Books
Two new political memoirs reveal how the sausage of democracy is made
Top Dem, GOP spin-meisters weigh in on Trump, Buttigieg, more
‘Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell’
By Tim Miller
c.2022, Harper
$26.99/259 pages
‘Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story’
By Lis Smith
c.2022, Harper
$22.39/304 pages
The lilies of the field, the Bible tells us, “neither toil nor spin.” If only, they had met Tim Miller and Lis Smith!
Miller and Smith, two top-tier spinmeisters have written memoirs. Fasten your seatbelts. These aren’t the usual tepid politico’s tales.
As you read, you’ll laugh out loud one minute. Then gulp down your go-to comfort food or libation while (literally) worrying about the fate of our democracy.
“Next to love, the most sacred thing you can give is your labor,” James Carville says to staff and volunteers in the last days of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign in a real life Aaron Sorkin moment in the 1993 documentary “The War Room.”
Miller and Smith both saw “The War Room” when they were kids. Miller would grow up to be a Republican strategist who left the party over Trump. Smith would become a top Democratic political operative. But “The War Room” instilled in both of them a love of the public service and game of politics.
Miller, who lives in Oakland, Calif., with his husband Tyler and their daughter Toulouse, is a former Republican political operative. He was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign and spokesman for the Republican National Committee during Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. Miller left the GOP to become a leader of the “Never Trump” movement. After calling it quits with Trump, Miller worked briefly as a consultant for Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the Trump administration. Now, Miller is an MSNBC analyst, a writer at large with “The Bulwark” and the host of “Not My Party” on Snapchat.
The Republican Party has a history – from Ronald Reagan’s abysmal record on AIDS to Donald Trump’s transphobic policies – of being anti-queer. You’re likely wondering how Miller, as a gay man, could stomach working for the GOP.
In “Why We Did It,” Miller puts himself and some of the people who “enabled” Trump under the microscope.
“America never would have gotten into this mess if it weren’t for me and my friends,” Miller writes, “We were the ‘normal’ Republicans.”
When Trump arrived, they didn’t take him seriously. They didn’t, “get off on the tears of immigrant children,” Miller writes. Nor would they have been caught “dead in one of those gaudy red baseball caps,” he adds.
“Why in the fuck,” Miller asks, “did the vast, vast majority of seemingly normal, decent people whom I worked with go along with the most abnormal, indecent of men?”
The first half of the memoir is Miller’s story of how he “compartmentalized” being a gay man with being an operative for the largely homophobic GOP.
Take when he worked for John McCain’s presidential campaign. Though he was gay, Miller told McCain to walk it back after McCain said “gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing.”
In the second half of the book, Miller examines why people such as Elise Stefanik opted to “take the red pill” and work for “the great MAGA future.”
“Why We Did It” is dishy, dark, and soul-churning.
Smith, a top Democratic strategist and veteran of 20 campaigns, has worked for everyone from Claire McCaskill to Barack Obama. She was a senior communications adviser for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.
Thankfully, “Any Given Tuesday” isn’t a stuffy political memoir. It’s smart, snarky, and gossipy. Smith is James Carville in high heels.
“Any Given Tuesday” is about Smith’s life in politics intertwined with stories from her personal life.
Due to sexism, her love life was politicized. Smith became a tabloid target when she fell in love with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, after learning of Smith’s relationship with Spitzer, fired her from her job with his administration. (Though she had worked for de Blasio’s campaign.)
You wonder if this would have happened if Smith had been a man. But Smith gets many digs at de Blasio. After her firing, de Blasio tried to win Spitzer’s political endorsement. “Both of us had tried to get in bed with Eliot,” she writes of de Blasio’s failure to win Spitzer’s backing, “but only one of us had been successful.” (Smith and Spitzer no longer have a relationship.)
Unlike Miller, Smith doesn’t have to twist herself into a compartmentalized pretzel to do her work. Like Miller, she’s hopped up on the “game” of campaigns. Though Smith doesn’t agree with everything everyone she works for believes in, she’s generally in synch with centrist Democrats.
Among the most interesting chapters of “Any Given Tuesday” are those about her work on Buttigieg’s campaign. If you’re queer or queer-friendly, even if you don’t agree with his politics, you get the historic significance of Buttigieg’s campaign.
