"He was an innocent, a pop naif, but he was more than that. Most prominently, Liberace was, without doubt and in his every facet, a genuine rhinestone, a heart without malice, whose only flaw was a penchant for imitation pearls--a certifiable neon icon, a light unto his people, with an inexplicable proclivity for phony sunsets. Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else's privilege; Liberace cultivated them both in equal parts and often to disastrous effect. But if, by his reactions--his antiques and his denials--he reinforced a tattered and tatty tradition of "Old World" respectability, then by his actions--his shows and his "showmanship" (that showed what could not, at that time, be told)--he demonstrated to m-m-m-my generation the power of subversive theatricality to make manifest attitudes about sex and race and politics that could not, just for the mo', be explicitly avowed." -Dave Hickey in Air Guitar