If there were to be one star emerging from the McCain/Palin 2008 clusterfuck to meteoric mediocrity, I never would have imagined it would be the sperm donor to Bristol - Levi Johnston.

 While Bristol is at home forced into being a martyr to her mother's pro-life cause (read: tending to their child), Sarah is talking to Chinese businessmen about capitalism (as if they need the lesson from someone who has not experienced the economic system, only verbally humped it between August and November 2008). Todd is riding snowmobiles and blood letting the earth of it's lucious black gold, the other kids are, I dunno, eating taco bell or something. All the while, Levi Johnston is packing plans to show his package to the word, male and female, gay and straight, in PlayGirl. He's gallivanting around New York with reporters from Vanity Fair and getting paid to go to parties. His fame is kind of benign like fellow deadbeat dad Jon Gosselin, however, his fame has become something else very interesting: he's been pegged as a gay icon.

To be a gay icon, one must be crowned as such by the collective gay community (lovingly referred to as the Velvet Mafia). This seems highly unlikely for a self-proclaimed redneck from Alaska who is a proven heterosexual breeder. Generally, gay icons do something for the cause of the gay community. They are promoting equality, embrace a flamboyant appearance and charisma, and are often gay themselves. These icons are people like Cher, Tammy Faye, Jackie Kennedy, Perez Hilton, and of course Madonna.

In my experience as a fruit fly (5 of 6 of my close male friends are gay), I can say that the gay community is a very easily mobilized and cohesive army. Nobody wants the gay community to be against them, they will be punished.

 So I posit this theory: what if Levi Johnston was decided to be an icon, because of his conservative background and relationship to Mrs. Palin, by the queer community? What if he had nothing to do with it, but embraced it when he realized, "hey if I take this opportunity, since I'm decidedly not a homophobe, to give Sarah the big ol' 'fuck you'?"

I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that he has no qualms with showing his gentials to the world. No doubt as an act of rebellion and a big gulp from the fleeting goblet of fame.

His "fuck you"  is kind of the Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood. In the late 1970s, when the gay community began to populate WeHo, some asshole put up a a sign at the Beanery reading "no faggots". As a collective "fuck you", the new homosexual residents took the place over. It was a favorite hang out. They prevailed in numbers. Eventually the sign came down (allegedly to the dismay of the queer community) and almost thirty years later it's still a popular drinking hole.

 It's really poetic. It would be beautiful if this is the case with Levi Johnston. He broke free from the pack, he refused to take the path that was set for him by Sarah Palin. He's a rebel with a cause. He was labeled as a white trash, hockey playing, piece of shit before he left the arranged marriage Mrs. Palin had set up for he and Bristol. Who knows if Bristol even wanted it, who knows if she even wanted to keep the baby. Since Bristol is tied down in her forced martyrdom the only person able to break free with the message of "fuck this and fuck you" is Levi. I hope Bristol is secretly proud of him.

Maybe his statements regarding being a redneck and loving it (on his MySpace page circa Fall 2008) painted him as a "no man's land" for the largely liberal gay collective. Seeing him naked, slapping the "gay icon" label on him, may just seem kind of politically and socially fetishy. Come to think of...I can see how that's kind of sexy. Seeing someone like that naked is a bit like stripping them of their foolish convictions. It's turning (them) him into a hypocrite while he isn't even aware of it.

But is Levi Johnston being made a hypocrite? He really can't be if he had never offered his opinion before he was already crowned, and aware of it, as a gay icon. There is one thing for certain, his fame will be more interesting, more legitimate, and more prolific than Sarah Palin's will ever be. For that, I think I kind of like him.


 Here is the link to the Gawker "gay icon" article.

Click here for the Vanity Fair article "Me and Mrs. Palin".