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Ricky Martin is a tabloid gay

April 3rd 2010 05:17
ricky martin

VYOOS EDITORIAL
The main news stories around the world on Monday, March 29, were the terrorist attacks on the Moscow subway, a surprise visit by the US president to Afghanistan, and the announcement by Ricky Martin that he is gay.

Most non-tabloid media rated the first two stories more important, but you wouldn't know it from the astonishment, applause, approbation, anger, angst and airheadedness with which the community greeted the third.


Why all the song and dance? Well, the strident reactions came mostly from America, where conservative, prurient, judgmental, religious conservatism is, like Sarah Palin's glasses, a fashion accessory. America is the world's biggest importer of eggshells, upon which the country's liberal-minded citizens walk.

Admittedly, Martin's announcement was itself less than robustly self-affirming. It came on his web site, as follows: "To keep living as I did up until today would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids where born with. Enough is enough. This has to change."

Indirect diminution is not a concept that commonly confronts the fans (or foes) of pop stars, so we will try to clarify. The children to which Martin refers are his twin sons, Matteo and Valentino, who were born in August 2008. So what Ricky is saying is that having children made it clear to him that he was gay.

We hope that's clear.

Of course, Ricky could have said something like "I knew I was gay years ago" but, as his marketing advisers would have pointed out, there is little headline mileage in such banalities. Often, truth isn't sexy.


Also, you don't have the fun of teasing the religious right.



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Today's news: Fare's fair

January 14th 2010 02:52
new york cabs
There are an estimated 13,000 taxis in New York city
It's an ongoing saga: person leaves valuables in New York cab, cab driver finds person and returns valuables.

The latest involves a 72-year-old Italian tourist named Felicia Lettieri, a young taxi driver named Mukul Asadujjaman, and a large purse containing about US$21,000 in cash, jewellery worth several thousand dollars and some passports.

Asadujjaman, who is a native of Bangladesh and is studying medicine in the US when he isn't driving taxis, found the purse on the back seat of his cab, and inside it found an address for the Italian tourist group of which Ms Lettieri was part. Asadujjaman borrowed a friend's car and drove about 80 kilometres to the address, only to find no-one there. He left his phone number, drove home, was contacted, and drove all the way back to return the purse.

He then declined to accept a reward, saying his Muslim faith prevented him doing so.

In 2007, Osman Chowdhury, another Bangladeshi driving cabs in the US, returned a bag containing diamond rings worth $500,000. He had to track down the owner in Texas.

And in 2008 Mohamed Khalil, of Egyptian background, dropped a passenger at Newark Liberty Airport, and later discovered the passenger had left a violin in the cab. When he tracked down the owner and returned the violin, he learned that the man was Philippe Quint, a world-famous violinist, and that the violin was a Stradivarius, made in 1723, and worth about US$4 million.

As well as a cash reward, Quint gave Khalil a 30-minute private performance and then invited his entire family to Quint's next performance, which was at Carnegie Hall.


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