When the anti-disco revolt began in the spring of ’79, advocates were derided as both homophobic and racist. If you wore a “Death to Disco” T-shirt…if you liked The Who‘s “Sister Disco” or Bob Seger‘s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll,” you were behind the curve and maybe a chip off the old asshole block**.

I explicitly recall my friend Stuart Byron, an “out” Village Voice columnist who later worked for producer Ray Stark, telling me to my face that I’d be wise to keep my loathing of disco under wraps lest I sound like a homophobe.

40-plus years later the disco haters have been totally vindicated by history and the tradition of good musical taste, and nobody even alludes to homophobia as any kind of lingering undercurrent.

This hasn’t stopped today’s reverse-racist wokesters from using the same bullshit against anyone who doesn’t fall into line in the movie realm. If you dare to apply seasoned judgment in the assessing of this or that film that happens to be POC-focused…if, say, you’re a devout admirer of Lakeith Stanfield‘s performance in Judas and the Black Messiah or Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, Widows and Mangrove (as I am) but you have reservations about the late Chadwick Boseman winning the Best Actor Oscar for his “okay but no great shakes” Ma Rainey performance or Viola Davis‘s blustery, obviously supporting lip-synch fatsuit performance (as I do), you might have an attitude problem.

** “Bend Over, Chuck Berry,” an old SNL comedy sketch in which Dan Aykroyd and other regulars pretended to perform as the Village People, was arguably homophobic. As far as I know it’s completely disappeared online.