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from: Andrew Sullivan

Free-Thinking in P'Town? Forget About It

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001, at 1:35 PM ET

Jonathan,

Alas, your P'town has been somewhat altered. Blame the boom. Many of the poor kids and manual laborers and fishermen and local craftspeople have been forced out by skyrocketing real estate prices and high rents. Their place has been taken by weekending Bostonians and even, God help us, Fire Island types with too much money. (I'm one of the invading guppies, of course.) Beneath the surface, there's still genuine life--plenty of painters and writers and former Clinton officials in drag. But the live-and-let-live mentality has been worn down by liberal Puritanism. You can barely sneeze here without a permit; the cops get called if your dog poops on the beach and you don't notice; boomer ex-hippies have succeeded in stopping one beach from allowing nudies; don't try to smoke a cigarette or make an ethnic joke; the off-Broadway show Naked Boys Singing has had a "cease-and-desist" order placed upon it not because it's sentimental dreck but because it has naked boys singing in it. You can't even wave your willy in Provincetown anymore without the thought police barging in. It's enough to make you miss the hippies of the '70s.

As for free-thinking, forget about it. Tell anyone here--literally anyone--that you supported Bush, and they look at you as if you just confessed to murdering your five kids in a bathtub. (Actually, P'towners have more sympathy for child-killers.) I was at a dinner party earlier this summer, and we began to discuss Bush's environmental policies. One woman at the table simply refused to discuss it. She said that the notion that Bush had any environmental policy was "ridiculous." End of debate. I've been reading the Boston Globe here a little. It was bad enough a few years ago, but now it's pure propaganda. It's like reading the news as written by Terry McAuliffe. The most you can expect from political discussion is a recitation of Bushisms--and that's it. They even think they're being hilariously funny. I don't think rednecks in rural Alabama are more closed-minded than some of these folks. And they certainly don't want their ideas examined or engaged. Why bother when you're basking in the warm moral approval of all your peers?

Not everyone, of course. There are some wonderful, open-minded free spirits here as well. And plenty who are what we call here "used-to-bes." Not "has-beens," but people who come here after consuming careers to take stock, to think, to get off the treadmill for a moment--like the drag queen in the Times. When I found out I had HIV eight long years ago, my first impulse was to come here. The space heals.

That said, I was in a ferocious argument on the street at 2:30 a.m. over Gary Condit. I don't think he should agree to an interview. What is there to discuss? His feelings about being lynched by a media mob for something he's not even been named as a suspect in? Will you watch? And what, psychologically, will you be watching for?

Andrew

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Andrew Sullivan

Free-Thinking in P'Town? Forget About It

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001, at 1:35 PM ET
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Jonathan Lear is a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. Andrew Sullivan writes daily for andrewsullivan.com, writes the "TRB" column for the New Republic, and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.
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