MovieChat Forums > The Times of Harvey Milk (1985) Discussion > Wtf How come i've never heard of Mr. Mil...

Wtf How come i've never heard of Mr. Milk.


How come i've never heard of Mr. Milk...

You think with the "Liberal Media" You'd hear more about the life of Harvey Milk.
Added to the fact that there still isn't a Vocal out-of-closet homosexual in public office 20 + years since his death.

Very good movie by the way.

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The media is only as liberal as the conservative organizations that own them.
By the way, have you ever heard of Representative Barney Frank (D - MA)?
(Not that he has the balls that Milk had.)

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Yeah, the NY Times and the L.A. Times are very, very conservative!! Come on, that's absurd. The media is very liberal. Every study undertaken has shown that liberals control the media from the street reporter to the board of directors.

As for Milk, if you lived in the S.F. Bay Area, like I did, you would have heard of him quite a bit.










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America put the "fun" back into "Fundamentalism".

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Liberals control the media? Is that a joke? I suppose Fox News is a bastion of liberality! And have you listened to talk radio lately? That whole "liberal media" stuff is just another right wing missinformation attempt to discredit liberal ideas and thinking.

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Obviously, "liberal" means something vastly different than, say, 50 yr ago.

NYT sat on Iran-Contra story for a year, because editor-in-chief was Reaganite; late Arthur Schlesinger, leading liberal light, spent 40+ yr redefining JFK, according to his invented specs.

"Liberal media" is a decoy from the ruling right wing elitist zealots. Janet Malcolm wrote that every journalist knows that what he does is morally indefensible: liberals commit the morally indefensible; right wing zealots profit by it. & So Harvey Milk, Lenny Bruce: metaphors for liberals.

Anyway, other than Mark Isham's creepy score, the best part I remember of "Times of" was the crusty old union guy telling his mates that they had to back Milk @the time he was trying get non-union brand Coors out of Castro St. bars. When City Super Milk & Mayor Moscone were shot, shooter used now-infamous "Twinkie defense," now also a metaphor for liberals. Milk was a civic activist who just happened to be gay, & we know that the establishment wonks never question what you say, just your opportunity ("Now is not a good time.") to say it. You're always a danger when you take America @its word.
51depasser

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Because our history books are still filled with archaic information.

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"Every study undertaken has shown that liberals control the media from the street reporter to the board of directors"

Hey, I guess if your idea of a liberal is Alan Colmes, then sure...Are you referring to studies done by Fox News or something? Every legitimate study done by any media watch group has shown time and again that the media is little more than a right-wing mouthpiece for the U.S. government. By choice of course, since obviously the media is made up of major corporations who have a vested interest in keeping silent about the things that really matter. I can't imagine the stupidity it takes to believe that the U.S. media is liberal. It defies all logic. It would be the death of for profit media if it worked in the interest of the people and not the government.

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Sorry, you are the one whose brain matter is deficient if you think the media represents a conservative view point. It is most decidedly liberal--something like 85% of American journalists define themselves as liberal. And so it follows that they would write stories with their own ideology, even if it is subconscious. Fox News has only been around for the past couple of decades, and can hardly be characterized as right wing. You just think it is because you are so used to a liberal bias in the media, that you cannot identify news without that built in leftwing nonsense.

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I love when brain-dead conservatives throw out made-up statistics. "85% OF American journalists define themselves as liberal." Oh really? 85% huh? Why not 90% or 95% or 99%?

You'll never win this argument with a conservative. The truth about Republicans is that they are a bunch of cry-babies who are never wrong. Even when they're wrong, they're still not wrong.

They can control the Presidency, The Congress, The Judiciary and STILL COMPLAIN about how oppressed they are.

It takes a certain level of narcissism to even try to convince people of that. So what do I say? I say, screw them. Just ignore whatever they write. They're worthless anyway.

Bananas? I ain't got no stinkin' bananas!

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That's very liberal, to accept that 85% of Am. journalists define themselves as liberal. Very trusting.

Still, it's a stretch to go from 85% in a (presumably) poll to implying the 85% have an ideology. (Personally, it's hard for me to fathom that a primarily unconscious crowd like journalists would have a subconscious.)

