GLR May-June 2026

They’re Back! A couple of issues ago we ran a photo of a statue that had materialized one day on the National Mall in Wash ington depicting Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump doing a kind of dance while holding hands. A new statue takes the ho BTW 38 years old and has matinee-idol good looks? That he’s the new, openly gay Prime Minister of the Netherlands? It’s true: Jetten took office in late February as the youngest prime min ister in Dutch history, which is not even his most important dis tinction for our pur poses. The fact that he’s openly gay is a newsworthy item in itself, to be sure, but there’s also a curious side story that’s a case of life imitating art. Jetten is currently en gaged to be married to his longtime boy friend Nico Keenan,

moerotic suggestion to a new level of innuendo. Titled Kingof theWorld , the twelve-foot statue recapitulates the iconic em brace of Jack and Rose in Titanic , a moment of both world con quest and romantic love. The plaque on the statue is worth quoting in full: “The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches. This monument honors the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on lux urious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches.” And Then They Came for Ghosts Taken by itself, this could be just the raving fantasy of a lone State Rep. from the Upper Midwest, one Mary Miller (R-Ill.), who made quite a splash by publicly denouncing the widespread practice of hiring strippers to entertain children in public schools in Illinois, starting as early as the fourth grade. Of course there are no strippers in schools and no plans to hire any, and when asked to name a single instance of this happening, Rep. Miller was speechless. And yet, she’s not alone; this is all a part of a Re publican-sponsored bill titled the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” (H.R. 7661), which is filled with similar chimeras, including the assertion that transgender people do not exist at all. Another Miller (Arthur) wrote a whole play about the invention of social evils to be rooted out by what ever means in The Crucible . In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy brought back the Salem Witch Trials in his pursuit of Com munists in the State Department and Hollywood and every where. Well, at least Communists really do (or did) exist in the real world. We’re now entering (or re-entering) a phase in which the invented realities of the Internet—like those of the Church fathers in the Middle Ages—are finding their way into the official laws of the land. Elected to Be Illustrated What can one say about Rob Jetten? That his name sounds like he comes from the future? That he’s

who happens to be—wait for it—an Olympic hockey player. Also, as luck would have it, our contributing artist Charles Hefling was jonesin’ to do a caricature of the new PM, and how could we refuse an offer like that?

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