The Prancing Elites - How About Some Holiday Tolerance? Kinky Boots Alabama Style

Sickening Moves in Santa Suits

On December 11 in the very right wing suburb of Mobile, Semmes, Alabama, folks in the community got something of a jolt at the end of their annual Christmas parade.  Clad in not quite fitting Santa suits and hats, white hot pants and go go boots, the "ladies" of the Prancing Elites came by strutting their sickening dance moves to quite a few dropped jaws.  By the way, for those not literate in tranny street talk, sickening means awesome.  I only know from watching Ru Paul's Drag Race on Logo but, being a white straight guy, I take pride in throwing around terms like that.

So yea, Semmes is a primarily white, very blue collar, very Baptist area in a very conservative state.  The Prancing Elites are all ladies of color and, to the crowd at the parade, represented about fifty things the citizens of that community rarely see.  Even on TV when all you watch is NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, Alabama football and Fox News, the only black people you see on a regular basis are on the football field.

Bringing Up the Rear and Throwing Some Junk

But remember the outrage over the Kinky Boots thing at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?  Well imagine that times about a hundred.  That particular event in Manhattan had people around the country bemoaning the fact that they had to explain to their kids what those men were doing dressed like that.  The funny thing is that children are much more ready to be tolerant than their parents.  For many, an answer like "those men like to play dress up, honey" wasn't an option.  I guess you have to explain that those men sometimes like to have sex with other men and sometimes those men actually want to become women.

Recently John Stewart's Daily Show came to Alabama and Mississippi.  They had a fantastic plan.  They had two kind of redneck looking actors pretend to be gay and in love walking around with a camera to see how people would respond.  To their field reporter's shock the couple met with almost universal approval.  They even had one propose to the other in a Waffle House and that got a standing ovation in the restaurant known pretty universally as the redneck headquarters of the South next to Cracker Barrel.  The best part of that story was that the sure that he's always right Nate Silver had to eat crow.  You can read that story and watch the hilarious video, if you missed it, here.

The point is that, despite many people down here being intolerant jackasses, there are a lot of folks who are accepting and more open minded.  If all you see is media coverage of Alabama you wouldn't know that.  That's what made the shock on Nate Silver's face so gratifying.  If all you do is sit in an office in D.C. or Manhattan or Los Angeles and rely on some well-worn talking points and assumptions, you'll certainly miss the fact that the world has some good people in it everywhere you go.  Sometimes you just have to look a little harder.

Case in point:  The Prancing Elites were supposed to appear in Mobile's MoonPie Over Mobile Parade, the city's annual New Year's Eve event.  You'd have to know the history of Mardi Gras in Mobile, yes Mobile had it before New Orleans, to understand the MoonPie thing but it's the most common throw during Mardi Gras in Mobile's parades where in New Orleans they only throw non-food items.  Due to the negative publicity over the event in Semmes, the people putting together the Mobile parade told the ladies they wouldn't be invited.  That's the bad news.

The good news is AL.com, sort of a news clearing house for the major newspaper dailies in Alabama, posted a story about the cancellation and included a poll.  The poll's question was "What do you think of the decision to pull the Prancing Elites’ invitation to perform in the New Year’s Eve MoonPie
Drop parade?"  The two options for answers:  They shouldn’t be invited and Get over it, bring them on.  As of the writing of this blog, the numbers on the poll are 2,587 for Get over it, bring them on, and 1,673 for They shouldn't be invited.  61% to 39% in favor of letting them dance in a state where George Wallace once proudly stood on the steps of a university risking his life to deny a black man an education.  Please cast your vote in the poll here.

Yes Alabama has a long, long way to go.  But it has a lot more to do with the politicians who end up representing us in Washington than actual public sentiment.  All the average American gets to see of us is the likes of our moronic Senator Jeff Sessions and other pols putting their feet in their mouths every chance they get.  Yea, rednecks are a big part of the equation, but the tide is changing here as in much of the rest of America.  And where once a black man was lynched on a street corner in the heart of town not 40 years ago, a group of young black men are now dressing in hot pants and shaking their asses like there's no tomorrow in the middle of the street.  Here's an interview with this stunning crew and them showing off their hot ass moves.  Enjoy!  and Merry Christmas!

All I've got to say is YOU GO GIRLS!!!!  And to all those wanting to throw shade on these ladies, take it back to the 1960s and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!