I think it was the old publisher of Time, Henry Booth Luce, that said, "Integrity is a word I left @Yale." Leaf thru Janet Malcolm's The Journalist & the Murderer (former Army Green Beret Capt. MacDonald's fraud suit against journalist Joe McGinnis): whether liberal or conservative barely matters; I'll bet 85% of all Americans confuse their right to free speech with a right to free air time. & There isn't a journalist or TV talking head that isn't ready to massage that confusion.
51depasser

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Fox News has only been around for the past couple of decades, and can hardly be characterized as right wing.


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Forget about "studies". Read the newspaper. Watch the news. I am liberal and NONE of the mainstream media comes remotely close to representing my point of view. At the same time, I can turn on FoxNews or ABCNews and listen to nothing but endless and repetitive (and patently false) versions of the news told with a completely conservative spin. This shouldn't surprise anybody. Look at the corporations and individuals who now control the media in this country. They are a bunch of conservative demagogues who give millions to conservative causes and politicians.

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I grew up in San Francisco, but never learned about him in school. Perhaps the reason why he was never mentioned in my somewhat progressive Catholic high school was because it is the alma mater of Dan White!

It really is a shame that I did not learn about this extraordinary public figure until recent times. The City is becoming so bland and yuppie-ish in so many ways. Sometimes, it is hard to remember that this was once a working-class city with passionate people who tried to make average people's lives better. I wish I was old enough in the late seventies to appreciate the efforts of Milk, Moscone, et al.

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"The media is very liberal."

lol hilarious repubican!

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I know - it's weird. I first saw this doc on IFC in 2001, my third year of university! This stuff should be manditory in schools, just as JFK and Martin Luther King are. I suppose it will be. In time perhaps we'll see a time when high school students can open their social studies or history texts to a meaty section on the history of the gay movement.

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Paul-dallas, I completely agree with your post. Mr. Milk seems to have done much for his community, and for the equality of the average citizen. The thing that frustrated me after I watched the documentary was the lack of justice for Mr. Milk and the mayor. Along with this idea, was the small amount of media coverage he received after the tragedy. As the documentary illustrated, that is happens when people challenge white, middle class religious values. I still hope that someday Harvey's fight for equality may be required reading.

And as for the post above concerning how liberal or conservative the media may be, I only have this to say: The media are only as liberal as their corporate masters and editors allow them to be.

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Try reading about Sheila James Kuehl a two-term Califonia state senator and former assemblywoman. You may remember her as the nerdy Zelda Gilroy on "The many loves of Dobie Gillis." You are right though, there aren't very many.

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So, did you get your question answered yet jarmontiff?
We kind of went off subject.
So, now I'll try to answer it.
We as a country, we forget our history very quickly and that is why we are destine to repeat it over and over again.
Plus Milk was gay and we STILL don't talk about gay people in history ESPECAILLY in schools!
Now I will go off subject.
Harvey Milk was a great man and not that had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. He was an original thinker and didn't care what people thought of him. He believed in the neighborhoods and in people of the community. He actually cared about the little people. He didn't believe in big corporations. It would have been wonderful to see what he would have done had he lived even just a few years longer. I doubt he would like the Walgreens that is now just down the street from where his Camera shop one was.

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I first came out back in 1996. In that time, I'd heard of Harvey Milk and only that he'd been the first openly gay person to get elected to office in the US. Yet, that was all I'd heard of him until last year when Showtime (I think it was) aired the movie Milk. In the program description, it said that he was assassinated, but I never expected he'd been killed by a disgruntled former coworker. I was blown away by the movie and then watched this documentary on YouTube. Since then, I've been trying to read everything I can about Harvey Milk. I recently got the movie on DVD, and according to Amazon, this documentary is being rereleased on DVD next month. When I order it, I'm also going to be getting Randy Shilts' book as well as another book I saw on Amazon about Harvey Milk.

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I know that here in the northeast part of the U.S. the mentality of most are - nothing that happens outside of the northeast part of the US matters. Even the majority of the media here acts that way.

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