When Hansel becomes Gretel

Remember “Rocky Horror Picture Show”?

The overrated ’70s film was anointed “campy,” “cool,” and a “cult classic,” mostly because it features freaks and weirdoes – a transsexual singing rock music.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer occult. It’s the latest “in” thing. “Rocky Horror” is no longer horror. Bizarre-dom is now cool. And we’re supposed to accept it as normal.

The latest offering in this ongoing campaign to make transsexuals the new minority is the movie, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” The story of a transsexual rock-star wannabe, Hedwig was an East German boy whose mother and U.S. GI soldier boyfriend convince him to undergo a botched sex-change operation so the GI can marry him, bring him to the U.S., and then abandon him. In case you’re wondering, the “Angry Inch,” is all that’s left between his legs. Hedwig goes on to corrupt and have an affair with a fundamentalist Christian teen-aged boy, the son of a minister, who lives in a trailer park.

Of course, an American serviceman fighting communism would be involved in this strange sexuality, sick “medical” operation and ultimate abandonment of this pathetic character. That’s the way entertainment industry elitists see working-class enlisted U.S. military men who protect their freedom to make these sick films. It’s also the way they make fun of religious Christians in America. After all, don’t all fundamentalist Christians you’ve met live in a trailer park? Not that there’s anything wrong with that unless you’re an intolerant Hollywood snob living in a kajillion-dollar home in Malibu, looking down on mainstream and less-fortunate Americans.

Coupled with celebration of trans-sexualism, movie critics love this type of social propaganda. Normal middle-American values are abnormal, and abnormal transsexuals are mainstream.

Gear Magazine, a hip, macho guy’s publication filled with sexy, scantily-clad women, raves about “Hedwig,” calling it “the next great cult film.” According to Gear’s Michael Martin, “Internet pundits are calling Hedwig the best film of 2001, period.”

Other critics are falling all over themselves to praise this dreadful film. The Wall Street Journal’s usually reasonable Edward Jay Epstein says: “Hedwig” is “not to be missed.” The New York Times’ Stephen Holden calls it, “clever, funny, and wildly innovative!” Horribly loud musical trash, a bunch of silly platinum wigs and a lousy German accent are clever and wildly innovative? America’s taste has really gone down the toilet.

Or are these critics just eager, as usual, to plug yet another politically-correct film, no matter how artistically bad it is? Probably. Why else would Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers call this incredible agenda-filled waste of two hours “a cause for celebration”? “Hedwig” won the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award and Best Director Award, which says a lot. “Boys Don’t Cry,” a similar cross-dressing propaganda film, won similar awards and shared the same producer, Killer Films.

As in, Killer of American Values.

That’s the agenda here. “Hedwig” creator, openly gay John Cameron Mitchell, told the Detroit Free Press’ Terry Lawson, he hopes “Hedwig’s” real legacy “is that some kid out there who is confused as I was at that age will see it and realize there are more choices in life than he or she thought.” His next film project is a children’s story. Heaven help us. “Hedwig’s” pre-sex change name is “Hansel.” I can predict his children’s film: “Hansel becomes Gretel,” giving new meaning to “Grimm” Fairy Tales.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if “Hedwig” were the only pop-culture effort to mainstream transsexuals. But it’s part of a campaign. This fall, CBS will feature the first ever major transsexual TV character on “The Education of Max Bickford,” starring Richard Dreyfuss as a college professor whose colleague undergoes a sex-change operation. In the ’70s and ’80s, TV shows celebrated Jews and blacks as its new minority cause. In the ’90s, it was gays. And now, it’s transsexuals? Amazing how a noble effort against ethnic and racial bigotry has degraded into tolerance of the absurd.

And this isn’t your grandparents’ innocent cross-dressing Uncle Milty or parents’ Liberace with a pink feather boa. It’s much more aggressive and dangerous. Today, kids are exposed to rock “artists” like Marilyn Manson – who, last week, was charged with criminal sexual conduct, stemming from masturbating his genitalia against a guard’s head during a July Detroit-area concert. Next week, kids at New York’s Eastchester High School will encounter art teacher Randey Gordon, the woman. Last year, he was art teacher Randey Gordon, the man. Ditto for Northbrook, Illinois’ Glenbrook North High School, where a female science teacher will return to class as a man. Talk about weird science.

This political correctness isn’t just weird – it’s expensive and disruptive. To prepare for Gordon’s return, she/he/it was given an entire year’s leave, with pay, “so everybody could get used to the situation,” Superintendent Bob Siebert said. The entire student body and their parents had to attend a meeting covering everything from privacy rights to bathroom use. “There was a lot of confusion.” No kidding. “Diversity is something the world needs to understand and respect,” Gordon preached. But where does diversity end? Pedophiles and bestiality are diverse, too.

In Wilmette, Illinois, middle school principal Donald Reed will return as Deanna Reed to share his new “look” with sixth graders. (Thankfully, he didn’t pick “Donna Reed.”) School Board member, Marilyn Horwitch said, “I certainly hope Dr. Reed will be happy.” No mention of young students’ well-being. It forced parents, like Jon Liberman, to teach their daughter about something they didn’t expect to, and to be tolerant of the intolerable. “We’re trying to be open-minded about it. This is the world today,” he said. Thanks to “Hedwig’s” reality.

“Don’t be scared,” says Hedwig’s Mitchell. “Without deviance, there’s no progress.”

Wrong.

Defining deviancy down is the exact opposite of progress. It’s regressive. And it’s not campy. It’s creepy.