With tickets at $450 a plate ($650 VIP), and a house filled with corporate execs, high-profile politicians and Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, the Human Rights Campaign gala Saturday night at New York City‘s Waldorf-Astoria was a definitely a high-powered event.
As predicted, Queering OWS “occupied” the event—if by occupy you mean stood across the street from the hotel with signs and chants while the gala went on, unfazed, upstairs on the third floor.
Outside we spoke with the protest’s unofficial leaders, Joe Annino and Jeffrey Marx, who said that they were unhappy that financial giant Goldman Sachs was being honored with the HRC’s Corporate Equality Award. “Their idea of equality is that everyone can come to the country club,” Marx says.
Inside, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin took the podium with his two daughters, Becca and Olivia, and delivered a rousing speech equating gay marriage with family values.
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After we chatted with Johnny Weir and hubby Victor Voronov, we hustled over the step-and-repeat for a glimpse of Wintour, who was presented with the HRC Ally of Equality Award by Glee creator Ryan Murphy (see photo at top).
Joked one photographer, “That’s the longest I’ve ever seen Anna pose for a red carpet.”
Later, fashion designer Michael Kors and his husband, Lance Le Pere (left, with Kors), posed for photos. One shutterbug called out to the Project Runway judge,”Hey Michael, can you kiss your husband?”
The designer joked back, “Can I kiss my husband? Yes. Will I kiss my husband? That’s the question.”
And the answer? No.
Fed up
“We got tired and left”
How is this even journalism?
Damian
also, “unphased”? Do you know what a dictionary is?
(it’s ‘unfazed’, for the record)
CBRad
The McDonald’s around the corner would have been a cooler place to hang out than at this snotfest of out-of-towners (including the “journalists”) posing in front of that Tyvek insulation wall.
Sceth
The Annino and Marx characters are discardable vermin. To their idea that “queer people are poor, therefore supporting the queers requires supporting the poor,” a reasoning person might say, “being queer does not in and of itself make someone poor,” but they discard logic.
And dear god, they dress badly.
CBRad
@Sceth: And that one with the lipstick, and the “reporter” talking to him : such awful gay voices. This whole thing could turn me into such a misanthrope.
Oh Dear (John From England)
Pease, can someone tell me what exactly Wintour has done towards gay rights? I know gay is like number 5 in the publicity manual ‘how to gain media attention, accolades and fame without doing anything 1-10’, the other ironically also includes a Vogue front cover but what does SHE gain from this?
I guess with the fame climate rapidly changing, her position at Vogue is not as exclusive and glossy as it once was, I mean, you have to be pretty desperate to hang out with Blake Lively and call her a fashion icon-poor Audrey Hepburn is rolling in her grave-but gaining more publicity strategically is supposed to lead to some..work….
What does or can she do as she’s no Tina Brown or Arriana Huffington….
Victoria
Oh good. The snotty reporter WAS from Queerty. Everyone thought he was lying and was some HRC/Goldman Sachs sugar daddy’s lapdog sent to get footage. I suppose both could still be true. This blog sucks. Always.
Marx
Hey Queerty. There are no leaders, even “unofficial” ones. Out of the entire, diverse crowd, you just happened to interview two white guys? We are not leaders. We’re part of a movement and helped with organizing, but to suggest leaders in any capacity is just plain untrue. I sincerely hope that our group is wrong and that actual good work was being done inside the Waldorf Astoria – making moves to include trans rights, figuring out funding for the LGBT homeless population, and being financially responsible with HRC’s spending. All I can see is fancypants photo ops. xxo
Ray
The HRC exists only to beg for money. Stop feeding the monster and it will die.
JayKay
A country club that lets everyone in would be a pretty shitty country club.
jason
I don’t like Anna Wintour or her magazine Vogue. It’s sexist towards women. The images are designed to empower sleazy straight guys. Anna Wintour is an enabler of the sleazy straight guy fantasy. Her gay rights devotion is as questionable as Madonna’s. Anyone who enables sleazy straight guys is also enabling their homophobia.
wc1
Stop supporting HRC, they are the Komen Foundation of LBGT rights groups.
jason
Anna Wintour is an ugly creature whose magazine Vogue photo-shops and/or air-brushes photos of women so as to comply with the advertisers in the magazine. Her magazine puts an enormous amount of pressure on women to abide by a certain look.
Vogue is a disgraceful, anti-woman publication and Anna Wintour is an ugly creature who enables this.