After six long decades and several hit singles, we’ve finally discovered a rare group of people that doesn’t enjoy dancing to David Bowie’s music in front of the mirror: the Catholics. (Then again, what do Catholics like?)
In a blog post condemning Bowie’s newest star-studded music video for “The Next Day“, Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote a scathing review accusing the legendary singer of being a “switch-hitting, bisexual, senior citizen from London” who “hangs out in a nightclub dump frequented by priests, cardinals and half-naked women” in “a video strewn with characteristic excess.”
Call us old-fashioned, but we think it makes him sound pretty freakin’ awesome.
The video stars Bowie alongside Marion Cotillard and Gary Oldman, playing a prostitute suffering from the stigmata and a kinky bishop respectively.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Perhaps it’s not the video’s contents that Donohue finds most offensive, but Bowie’s indecision when it comes to religion. In the post, Donohue cites a quote Bowie delivered more than 10 years ago about questioning his own religion: “I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s a little bit that holds on. Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple months.”
Welp, guess we know where he stands now!
Michael David Barber
Poor Bill. A brainless Army of 1.
mummycop
First off, Bill Donohue and the Catholic League aren’t “The Catholics” They’re “some Catholics”.
Secondly, David bowie IS a switch hitting bisexual senior citizen. None of those things are insults.
Kieran
Only in America could you have a Divorced Doofus like Donohue acting as official spokesbigot for Catholics.
Polaro
@Michael David Barber: Yep,I wonder why anyone gives this guy any press, the Catholic League has one member. He is not only irrelevant, he is dishonest in promoting himself for being something he isn’t – a spokesperson for the church. Long live David Bowie.
oilburner
The sad thing is bill Donohue is speaking the truth
Gigi Gee
“Who?”
– David Bowie
Homophile
@oilburner: @oilburner:
Why is it sad?
I fail to see the insult. I suppose one could take issue with the redundant term “Switch-hitting”, but the rest is just fact.
Dakotahgeo
@mummycop: Actually, I wish Brother Donahue would get over his jealousy of everyone else having fun in life!
Brian
Bowie has previously denied being bisexual. His camp image during the 70’s was misinterpreted by the media as being ‘bisexual’
Niall
Didn’t he deny being bisexual and say he only kept up with the image for the attention it got him?
GeriHew
@Brian: Wrong Brian. Wrong.
Bowie denied his bisexuality 11 years after coming out because he had come to feel that it was holding back his career in America.
1. Bowie declared himself gay in an interview with Michael Watts in the 22 January 1972 issue of Melody Maker. (this was when he was married to his first wife Angie: who to her credit has never hidden the fact that both she and David are bisexual.)
2. Several of the songs Bowie wrote and recorded in the 70s are clearly “bisexual” songs: E.G. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crNI8DtP6IY (John, I’m Only Dancing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IQdhUd4V1o (Rebel Rebel)
3. In a September 1976 interview with Playboy, Bowie said: “It’s true—I am a bisexual. But I can’t deny that I’ve used that fact very well. I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
4 Then in a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was “the biggest mistake I ever made” and “I was always a closet heterosexual”
5. Nearly 20 years later Bowie quietly came out as bisexual again.
Asked in 2002 by Blender whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied:
“Interesting. [Long pause] I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that bisexuality became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”
Have you got it now?