Jodie Foster’s Inspirational, Vague Riddle Inspires Teens to Come Out, Sort of, Maybe

ob·fus·cate
/ˈäbfəˌskāt/

Verb
Render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible.
Bewilder (someone).Synonyms
darken – obscure – confuse – cloud – dim – becloud

I didn’t realize that word was still in my vocabulary, much less than I could spell it right. I was wondering if I was imagining it, a relic of my vocabulary laden obsessive reader younger days when I didn’t realize that most people do not use words such as “obfuscate,” or “supercilious” in everyday conversation, even if it was precisely the meaning you wanted to convey.

But I looked it up and I saw that I hadn’t completely lost my touch. This was exactly how the most of her speech struck me. Obfuscating and irritating, with a twist of supercilious thrown in for good measure.

Come out, stay in, play hopscotch across the closet’s threshold when outsiders are around.. I don’t care. If you have convictions, then by all means, stick with them, but do it gracefully, without taking potshots at people who’ve handled things differently. There are a world of options in between a wall of silence and a prime time reality show.

I don’t really understand thinking out and proud, means being proud just to be gay any more than being proud to be straight. Those aren’t qualities you cultivate, they come factory installed. The pride, or lack of it, is demonstrated by how you proceed after you leave the factory showroom. It doesn’t always mean making your life an open book. While I couldn’t understand choosing a military career–ever, but especially prior to the end of DADT–, if you did, it probably wasn’t a good idea to have a rainbow flag hanging off the back of your jeep.

The same thing applies if you spend time tooling around places like Uganda, or a good chunk of the Mideast. Discretion isn’t always a bad thing. Maybe this is why is why I see Anderson Cooper’s silence in a different light. Although in the public eye, he wasn’t an entertainer, and his job brought him to places a lot less gay friendly than southern California. He wasn’t so closeted that he his public image included a girlfriend, with boyfriends snuck into this home accompanied by armed guards under the cover of darkness. My husband mentioned several years ago that a male friend of a colleague had dated him. I didn’t think about that again until he came out publicly. If he wasn’t using his show to “protest too much,” while tailing and trashing those who didn’t, then he was welcome to his public persona of asexuality. I outgrew The Enquirer mentality long before I could go into a bar without fake I.D. (which, back then, that meant being under 18). I don’t care what any celebrity does, as long as they use the power of their celebrity status for good, instead of evil. Or at least, do no harm.

But for someone in the creative side of the entertainment business, here and now, not in the McCarthy era, I would think that out and proud would be saying “Here I am world, either take it, or don’t let the door hit you on the way out,.” in both public and private life. Nothing to prove, but nothing to go of your way to hide. No need to make an announcement, because if anyone didn’t know, they probably weren’t all that interested.

I didn’t have any previous opinion about Jodie Foster. I had a hard time separating her from Tatum O’Neil, except to remember that she was in Silence of the Lambs, and her last name probably meant she wasn’t the one related to Ryan O’Neil. Plus, she’s worked recently. I don’t know many screen actors, and the last time I cared about the personal life of a celebrity was around 1968 when I found out that “eligible bachelor” Davy Jones was long since married, with a one year old daughter. Ah, the days when it was possible to keep a secret! But even then, I wished him well, and forgot about it. I really didn’t care, as long as they entertained me, and didn’t act like complete asses in their private lives. As long as they didn’t act like, for instance, Mel Gibson.

So if I’d been at the award ceremony, I would have just said “Oh, she’s gay? Maybe I heard that already, but I didn’t remember.”

Or better yet, if the food, drink and conversation had my mouth too busy for anything else, just a shrug and “Whatever.”

I know I wouldn’t still be thinking about it on Thursday.