Re: Who the hell is JT Leroy
The New York Times piece is good, but New York Magazine busted JT Leroy months ago. Check out this take-down/take-apart by Stephen Beachy.
At least one Stranger reader is pretty pissed about the JT Leroy scam. From the Comment section of an earlier post about Leroy:
This has me outraged. I am all for tricksters and fakes, ala Orson Welles (even Genet understood the power of the fake), but this is something else. It appears that a straight, white, middle class woman pretended to be a homeless, abused, junkie, whore, HIV positive gay man/transgendered person in order to sell books (and, apparently, some crappy cd’s). The damage that this does to people who have experienced actual traumas and worked hard to give expression to their experience in a literary and artistic form is incalculable…. This is such a huge embarassment for so many people. And, as funny as hell as this story is (wigs and glasses), I think people should be reminded that this goes way beyond the travesty of faking hate crimes. This is using trauma and abuse to sell hip, indie product. FUCKERS. Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers, fuckers. Goddamn middle class str8 white fuckers who never experienced anything even remotely traumatic, and who don’t have the slightest idea what it’s like to actually live through something traumatic AND try to express yourself on top of it. Fuckers. That’s what these people are.
What does this mean? It means that showbiz is a brutal fucking business to break into and if you need to be a charlatan to do it, it doesn't make you any less of a talent than the many artists who owe their continued success to the whims of fashion or caprice.