You Gotta Give Them Hope

NYMag.com – By Carl Swanson

Troubadour of sadness Antony tries to shake off the solipsism.

Antony Hegarty is afraid he might have had too much tea. That pot of apricot-lemon chai has, he fears, gotten him all riled up, and now he’s railing against President Bush’s last-minute regulations (“I consider it virulence. It’s people with virulent mental illness of their male archetype. It’s the same thing that informed the conquistadors. It’s the same thing getting them to pass out smallpox blankets”) and Sean Penn’s being cast in Milk (“It’s like blackface to me … it’s a continuing Hollywood minstrel show, co-opting queer stories and perversely building up the careers of these heterosexual bastards with the plumage of effeminacies, that they can wear this plumage of effeminacies without having to really be accountable”).