Political correctness, now!

>> The host of QueerCorps says anti-P.C. people are afraid to take politics seriously

by JOHN CUSTODIO

Not long ago, I was introduced at a party with this tag: "He does the gay show at CKUT." I was met with what seemed like sincere enough interest.

"That sounds fun," my new acquaintance remarked. "What's the name of your show?"

"QueerCorps," I replied.

"Ooh," he said, not bothering to mask his disappointment. "That's so militant, so '80s." I had to laugh; he'd meant to register his disapproval, but I took it as a compliment.

Something else happened recently, though, which I can't shake off quite as easily, and which, in a way, raises the same criticism. This time it was a remark made by Mirror editor Annarosa Sabbadini.

We had been talking about CKUT's 10th-anniversary celebrations, and I suggested an article about the station's queer programming. No other station in Montreal, I told her, has done it for as long, or as comprehensively: in addition to separate shows for fags and dykes, in both English and French, CKUT regularly produces Focus Day programmes such as Homo Promo (all queer, all day, to celebrate Divers/Cité, Montreal's Pride festival).

Annarosa interrupted me in mid-pitch. "I don't listen to CKUT all that much, I admit," she began, "but I get the sense, from people who tune in more often, that a lot of its spoken-word programming is really..."--a pause, and then, carefully--"... well, too earnest, too serious, too ..."--another pause, and I'm thinking, she's not gonna say it, she can't--"too P.C." She said it! Then, as if that weren't enough, she added,"It's boring." Ouch!

"Do you think you could tackle the article from that angle?" she asked.

Okay, Annarosa, here goes: I can't speak for CKUT's other spoken-word shows, but I'm willing to defend the station's queer programming.

QueerCorps is political, it's true. Given the status of queers in society today, even in relatively liberal Montreal, the very existence of a show dedicated to queer interests is political. The closet makes that inevitable. Of course, there are many ways to be political.

We have done shows in which "politics" are covered in the narrowest sense, i.e., the business of elected officials. Homo Promo 1995, broadcast two months before the Referendum, featured a discussion on how Quebec's separation might affect queers. A live audience of about 300 people attended the discussion, and one senior CBC producer who congratulated us for producing "excellent radio."

When the situation calls for it, QueerCorps can be quite earnest and treat its subject matter very seriously. People forget that the politics of being queer can often be very serious, even a matter of life and death. The very first Homo Promo (called Gay Day at the time) was prompted by the homophobia-motivated murder of activist Joe Rose.

I'm ashamed to admit that on one occasion, my eagerness to avoid coming off as too "serious" got the better of me. We were doing a show about the rise in anti-gay violence; there had been a spate of unsolved murders. We thought it would be amusing to play the Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" during one of our breaks. Unfortunately, the prominent community activist we'd been interviewing didn't think so at all, and let us know as much.

But more often than not, politics on QueerCorps means something different, something more than electoral, legislative, or even community activist concerns.

The show has always had an "ArtFag" bent, so there have been many, many shows about the politics of gay art, writing and film. Our everyday lives are also political; recognizing that, we've done shows on gay dating, gay parenting, and on aging--we've even done a tribute to fag hags.

And we love to talk about sex. We've aired pornography on numerous occasions. To dramatize the politics of S/M, we had professionals enact a story by the late John Preston. These interventions, I believe, were also very political.

It would be difficult to do QueerCorps without addressing politics in one form or another; I'm not sure I'd want to. As for the "correctness" of QueerCorps' politics, that's probably not for me to say. Do politics make it boring? Here's how former QueerCorps producer Vincent Doyle, responded to that charge. "Screw that," he said. "That's like saying feminists have no sense of humour. That's just old. That's boring."