:
There are a zillion gay journalists out there, of course, but few have made a career out of being, well, out…. Today, while the blogosphere is packed with name bloggers …, just one daily newspaper in America boasts a bona fide gay blogger, staff writer Steve Rothaus of the Miami Herald.
We aren’t living in America.
Now, with Pop Tart, Montreal’s 233-year-old daily newspaper, the Gazette, has become Canada’s first daily to host a (not-always‑)gay blog.
Unless you include Brent Ledger’s column in the Star, or the column I wrote in that same paper in the early ’90s, or the de facto column I wrote for the Globe in that same period. Those two columns did not discuss “gay issues,” but I’m the one who wrote them; don’t they count?
(In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a world-class name-dropper.)
And he wants you to call him Bugs. Question for Burnett: Were you the one who thought up that nickname, or did it spontaneously arise from among your friends? Are you the one who insists new friends call you Bugs?
I suppose it’s commendable to write an anglophone homosexualist newspaper column in a city where the majority despises you, possibly twice over. I suspect it’s almost as big a feather in one’s cap as being named microwave-cooking editor at Soldier of Fortune.