My Country Tis of Whine: part 2

This was the only response letter published by the BAR in response to my chorus' song "Magic Snow" at the Castro Theater Christmas Eve:

'Magic Snow' keeps falling

Arthur Bosse of the National Council on Alcoholism and other Drug Addictions, and Kim Grubbs, a clinician, wrote to you of their dismay at the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco having performed a comic piece, "Magic Snow," in their set at the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus 9 p.m. "Home for the Holidays" concert on Christmas Eve. Apparently, they each feel they possess the wisdom and judgment to determine what audience members should and shouldn't hear at a concert. I think maybe they're just sanctimonious poops who need to find something more important to focus their attention on than comedy bits.

I, too, am a clinician, and I treat patients with addictions, including to cocaine of both the powder and crack variety. I am also domestically partnered with a psychiatrist who is chief medical officer of a major addiction treatment provider. I am well aware of the pain and destruction caused by all addictions. I can tell you that I have not, in the past decade at least, encountered anyone who doesn't have a strong sense that cocaine is a dangerous and destructive drug – not any clinicians, addicts, or lay people. I really don't think that anyone in the audience came away from the concert with the thought that cocaine really must be okay if the LGCSF sang a funny song about it.

As a clinician, I am also aware that humor is an adaptive and high-level defense, an indicator of cognitive flexibility and perspective. It was very foolish of Bosse and Grubbs to have had (apparently) a humorectomy. Lord preserve us from these folks who go around declaiming the right, good, and acceptable for the rest of us. They belong in the same class of people who want to tell us what we should do in our bedrooms and who we should love: different complaint content, same tedious social dynamic.

Asa DeMatteo, Ph.D.