I received a piece of spam this morning with the subject line “Hot lesbian slut gets punished by her girlfriend for fucking another boy!”
(The exclamation point was theirs, by the way, and I commend whoever put the spam together for using it instead of a more anti-gay frowny-face emoticon. In the wake of three states passing gay marriage bans on Tuesday, it makes me happy to know that spammers are so enthusiastic about homosexuality.)
As far as the substance of the subject line goes, I’m O.K. with hot lesbian sluts. I approve of them in much the same way that I approve of the progressive tax system and Velvet Underground records. And if this particular lesbian or, for that matter, any lesbian — hot or not, promiscuous or monogamous, or partly monogamous with a 30% chance of infidelity — likes getting punished by her girlfriend, I’m completely supportive of that.
It’s the “for fucking another boy” part that I’m having trouble with. Doesn’t “another” imply something that “lesbian” and “girlfriend” don’t? I guess what I’m getting at is, I don’t know, I’m not so convinced this hot slut is really a lesbian.
Alas, Mink Stole was not a volunteer at my polling place.*
Four years ago, when I voted in my first presidential election, the line outside my polling place — a small, shabby church with a kitchen whose ancient refrigerator was covered with alphabet magnets and children’s fingerpaintings — was long and grim. And that was at six in the morning, when the polls first opened.
Everywhere I looked there were tense, glum men in business attire, yawning and impatiently checking their watches and cell phones. It was cold and dark outside, and every now and then the wind would pick up and sting my face. The wait ended up being a little more than 90 minutes long, and by the time I stepped into the church my hair was tangled and my fingertips were numb. As it turned out, the day didn’t get any better from there.
Mid-morning yesterday I went back to the same polling place, thinking of the bleary-eyed zombies who’d surrounded me in 2004, when my candidate lost. Again the line was very long, but the volunteers were better organized this time and everything moved faster. It was nice outside, warm and breezy, and the leaves rustling overhead seemed more colorful than I remember anything looking the day George W. Bush was re-elected. The atmosphere was oddly idyllic.
TV Guide’s Matt Mitovich, who earlier this week wondered if Brooke Smith’s dismissal from Grey’s Anatomy might fit a newly emerging pattern of ABC eliminating LGBT content from its shows, has now come out with a curiously upbeat appraisal of the move, writing that:
GLAAD may be “disheartened,” but this Grey’s Anatomy fan is thrilled to see the Erica-Callie romance put out of its misery. What was touted over the summer as being daring and informed in its exploration of someone’s coming out instead too often played on-screen as awkward, devoid of chemistry and titillating purely for titillation’s sake (Mark knows Callie’s bits better than she does?). Kudos to Shonda Rhimes for taking a precise scalpel to this romance.
If the reports are accurate, Shonda Rhimes didn’t do anything — ABC did. And that last line of Mitovich’s is so hilariously off-base that at first I assumed he was being facetious. It doesn’t appear that anyone who writes for Grey’s Anatomy is capable of precision; precise writing requires some degree of subtlety, and in Grey’s land they seem to prefer repeatedly knocking their viewers over the head with heavy objects.
Matt Roush, another TV Guide writer who disliked the “Callica” storyline, takes a different tack, criticizing the show’s scribes for their “ick-inducing” treatment of Callie’s sexual confusion and going so far as to question whether Callie can remain a viable character in the wake of it. He parts with the line “I’m not so sure even a miracle worker like Bailey could fix this mess.”
Yes, I really rented Top Gun just to get this image.
I’d planned on simply posting the headline, the picture, and the word “discuss,” but there’s nowhere for you to discuss anything here so that would be kind of stupid. All things considered, the only difference I see between John McCain and Goose is that Meg Ryan, a Barack Obama supporter, cried when Goose went down.
Remember us? We’re the ghosts of ABC’s lesbian past.
