January 7, 2012
RuPaul in New Hampshire: 'I'm not Ron Paul!'
Steve Weinstein READ TIME: 2 MIN.
For the past several months, right-wing talkshow host Mark Levin has been calling Ron Paul "RuPaul." Apparently, Levin's tag finally got sticky -- enough so that the real RuPaul took the trouble to hop on a plane, fly to New Hampshire, and tell the much-amused crowd at a local diner that she is definitely, definitively, decisively not Ron Paul.
RuPaul was not dressed as "RuPaul," but rather in his masculine persona when he surprised and delighted customers at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, N.H. "I'm going to N.H. on a mission to spread love and set the record straight," the entertainer told Politico, which broke if not the most important, certainly one of the more amusing stories to have come out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
"Contrary to recent reports, I am not Ron Paul," she said. "And I am not running for president of the United States. I hope to meet Ron Paul in person so we can be seen together to put the rumors to rest once and for all." The drag diva was also on a mission to spread the message that "if you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else."
It's not that RuPaul doesn't have a political philosophy. She told Politico, "Any time a man leaves the house in a wig and a pair of cha cha heels, he's making a political statement. Let us not forget that this great nation was founded by a bunch of men wearing wigs."
She tweeted to her followers that she would be "wearing Ferragamo." She also warned off any criticism that she was coat-tailing on the media attention to the GOP race: "Cheap publicity stunt? I'll have you know that I flew here first class!"
Ron Paul has been severely criticized for making viciously homophobic statements in his newsletters. EDGE reported that he believed gay men want to spread AIDS and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a pederast.
Ron Paul was also mocked in the film "Bruno," in which actor Sacha Baron Cohen, playing an Austrian fashion journalist, lured Paul into a hotel room with the promise of an interview and then came onto him in front of the camera.
Watch RuPaul cheered by Granite Staters at the Red Arrow Diner (and curse your luck that you weren't there):
Come to think of it, a RuPaul presidency doesn't sound so bad to us.
Steve Weinstein has been a regular correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Advocate, the Village Voice and Out. He has been covering the AIDS crisis since the early '80s, when he began his career. He is the author of "The Q Guide to Fire Island" (Alyson, 2007).
