Daily Loaf

Late this afternoon, just hours before controversial reggae singer Buju Banton’s concert at the Cuban Club in Ybor City was to take place, an emergency meeting was held inside radio station WMNF.

Banton’s song “Boom Bye Bye” advocates gay-bashing and murder, and has led  to a letter-writing campaign by the LGBT group  Equality Florida to protest Banton’s shows in Jacksonville, Miami and in Ybor City.

WMNF has had a relationship with the Cuban Club for years, using the facility for their popular Heatwave concerts.  But after one board member reportedly questioned whether that relationship should continue because of the controversy over Banton, Station Manager Jim Bennett called a meeting at 4p.m. on Friday.

Representing the Cuban Club was La Gaceta editor and publisher Patrick Manteiga, who sits on the Executive Committee of the Foundation Board of the Cuban Club.

The Cuban Club booked the show earlier this week after the show was canceled at the Ritz Theatre and Jannus Landing.  During a discussion with Bennett, Equality Florida’s Brian Winfield and several staff and board members of WMNF, Manteiga said the promoter had come to the Cuban Club because the Ritz had not sold many tickets for the event.

But others say that the Ritz wanted nothing to do with the show.

Manteiga said in the last 24 hours, Cuban Club board members had received some hate e-mail for booking the show.  He said that no one with the Club had any clue about the controversy surrounding Banton.

“What we’ve done is ask this artist not to perform this song, we’ve increased the deposit, and if he performs this song, we’ll keep the deposit,” Manteiga said.  He also said that the promoter agreed to pay for three additional police officers to staff the event.

Brian Winfield of Equality Florida told CL that his group was not satisfied with the Cuban Club agreeing to let the show go on, saying they were literally giving him a platform to deliver his hateful message toward gays and lesbians.

Winfield said he was not there to dictate to WMNF what their policy should be toward Banton (WMNF Program Director Randy Wynne said the station has only played “Boom Bye Bye” one time, and has a policy of not airing it.  But he says that they do play other songs from his repertoire.  During the meeting, he said “the bulk of his material does not reflect his message.”)

“We’re asking  community members and leaders like WMNF to stand up and clearly stand against the murderous message that Buju Banton represents and incites violence against gay people,” Winfield said.

He said that his group had no intention of protesting in front of the Cuban Club for Friday night’s performance.

(Full disclosure.  This reporter was a staff member of WMNF for over 9 years, and still does volunteer work with the station).

Jamaican dancehall singer Buju Banton, whose notorious song “Boom Bye Bye” advocates gay-bashing and murder, was originally supposed to play The Ritz Ybor and Jannus Landing this weekend. Those gigs are no more — cancelled like so many of the gigs on Banton’s U.S. tour. But now we hear the show is back on — at the Cuban Club in Ybor on Oct. 30. Here’s the promoters’ defiant announcement:

This is the show Gay Activists have tried to shut down. Originally scheduled for The Ritz Ybor then forced to move to Jannus Landing – Now CONFIRMED for The Cuban Club – The Buju Banton Freedom Tour! is an event for All Peoples of All Colors and Choices to embrace the Music from Jamaica BACK now in Ybor City where it should never have been made to leave!

Equality Florida had been calling for a letter-writing campaign to protest Buju Banton shows in Jacksonville, Miami and St. Pete, receiving what the organization calls “an unprecedented flood of hate mail and threats” as a result. Now that the St. Pete gig has been moved back to Ybor, expect a call to action there as well. Read the rest of this entry »

The Laramie Project explores the long-term effects of Matthew Shepard’s murder (the result of a brutal, homophobic hate crime) on his hometown of Laramie via in-depth interviews with his mother, friends, and, most chillingly, his murderer, Aaron McKinney – the results of which eventually became an HBO special and play. Tonight’s performers take the stage just once for The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, which returns to Laramie to find out if anything has changed – at home and around the country — and includes “epilogue” interviews with Mrs. Shepard and McKinney, who is a decade into serving his two consecutive life sentences. In a live webcast, playwright Moisés Kaufman introduces the show, which is performed simultaneously in more than 100 theaters around the country, from Salt Lake City to LA and NYC, and marks the 11-year anniversary of Shepard’s death. (Pictured: Matthew Shepard) Mon., Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m. American Stage, 163 3rd Street N., St. Petersburg, pay-what-you-can admission, 727-823-7529, americanstage.org. – Franki Weddington Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have any reason to think 99% of the developers who programmed, designed or otherwise helped create the new X-Box Live Arcade game Shadow Complex hate gay people. I’m assuming they don’t. But I do know that one man associated closely with the game is a talented writer and outspoken anti-gay advocate named Orson Scott Card, a man whose books I used to love and whose fevered anti-gay rhetoric I utterly despise. Shadow Complex is set within a fictional near-future America that is the setting for Card’s novel Empire. That novel is also published in conjunction with Chair, the developers of the game. Chair previously worked with Card on the game Advent Rising and their Web site state plans for future projects based on his work. Card himself has done interviews promoting Shadow Complex. I lay all this out in advance because I want to make clear that Card is firmly connected to this game, albeit at an inspirational rather than hands-on level (as far as I can tell).

The game itself is really a ton of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

If Sacha Baron Cohen’s films intentionally court controversy, he’s getting what he asked for with Brüno. Some critics, like CL’s Joe Bardi, admire Cohen’s risk-taking comic performance as a flamboyantly gay Austrian. But the head of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) says the satire is likely to miss the mark: “Some people in the gay community will be as troubled as GLAAD is that the movie doesn’t decrease homophobia, but decreases the public’s comfort with gay people.” Read Bardi’s review and the GLAAD story and check out other critics’ reactions at Rotten Tomatoes. And after the break check out a clip from Current TV’s That’s So Gay (pictured above) that mocks the movie and the controversy, declaring “Bruno is the gay version of Malcolm X!” Read the rest of this entry »

For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

I’ve never been smacked in the face with a dick, but I imagine the experience is a lot like watching Brüno. The first 15 minutes of the movie is a penis shock-and-awe campaign, with a pink bunny-costume dick, a dick on the end of a stick and a talking dick that shouts “Brüno!” out of its peehole. That’s in addition to the many items — dicks, dildos, champagne bottles, etc. — going in and out of assholes obscured only by a little black dot. If there is one word to describe Brüno, it’s Cocktastic.

(Listen to Joe and Joran break down the movie in this week’s Reel Projections podcast after the jump)

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Like Clay Aiken, except, you know, cool.

Sex and American Idol may not be synonymous, but this year things are a little different.  Enigmatic performer Adam Lambert is very close to taking the crown.  But sadly it seems many people aren’t as focused on his talent as they are on whether he’ll wear it as king…or queen.

(Video and
intrigue after the jump)

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We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!

But it’s not time to celebrate. The FBI’s annual hate crimes report is out and, although hate crimes have dropped across the country, Tampa has earned the dubious honor of having the highest amount of cases in Florida for 2007. The second year in a row.

According to the FBI, Tampa had 13 hate crimes in 2007: eight of those involved race, four involved religion and one was based on sexual orientation.

Now, 13 is just a small slice of the 166 incidents reported in Florida last year. But pinning Tampa’s No. 1 status on its size or population would be a mistake. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the man behind Amendment 2 and the architect of the gigantic Confederate Flag at I-4 and I-75 both live in or around Tampa.

And if past studies are right, we might be No. 1 next year too, based on the homophobic rhetoric coming out of the Amendment 2 debate.

Read the rest of this entry »