TV Guide‘s Matt Mitovich responds to news of Grey’s Anatomy actress Brooke Smith’s firing by suggesting that ABC, previously recognized by GLAAD as America’s most gay-friendly TV network, isn’t showing equal love to all parts of the LGBT community:
Might have this frank exploration of two women coming to terms with new sexual orientations proven too hot for ABC to handle? Smith saw no such signs. “At work I had no sense of it. And more fans seemed to like it than not,” she tells EW. “I don’t think I’m ever going to know [why this happened].”
The answer may be obvious, if one looks at a pattern of recent story “twists” across ABC. Ugly Betty last season introduced with much fanfare Rebecca Romijn as a post-op transgender; now she’s gone. Right out of the gate, Dirty Sexy Money lathered things up by pairing aspiring politician Patrick with a great transgender love; last week, she walked out of his life. So Grey’s writing out a full-fledged lesbian such as Erica — versus the simply lez-curious Callie — would seem to fit this pattern. Meanwhile, gay males such as Brothers & Sisters‘ Kevin appear to go unpestered… at least for now.
Lesbians almost always get fucked over on TV, when they’re on TV at all, so that part of the story isn’t anything new. But for ABC to snuff out Erica Hahn in the wake of eliminating two transgendered characters — and to apparently de-bisexualize Melissa George’s upcoming role as a Seattle Grace intern at the same time? I think it’s fair to say that’s a bit alarming.
It’s a good thing Erica Hahn is a doctor, ’cause she’s about to get thrown under the bus.
When I last wrote aboutGrey’s Anatomy and its horribly botched attempt at a lesbian storyline, I ended my lengthy, lengthy (sorry about that) post with this:
There are people who will always be happy with crap, and there are networks that will always be happy to supply it. Will Grey’s Anatomy continue that trend? We’ll know soon enough.
That was a little more than a week ago. Since then, another episode aired. I had planned on publishing something about it later tonight or tomorrow. The thrust of the post, as presented in its opening line, was going to be “This storyline just isn’t going well at all.” I was going to briefly recap what happened in the episode (you can view the Callie and Erica-oriented scenes online) before moving onto this analysis:
From New York, another article for my geeky sister to add to her collection of Rachel Maddow press clippings. My favorite quote comes from Rachel’s partner, photographer Susan Mikula:
They’re both nonchalant about the fact that Maddow is the first openly gay woman to host a prime-time news show.
“We kind of forget we’re gay,” says Mikula. “We live in western Mass and New York and it’s very accommodating. Every once and a while I’ll say, ‘Oh my God, we’re gay.’ ”
“I’ve been out most of my life,” says Maddow. “I don’t feel like I have a choice about it. I look gay.”
I have moments like that myself sometimes, and every time it happens I’m kind of surprised for a minute, and then I’m surprised at my surprise. And then I think to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with you? This isn’t exactly a breaking news bulletin.” It’s not like I ever stop what I’m doing to say, “Holy crap, I’m Jewish!” or “Jesus Christ, I’m a liberal!” It’s only the gay thing that ever slips my mind.
There’s also a lot of Keith Olbermann-y goodness, for those of you who like such things, plus the obligatory rundown of MSNBC behind-the-scenes grudgefest gossip that accompanies articles about so much of its (and CNBC’s) programming. Personally, I’m a little sick of all that “So then Dan was like, Excuse me?! and Keith was like, Oh no he di’n’t” business. It makes the guys at MSNBC sound like “Desperate Housewives” characters.
Teens who watch television shows that have a lot of sexual content are more likely to become pregnant — or to get someone pregnant — by the time they turn 20, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics.
Blah, blah, blah, then:
The research was based on a 2001 survey of 2,000 12- to 17-year-olds who were asked how often they watched any of 23 popular TV shows, ranging from cartoons and comedies to adult-themed shows such as Sex and the City.
Follow-up interviews were done years later to see how many of them got pregnant in their teen years or were responsible for a pregnancy.
Teens who watched shows where sex was regularly shown or discussed had two to three times the risk of pregnancy than young people exposed to lower levels of sexual content, the study said.
Hmm. I watched TV shows “where sex was regularly shown or discussed” when I was a teenager, including Sex and the City. Never got pregnant. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “That’s ’cause you’re a giant lesbian. I mean, duh, your last name is Lesbian.”