Smith’s account of being on the road with the “Buttibus” and prepping Buttigieg for the candidates’ debates is entertaining and informative. It’s moving when Smith, a seasoned, snarky hack, comes to believe Buttigieg is “the one” — the candidate who truly would serve this country well.
In “Any Given Tuesday,” Smith reveals how the messy sausage of democracy is made. In “Why We Did It,” Miller makes even die-hard atheists pray that democracy will last.
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Books
‘The Loves of My Life’ is not for prudes
Edmund White’s thoughtful read about pursuing pleasure
‘The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir’
By Edmund White
c.2025, Bloomsbury Publishing
$27.99/256 pages
Celebrated author Edmund White is just as prolific with men as he is with books. “The Loves of My Life” is a steamy memoir about his decades-long sex life. Now in his 80s, he’s had, in his own words, “thousands of sex partners” and this book recounts many of them, including some many amusing, some poignant, stories.
A warning: this book is not for prudish readers. White describes his encounters in lovingly explicit detail, fondly recalling his partners’ equipment and their skills. Some were shockingly creative: one partner belonged to a “fisting colony” where another member once inserted a football into a man, requiring surgery.
White began early, as a teenager sleeping with other boys at his boarding school, neighbors, and the son of his mother’s lover. Later, working for his father’s business, he picked up male hustlers. He would take these predominately “straight” men to cheap hotels for one-sided, quick affairs; many kept their socks on during. Some threatened violence afterwards, demanding more money or that White spend more time with them.
As an adult, a sex worker he took to a country home to help get clean spent nearly all his time alone in the bedroom, leaving only to pick up meals.
White lingers on his experience with Stan, “my first husband.” They met in college, at a play Stan starred in. Moving to New York, they lived together off and on as Stan found acting work. He became involved with a group led by a former Marine, who kept the party going with drugs and orgies. Thankfully, he would later leave and get clean.
White had many memorable adventures abroad. Visiting Puerto Rico, he and his partner went home with two men they met on the beach; the natives laughed during, speaking mostly Spanish. In a park in Spain, he encountered a man who robbed him after propositioning him. Because homosexuality was illegal, he couldn’t go to the authorities, although they had a quickie afterwards. Years later, he rented a house in Madrid with a younger, Spanish lover, who took him to “geezer” clubs, but who threw tantrums if White spoke to any men there. He felt like a housewife, keeping the home spotless and prepared to satisfy his partner anytime, only once visiting a museum.
The book’s tone is generally humorous, although White recounts how, when he was a young man, many gay men saw themselves. Most only wanted to sleep with straight “trade,” which carried the threat of violence. Even successful professionals thought they were “sick.” White saw a therapist hoping to become straight. While the community’s self-image has improved considerably, there are still plenty of hang-ups. White’s younger friend Rory, for instance, Asian, athletic, and intelligent, only loves white men and feels depressed if one doesn’t return his affections.
He surprisingly doesn’t talk much about his husband, Michael, apart from him walking in on White with a lover and an airplane encounter. It might be useful to hear how they met, and their arrangements with other partners. Perhaps their relationship was off limits.
Mixing self-deprecating anecdotes with insights into writing and literature, “The Loves of My Life” makes for a fun, yet thoughtful read about pursuing pleasure.
Books
Thom Gunn bio explores joys, complexities of modern gay life
‘A Cool Queer Life’ presents author’s humanity, poetic genius
‘Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life’
By Michael Nott
c.2024, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$40/720 pages
A confession: Until reading “Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life,” I hadn’t known much about the accomplished, controversial gay poet’s life or read many of his poems. But this first biography makes me feel like I know him and his large body of work intimately. Michael Nott, coeditor of “The Letters of Thom Gunn,” draws on interviews with friends and family, as well as Gunn’s letters, notebooks, and diaries, to tell the triumphs and tragedies of his life.
Born in England in 1929 to journalist parents, when he was 15, he and his younger brother Ander found their mother dead from suicide. He would not discuss this tragic event in his poetry for years, including one of his last poems “My Mother’s Pride.” He published his first book of poems, “Fighting Terms,” while still an undergraduate at Cambridge University.
