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You are here: Home / Absent Friends / “Not Polite”: Rest in Power, Larry Kramer

“Not Polite”: Rest in Power, Larry Kramer

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… Kramer was not polite. He was far from civil. People were dying, the country and its government didn’t seem to care—indeed, some of the more prominent conservatives of the day seemed downright gleeful that AIDS was killing all the right people—and Kramer didn’t have time for polite discussions.

Mr. Kramer enjoyed provocation for its own sake — he once introduced Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York to his pet wheaten terrier as the man who was “killing Daddy’s friends” — and this could sometimes overshadow his achievements as an author and social activist…“I was trying to make people united and angry. I was known as the angriest man in the world, mainly because I discovered that anger got you further than being nice. And when we started to break through in the media, I was better TV than someone who was nice.”

We may very well be entering the most volatile summer of protest since 1968. If what happened in Minneapolis on Tuesday night is any indication, a fully militarized police culture is out there waiting to be unleashed on all the right people. We need Larry Kramers as loud as we can get them.


“We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the American government: a tragedy that made the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP movements so vital. He never stopped shouting about the injustices against us. His voice was the loudest and the most effective.” — Elton John, via Instagram.

“Don’t know a soul who saw or read `The Normal Heart’ and came away unmoved, unchanged. What an extraordinary writer, what a life. Thank you, Larry Kramer.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda, via Twitter.

“Larry Kramer changed me in the same way he changed the world, with love, compassion and an indomitable spirit. He taught me the meaning of the word resist and how one person can change the world. I will keep fighting Larry, just like you taught us. SILENCE=DEATH” — Ellen Barkin, who co-starred in the 2011 Broadway production of “The Normal Heart,” via Twitter.

Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    He was kind of like my spirit animal. He confirmed to me that you don’t have to fall for the “be nice” bullshit when it comes to activism. I related to that very well, as so many had said that to me in my own life. It’s okay to be passionately angry and be effective.

    He will be sorely missed at this time. We need to channel him. He’d love that, in his own way.

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    When I first saw this reported I erroneously thought it was Larry Cramer of CNBC. Hope springs eternal…

  3. 3.

    Delk

    Way back in 1983 when I tested positive, with no internet or cellphones around, the GMHC Newsletter was a lifeline for me. I was so angry than. I distinctly remember where I was when Reagan won his second term. I felt like I was kicked in the chest. Damn right I ACTed UP.

    POZ magazine was great back then. Lots of gallows humor. They had a deaditor-in-chief.

  4. 4.

    Yutsano

    @Adam L Silverman:  For a moment I did too. Until I saw dat schnozz…

    I came out in 1991. A whole world of queer culture suddenly opened up for me and out front and loud as hell was Larry Kramer. At first he was way too brash for me until I woke up and realised that’s what he had to be. Being polite wasn’t working. He didn’t exactly turn me into an instant activist (that took a bit longer and some other inspiration in my life) but there was no denying he was a part of this new beautiful culture I was a part of. I’m sorry he didn’t get to live to see Dolt45 lose.

  5. 5.

    laura

    Larry Kramer channeled his rage against inaction and injustice into direct action. That he died at an advanced age is both a blessing and a reminder that agitation, anger and leaderless movements are people power. Rest in Power Larry Kramer, your life’s work will not be forgotten.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yutsano: During the survey class “Middle Eastern Studies” at Emory in fall semester 1991, which was being team taught by several of the departmental faculty including two Israelis and one Lebanese American (naturalized), the ACT Up folks came through the lecture hall. On the podium that day was one of the Israeli faculty who was not quite sure what exactly was happening (this was her first semester at Emory), stopped lecturing, watched a large group of loud, chanting, face painted, sign carrying ACT Up protestors work their way along the aisles while about 300 or so undergraduates sat there and when the leader of the chanting paused to take a breath seized the opening to say “What’s the problem?” What’s the problem is a literal translation of a common Israeli expression transliterated as ma baayah, which was one of her favorite sayings in both Hebrew and English when dealing with anyone and anything. It was on the nose as I’m sure Shifra had no idea what ACT Up was let alone what they wanted and absolutely hysterical. Large – not obese, just a solid woman – Israeli woman wearing an Israeli Army shirt left over from her service 20 years or so prior over a dark t-shirt , some sort of cargo type pants, and doc martins facing off with a now visibly discombobulated ACT UP demonstration leader over a couple of hundred undergraduates neither quite knowing what to do in that moment.

    In over 20 years I have never forgotten that specific moment in time.

    Nor that I knew one of the women who was demonstrating, but had not known until then that she was either LGBTQ or HIV positive or both or just someone who cared enough to get involved. She had her face heavily painted and her hair done way differently than normal in order to try to obscure her identity. We’d been in class together off and on for our freshman and sophomore years and her eyes got real big when she realized she was stopped in her tracks, because Shifra’s question had temporarily stopped the demonstrators from moving through the lecture hall, right next to where I was sitting and that I’d recognized her. Would see her around campus off and on for the next two years, was even in a couple of classes with her. Never said that I knew it was her.

  7. 7.

    Barbara

    When you talk in a normal voice they pretend not to hear you and when you “act up” they try to dismiss you for being rude. It’s the story of most marginalized groups everywhere, and yes, you will almost always be better off for speaking up.

    I still can’t get over that policeman kneeling on a man’s neck until he died.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    @Barbara:   I hope the Minnesota protesters are as effective as Larry Kramer was.

    That shit has got to stop.  I’d be out there too.  Enough.

  9. 9.

    prostratedragon

    Gay issues were not central to me back in the day. Not that I didn’t wonder, and not that I didn’t have friends of both sexes who definitely were gay, but it was not a matter to me beyond, say, thinking that everyone should be regarded with equal respect in society. And I did have some evolving notion that peaceful adults should be able to make whatever domestic arrangements they want, with legal support somehow.

     

    It was the AIDS crisis that made me see that it would have to be the same as civil marriage, simply in order to avoid having people split from the ones who had loved and cared for them and with no regard for material commitments they might have made together, and then disregarded or abandoned a second time by those who had rejected them in the first place. Though I did not read him much, I did know of Larry Kramer, and I’m sure he did much to build the culture we now have where such thoughts no longer have to be constructed from scratch; they are part of the air now.

     

    R.I.P.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    I most humbly suggest haunting every last motherfucker.

    Rest well, sir – if you want to.

    I hope Larry Kramer gets to choose between resting in peace and haunting every last motherfucker on his list. pic.twitter.com/DHMKdg3MD2— Rebecca Makkai (@rebeccamakkai) May 27, 2020

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    When I first saw this reported I erroneously thought it was Larry Cramer of CNBC.

    Do you mean Jim Cramer by any chance? (I don’t watch CNBC, but he’s one of those ubiquitous annoyances one can’t help but be aware of.)

    And RIP to the real Larry Kramer. A life well lived.

  17. 17.

    Dan B

    I knew some loud and irascible activists far before Larry Kramer who became compatriots of Larry.  In the early days of Gay Liberation we spent a lot of time persuading people we were not scary.  When Reagan ignored AIDS the approach had to change.

    We are at a similar point with lack of testing and the absence of support to people at the margins.  Instead we have Trump threatening to shoot protesters.

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