Rant: in drag on the silver screen

preface:

 https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1665713471193772035?t=QTuuP6TPcss56HohmcP-Tw&s=19

And comments.

Rant in response:

Yes & no. In the comments some one mentions Max Clinger from MASH. . . 

While yes, that's the joke, there's an obvious motivation in hollywood history to make this joke as often as they could get an actor in drag, and only with the stars. It is never a side character. 

So who is the butt of the drag joke really? But it's also an old tradition in show dating back to Shakespeare and further for different reasons. 

Shakespear played it up to satirize his oppressive culture where the art of show was concerned; PT Barnum made the Bearded Lady a standard joke. 

Then there was Vaudville that came creeping into everything show, and from Vaudville came much of Hollywood. So American t.v. & movies of the past don't get such an easy excuse. Their roots have always been politically & morally activist in nature. The joke was never that Bing Crosby made an ugly woman; the joke was on Big Crosby. 

Progressives have always hated the standard of human success and those who became its figureheads. You just never got the real joke because it was never funny. 

It was never about being funny. It was always about upending social norms that create success. And now we are at the end game when you will own nothing, have no rights, and must accept what you thought was a joke in good fun as normal reality and good. 

The con is so much longer than people realize. 

End of rant.