But you never saw some of the women who came onto me when I was a teenager. I’m pretty sure one or two of them might have gotten me pregnant if given the chance. Had I, as a 16-year-old, gone on even one date with that very persistent 24-year-old retail manager who wanted me to see the inside of her truck (I was always afraid that was some kind of euphemism) and liked to point out that she was old enough to buy alcohol, I bet you anything a third-grader would be calling me ‘Mom’ right now.
You’ll note that no one in the Sun-Times article mentions the fact that these pregnant teenagers, and the guys who knocked them up, came of age in the George W. Bush era of abstinence-only sexual education. It was a golden era to be sure, with the teenage birth rate increasing by 3 percent in 2006 after 15 years of not rising. Which makes me think that it might be George W. Bush and his fellow evangelical nutcases who are responsible for creating this spike in our GDJP (Gross Domestic Juno Product), and not the Sex and the City gang.
Still, just to be sure, when I have kids there’s a very good chance they won’t be allowed to watch anything but I Love Lucy and The Cosby Show. They’ll be the only five-year-olds on the playground who could pick Harpo Marx out of a lineup and think loud patterned sweaters are stylish, but when they make it all the way through high school without baby spew on their graduation gowns they’ll thank me.
… And the asshole of the day award goes to Dwight Scharnhorst, the creepy Republican State Representative from Missouri’s 93rd district. Scharnie is up for re-election this year, running against Democrat Phil Bognar, and like his fellow Missourian and brother-in-hate Kit Bond, he’s trying to rile up bigoted voters by reminding them of the gay menace. You know, the same menace that already scared them into banning gay marriage in Missouri back in 2004…
This delightful gay-baiting mailer was sent to my parents on Mr. Scharnhorst’s behalf by “HRCC – Marc Ellinger, Treasurer” (I assume this is the Marc Ellinger in question), apparently to warn them that their almost 30-year marriage is being threatened by hot gay guys in chains. Oh, the humanity!
Mr. Scharnhorst, Mr. Ellinger, I have two questions:
1) If heterosexual marriage is somehow under attack in Missouri (again, despite the state’s gay marriage ban), as your mailer indicates, could you give me an idea of how quickly these traditional man-woman unions might be destroyed by these guys in their white tank tops, with their come-hither stares and their sexy chains, should Mr. Bognar win on Tuesday? Because my parents have an anniversary coming up and I haven’t bought their gift yet. The last eight years of failed Republican economic policies (™ Barack Obama) has taken its toll on my checkbook, and I don’t want to spend money on anything that might be rendered useless by Mr. Bognar’s support of — cue the sinister music — same-sex unions.
2) Where did you find the “guy in chains” photo? Was it already on one of your hard drives, or were you forced to arrange for your own special photo shoot?
Finally, Dwight Scharnhorst, thanks for reminding my parents who to vote for on Tuesday. One of them has a gay sister, the other has more gay cousins than any of us can keep track of, and together they have two gay children. When they drive through their subdivision they pass an awful lot of Scharnhorst signs, but I know that after seeing your mailer today they won’t forget to vote for Phil Bognar.
The Timestakes a look at the voluminous correspondence between everyone’s favorite depressed and drunken lesbian poet, Elizabeth Bishop, and her BFF, everyone’s favorite depressed and drunken non-lesbian poet, Robert Lowell.
Let’s everyone hope that no hacky producers are inspired to make a movie out of this, because you know they’d turn Bishop into a frustrated heterosexual who was desperately in luuurrve with Lowell and privately unhappy her in volatile same-sex relationships — relationships she was unable to walk away from because of the booze, or fears her partner would mentally collapse, or something similarly bleak.
And you know there’s a good chance the filmmakers would include a few pretentious queers looking for a bit of art-house credibility, which would make it even worse. So, on second thought, no one read the new book Words in the Air, which collects their complete correspondence. We wouldn’t want it falling into the wrong hands now, would we?
