First things first ... I fell asleep Wednesday night so I had to watch "T-Dez" on the trusty TiVO. But I didn't have to try too hard to avoid hearing who was kicked off the island because the major news outlets and blogs (well, except this one, right Kenny?) aren't really covering this show yet. You just wait until one of the designers poisons Todd Oldham's dog and THEN we'll have a hot show on our hands!
Okay, so we start off the show with one of those serious moments in reality shows when someone says they have an announcement to make ("I'm an alcoholic! I'm leaving! I'm Alexis Arquette!") and then they edit in people making fake shocked reactions … except this time John announces he's HIV-positive and that his doctors loaded him with testosterone before the show and that's why he treated spectacled Michael like crap in the last challenge. That's not funny.
Then woodland creature Todd comes in and explains that they have $8000 to design rooms for some discriminating clients and they are only getting a few bits of information about them, like one is a figure skater and another has a cat, and immediately I know that these must be kids, but nobody on the show realizes this and (again) this proves I am smarter than everyone on reality TV <breathe>.
Sure enough they go shopping at that expensive furniture place that looks like a stadium outside and a convention center with good lighting inside…. all the while thinking they are shopping for adults <there's your kicker>. And then they go back and Todd invites the clients in and the room erupts in "Omigod, children!" and Todd goes on to tell the designers that they only have $300 more to spend on the room (at Target, natch) and that the people who won last week will have more money to spend and they will have to use twin beds and they have to stand on their heads and shear sheep while doing it. So the last episode was too straight forward and now it’s all CAH-razy and I have to have my husband explain it to me because I am totally lost.
From here the designers complain about not having enough time or money and I respond with, "Dudes, you only have three walls and no windows to worry about, so chill!" Fast editing and people bumping into each other follows and John almost has a breakdown during twelve "Next on 'Top Design'!" promos and I think "Oh, the sh*t's going down" because John’s room apparently doesn’t have a floor.
The judges (who I still don't know) walk around the three-walled windowless rooms and go on and on Michael Kors-style how awful and "assisted facility-style" Michael's room is and how great soul patch guy #1's pirate room is even though one judge rightfully points out that the kid's going to like pirates for three more weeks and then hate his parents till death for doing this to him.
So John (left) gets kicked off and that leaves me feeling really bad for him, but I think that the clever editors and producers intended that. And when they show the faces of the other contestants I say "Wait – are they even on this show?" so that does not bode well either. Regardless, I'll watch episode three because Jonathon Adler has the potential to be the most evil TV star ever this side of Joan Collins. Now that's top design.
So can prejudice really be unlearned? Mental health professionals, researchers and even a former "Aryan warrior" weigh in on the subject. Check out 'My Big Bad Mouth,' then let's hear what you think.
DC Ice Breakers is a new semi-monthly ice skating social event for GLBTQ folk in the D.C. metro area who want an alternative to meeting people in bars. Drinking in a bar immediately follows skating hour.
ESPN confirms that ex-NBA player John Amaechi is coming out as a gay man. Amaechi tells his story in an autobiography titled 'Outside the Lines,' which hits stores Feb. 20. Get the story (plus some interesting video) about pro-basketball's first-ever out player.
The men at OutSports.com weigh-in about Amaechi and the longtime rumors about his being gay, while ESPN columnist LZ Granderston makes a fast-break to talk about the slam-dunk question:
"I do not mean to belittle Amaechi's experience or the experiences of any other athlete who comes out after retirement ... But I can't help but wonder: When will somebody simply man up? That is, come out while he is still playing and finally demystify this whole gay athlete thing once and for all." See 'Another Ex-athlete Comes Out? Not Impressed')
A dear friend who must remain nameless or he wouldn't let me share this recently appeared as a guest on both CNN's 'Anderson Cooper 360' and on MSNBC. He's a smart, well-spoken fella and news outlets know he's good for an insightful sound bite. Because he's a giver, he sends me post-appearance reports about what really matters:
"After a comparative 24-hour study, I can tell you conclusively that CNN gives better makeup and lighting than MSNBC. Last night [after CNN], I felt that I had a healthy glow about me, and when I got home to wash my face (because who needs pancake makeup to clog their pores?), my skin seemed smooth but not overly done – with the exception of the zit on my lower lip, which they gave the Gabor-sister treatment to.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I can report that the lighting at MSNBC is much more severe, and that the makeup lady there shovels it on with wild abandon. I got back to the office and looked in the mirror and felt like an escapee from a 'Six Feet Under' scene. And, even after trying to rinse the makeup away and scrubbing my face with paper towels, there’s still residue coming off on my phone whenever I use it. (I will say that the MSNBC lady was very understanding about my zit, and took good care of me on that front)."
