http://youtu.be/I1SIzuxmmQE
Jason Russell’s “Kony 2012” viral campaign was one of the big news stories this spring—firs for its sheer popularity, then for the creepy anti-gay connections news sites were able to link to his group, Invisible Children.
Then, within weeks of the clip’s release the blond-haired savoir got a little loony and went on a bizarre naked rampage through the streets of San Diego before eventually getting arrested for vandalizing property and masturbating in public. After his wife released a statement saying his wild ride was a “brief psychotic episode” we never heard from Jason again.
Until now.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
On Sunday, Russell appeared on Oprah‘s Next Chapter to discuss his meltdown. During their chat, Oprah brought up the rumors that Russell is gay:
Oprah: There were all these rumors that you were gay… that you were running through the streets nude because you were gay.
Jason Russell: Yeah, I’ve heard those rumors…In the video I was snapping my finger up and down. I grew up in theater. My parents started a large children’s theater organization,o when you take me, times it by ten, I don’t know what was in my head but it was controlling my body and making me do really strange things.”
Given his connection to anti-gay groups, we certainly would like to hear Jason address his sexuality. But we’re a little bothered that Oprah makes the connection that we all thought he was gay because of his naked meltdown.
Oprah gurl, that’s not why we thought he was gay. Gay men don’t need to run naked in the streets masturbating to get laid. We have Scruff for that.
There’s plenty of non-psychotic footage of Russell that pings the ‘dar, like this clip from a talk he gave at Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University—Russell pretty much outs himself with his slow-leak sibilant esses and talk of “making Hollywood musicals like Moulin Rouge and Chicago and Hairspray.”
Dumdum
That’s right honey none of us are Gay we are all just very theatrical.
MikeE
I think people should be considerably MORE concerned with the simple fact that his “documentary” on Kony was a complete and total fabrication.
mcflyer54
I’m just surprised that he didn’t ask Oprah about her “relationship” with Gayle … after all, probably more people have assumed that she had something going with her BFF than ever thought that Jason Russell was gay “because he was running naked through the streets”. While people might think Russell is gay it certainly has little to do with his “psychotic episode”. Regardless of the guy’s sexual orientation he’s little more than a snake oil salesman and con-man.
Taliaferro
The man is a charlatan – who cares if he is gay or not? He is toxic on many fronts and what self-respecting gay man would want aught to do with him? Theatrical – is that what you call running naked in the street, ranting and masturbating? Other terms – derranged, psychotic, deluded come to mind.
Christopher
One has to wonder if Mr Russell coming out in the public sphere once again has more to do with trying to sweep away the embarrassing incident and to attempt to rebuild his reputation as a credible film maker as opposed to a nutcracker. But then again how are we as audience members suppose to reflect on the nature of his films if he the director disavows a reflection of his own nature and pretends it was all just a moment that went awry.
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2012/10/jason-russell-reflects-on-his-meltdown-and-gay-rumors-with-oprah-winfrey/
FunMe
Closet queen in denial!
That interview will do NOTHING to repair his “image”. He’s already proven to the world that he is a CON man and a crazy one as well. Who knows, he’s probably a drug addict, too.
Ogre Magi
That man is a gay homosexual
Rockery
GIRL PLEASE!
balehead
He`s nit gay….Just Super Duper Gay!….but also funny!
balehead
not…soory about that! lol!
balehead
Oprah doesn’t really like the gays? Cue surprise….
MK Ultra
There is no question that he is gay. That much is obvious.
Likewise there is no question that everything he does, including that ridiculous Kony project, is shameless self-promotion.
So he’s a flamboyantly closeted gay and will stoop to any level in order to promote himself…
Survey says -He should get into politics and join the republican party.
FunMe
I forgot to mention one more thing, once South Park has made fun of you, it’s pretty much over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhNneU5shTs&feature=player_embedded
“Jacking-it in San Diego” Haha!
mikeandrewsdantescove
I remember Jason snapping his fingers and cursing the devil. Glad he’s in a better place.
Allen Andrew ManoftheYear I t u n e s
Cam
“”
Oprah: There were all these rumors that you were gay… that you were running through the streets nude because you were gay.”
__________________
Closet cases like Oprah say some of the stupidest things.
BruceeWilson
Invisible Children is an evangelical ministry – it’s billed as such at elite evangelical right funding confabs such as The Gathering, and it has been registered as a dues-paying ministry with the evangelical Barnabas Group. The nonprofit has, however, publicly presented itself as a secular effort.
Academics who study the Great Lakes region of East Africa have made some rather scathing critiques of Invisible Children, and at two different screenings of KONY 2012 earlier this year in Central and Northern Uganda, Ugandans themselves were so infuriated with Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 video that they pelted the movie screens with rocks.
Further, Invisible Children’s ties to members of the Fellowship Foundation’s elite leadership networks raising troubling human rights issues given the work that journalist Jeff Sharlet has down in exposing the Fellowship’s ties the Uganda’s so-called “kill the gays” Bill. I’ve exposed all these connections, and more, at http://www.talk2action.org
Generally speaking, Invisible Children has enjoyed rather improbable, early high-level access to Ugandan and U.S. government officials, and that raises some interesting questions in light of Uganda’s rather troubled human rights record ; Uganda has been charged with multiple human rights abuses that, in scope and severity, rival or exceed those attributed to Joseph Kony and his LRA.
In a 2005 ruling ( http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/116/10521.pdf ), from the International Court of Justice at the Hague, Uganda and the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces were accused of a range of human rights violations and atrocities in Northern Uganda and the DR Congo. Recently, the UPDF has also been implicated in supporting Congo warlord Thomas Lubanga, now on trial by the International Criminal Court for human rights violations in the DR Congo.
The UPDF has also been charged, in 2012 by Western human rights groups, with committing rape and looting in the Congo while searching for Joseph Kony. Accusations against President Yoweri Museveni include charges of a planned, slow genocide committed against the Acholi people of Northern Uganda. The U.S. State Department has, in addition, released a 2012 report detailing human rights violations under the Museveni regime.
Also recently, in late 2011 as reported by Oxfam, Ugandan troops evicted over 20,000 Norther Ugandans from their homes and farmlands, and burned their houses and crops, to make way for a British corporation that plans to start tree farms.
Jason Rusell has, most recently, compared Joseph Kony to Hitler and, in a rather odd coincidence, Yoweri Museveni is, according to journalist Milton Allimadi, on record as having twice praised Adolf Hitler’s methods. As Catholic academic Todd David Whitmore suggests, the Museveni regime has had a long-term agenda of depopulating Northern Uganda, to clear the land of its former inhabitants and open up its rich farmland for elite exploitation.
In another odd coincidence, the population of Northern Uganda, the Acholi tribespeople, were driven into concentration camps by the Ugandan army (the UPDF) in the late 1990s, and were there preyed upon by Joseph Kony’s maurading LRA. Reports are that UPDF troops allegedly guarding the squalid, initially un-provisioned concentration camps would simply run away when the LRA attacked.