At Cambridge, Gunn met his life-long partner, Mike Kitay, an American studying theater. Gunn followed Kitay to America, studying poetry under Yvor Winters at Stanford University. At one point, Kitay, doing his military service, was investigated as part of suspicion of homosexuality among his unit. Gunn wrote to friends of his worry both of what might happen to Kitay as well as to himself. While nothing happened, the event reminds us of the precarious state in which gay men lived until recently.
Eventually, they settled in San Francisco, which Gunn loved. Even when he became worldwide famous, he enjoyed the anonymity of the city’s gay bars, where he could pick up men. He taught at UC Berkeley for 40 years, one term every year so he could concentrate on his poetry. His and Kitay’s home was filled with friends and sex partners, usually of Gunn. This arrangement seems common for many gay men of the time, reminiscent of Dan Savage’s idea of “monogamish,” where committed gay couples might have other side partners.
In San Francisco, Gunn discovered leather and drugs, both of which he took to readily. He caused a stir by appearing in his British publisher’s conservative club in leather gear. Toward the end of his life, he became a crystal meth addict, frequently using with other addicts whom he also slept with. In 2004, his housemates found him dead from substance abuse.
He explored leather, drugs, and gay sexuality frequently in his poems. His collection “Moly” (named after the drug in The Odyssey protecting from the witch Circe’s magic), looked at the appeal and downfall of drugs. The Man with Night Sweats, perhaps his most famous collection, dealt with the AIDS epidemic, the painful death of so many friends and lovers. He won the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant afterwards.
The biography presents Gunn in all his humanity, from his poetic genius to his insecurities. After each book came out, he struggled with writer’s block, which led to hookups and drug use. As he aged, he worried about finding “gerontophiles” who would sleep with him. I hope this book encourages readers to discover or revisit his work, filled with the joys and complexities of modern gay life.
Books
A rabid fan’s look at the best and worst of queer TV
‘Rainbow Age of Television’ a must-read for viewers
‘The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer TV’
By Shayna Maci Warner
c.2024, Abrams Press
$28/304 pages
Wanna hand over the clicker?
You don’t want to miss the season premiere of that show you binge-watched over the summer. You’re invested, a fan who can’t wait to see what happens next. You heard that this may be the last season and you’ll be sad, if that’s so. Is it time to start looking for another, newer obsession or will you want to read “The Rainbow Age of Television” by Shayna Maci Warner, and find something old?
Like most kids of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, Shayna Maci Warner spent lots of time glued to a television screen, devouring programming before school, after school, and all summer long. For Warner, that programming eventually led to a revelation. They saw people that looked like them, for which they formed “a personal attachment.”
It was “life-changing.”
It didn’t happen all at once, and some of TV’s “milestones” are forever lost, since broadcasts were live until the 1950s. Shortly after shows were taped and preserved, homosexuality became a “source of worry and blunt fascination” but certain performers carefully presented gently risqué characters and dialogue that nudged and winked at viewers.
Some queer representation appeared in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the 1970s when dramas began to feature more gay and lesbian characters, however subtly. It took a while for “the ‘rest’ of the alphabet” to be represented in a meaningful way and – despite that “Star Trek” and its many versions included gender-diverse characters – it wasn’t until 1996 that an intersex infant was featured on a regular television drama.
Since Ellen DeGeneres came out practically on her namesake TV show and “Will & Grace” became a wild hit, queer representation on TV has ceased to be an unusual thing. And yet, programmers and writers know that caution is still warranted: sometimes, “there can still be hesitation around pushing the envelope and fear that a queer character who burns too brightly just won’t last.”
Quick: name three after-school TV shows that aired when you were in fourth grade. If you can’t do it, one thing’s for certain: you need “The Rainbow Age of Television.”
But get ready for some argument. Author Shayna Maci Warner offers a rabid fan’s look at the best and the worst queer representation had to offer, and you may beg to differ with what they say about various programs. That makes this book a critique, of sorts, but Warner offers plenty of wiggle-room for argument.
Tussling over the finer points of queer programming, though, is only half the fun of reading this book. Microwave a box of pizza snacks or mac-and-cheese, demand “your” sofa seat, and dive into the nostalgia of old TV shows, most of them from the later last century. Yep, your faves are here. It’s like having an oldies channel on paper, and in your hand.
This is a must-have for former kids and current TV addicts who are happy to see themselves represented on TV. If that’s you, who brought the chips? “The Rainbow Age of Television” will just click.
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