Barry Manilow Comes Out Again

Barry Manilow went public with his decades long guy-guy relationship a couple years ago. Nobody seemed to care, so he continues to provide People magazine with follow up coming out cover stories. Maybe there’s an advance to cover or something.

Manilow claims he never officially came out during his almost forty year gay relationship with his business manager, Garry Kief, because he felt he would disappoint his fans. Those being largely chubby women who dreamed of Manilow as a tender lover who brought them a Grand Slam breakfast in bed after an amazing orgasm. He likely does that. You’ll never know.

It’s hard to put yourself back into the 70’s when closeting may have been a relevant commercial matter. Elton John was pretending to marry girls and Rock Hudson was an aging Hollywood man’s man. Everybody knew everybody was gay because most everybody was either fucking one another or attending the parties where they were. Though the general audience before cable news and definitely the Internet were supremely naive. Also, they didn’t understand what it meant when you accompanied Bette Midler in a basement club in Greenwich.

In the new millennia we can openly accept that almost all theater people and a bulk of Hollywood entertainers are gay. For singers, it’s fifty-fifty. The ones singing about pussy constantly are most suspect. If you don’t like gays or Jews or blacks or the occasional Irish guy, don’t push the power button on your home entertainment system. Boring straight guys still get to be President. It’s a compromise.