I have to admit that I more or less cracked up when I read the headline at my friend Rex Wockner‘s blog this morning — Someone spank me. Forgetting it was the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising (coincidentily the topic of Wikipedia‘s Today’s Featured Article), Rex went to the beach yesterday, but, this morning, there’s Rex having an oopsie moment and writing about Russian activist Nikolai Alekseev (one of the organizers of the recent Slavic Pride which took place during the Eurovision finals in Moscow) who is writing (in Russian no less) about Liza Minelli doing Pride in Paris (suck it up you Liza-mocking Datalounge bitches) alongside the openly-gay mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, who was stabbed a few years back by some twisted religious fanatic (like there’s any other kind).
Connecting the Stonewall riots, Liza (daughter of Judy, whose death may or may not have driven the Stonewall queens over the edge and into the street) and Paris, of course, brings to my mind the phrase: Sous les pavés, la plage !
Translation: Beneath the cobblestones, the beach.
The phrase derives from the late sixties protests in Paris (yes, I really am that old), and I’ve always considered it to be among the most positive of protest slogans — on a par perhaps with sí se puede, which, of course, was recently co-opted by a certain self-described fierce advocate and rendered nearly meaningless by his subsequent lack of attention to the gay and lesbian rights he claimed to champion.
So, happy 40th Stonewall Anniversary, brothers and sisters.
Now get back to work.