In other news, Dood Abide over at Daily Kos digs a little deeper:
Phoenix, AZ (UPSI) - Newly declared heterosexual Ted Haggard came forward today to register his displeasure with the American public over condemnation of a recent Snickers Super Bowl ad in which he appeared. Mars Inc. was caught off guard by a tidal wave of public anger over the commercial which depicts an accidental kiss between two males. The company immediately pulled the ad campaign after overwhelming complaints that it was anti-gay. Haggard took issue with the public outcry, stating that he felt his performance reflected a natural, humorous and "completely heterosexual" situational response.
I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to a lot of the people who left comments on this blog yesterday saying that they didn't find the Snickers ad campaign discussed here to be offensive. Some found the ad(s) funny, not gay bashing. Others said they made straight men look stupid and had nothing to do with anything gay, and still others told us gays (aka "YOU PEOPLE") to "lighten up" and learn how to take a joke.
I found it amusing that there were also a bunch of comments left here from gay-haters who were mad at Snickers for depicting a gay kiss on TV for -- eek! -- the kids to see. All I can say about that is whoever the genius is at the ad agency that developed and tested these ads is amazing: Gays and gay-haters rarely ever agree on anything, but this campaign created something both parties could hate together. Now that's what I call reaching across demo.
Back to my first point though about "benefit of the doubt." I say that because I think -- I hope -- that most people who commented that they were not offended were reacting to the ad that ran on TV during the Super Bowl, and that ad only. On that one ad alone, I doubt the tremendous public outcry that took place yesterday would have happened. But that one ad isn't what got people swearing off chocolate -- or at least chocolate made by the Mars company.
To be clear, Snickers had four ad endings posted on their Web site. They wanted people to vote on which of them should run during the Daytona 500. Aside from the one that aired during the Super Bowl, there was another sort of neutral ad ending which hinted at a man-on-man-on-man three-way. It wasn't necessarily homophobic on its face, nor was it gay positive. In other words, it was almost irrelevant.
But the other two were clearly offensive to many who watched them. How anyone who viewed the depiction of violence motivated by a "gay" kiss as a joke, or something gays shouldn't take seriously, is beyond me. The message these ads send is that gay panic is a license to gay bash. Worse, the ads were developed to specifically reach 18-24-year-old males, the same group most likely to commit anti-gay hate crimes. About the campaign, Matthew Shepard's mother said, "This campaign encourages the same type of hate that led to the death of my son Matthew."
Sadly, the idiocy of the Snickers campaign got even worse than that. Also posted on their microsite were these videos of NFL players watching and reacting to the gay-bashing Snickers ads:
NFL Players React to Snickers Kiss Ads (1 of 2)
NFL Players React to Snickers Kiss Ads (2 of 2)
By the end of the day yesterday, Snickers had removed all traces of the ads from their site. In today's New York Times, a spokesman for the company says:
"As with all of our Snickers advertising, our goal was to capture the attention of our core Snickers consumer, primarily 18-to-24-year-old adult males," said a spokeswoman for Masterfoods, Alice Nathanson. "Feedback from our target consumers has been positive, and many media and Web site commentators on this year's Super Bowl lineup ranked the commercial among this year’s best."
"We know that humor is highly subjective and we understand that some consumers have found the commercial offensive," Ms. Nathanson said, adding: "Clearly that was not our intent. We do not plan to continue the ad on television or on our Web site."
I wouldn't exactly call that an apology, but it clearly signals that Mars/Snickers deeply regrets that so much damage to their highly-valued brand name can happen in a mere 30 seconds. At least they didn't announce that Isaiah Washington was coming on board as a celebrity spokesperson, or that they were sending their PR hack to inpatient homophobia counseling. In fact, it was pretty impressive that they reacted so quickly to an online outrage largely driven by gay bloggers.
Snickers certainly wasn't reacting to our community's media watch dog, GLAAD, who didn't utter a peep all day. At 8:00 PM Eastern last night, GLAAD finally issued a statement. What did GLAAD do all day Monday? I mean that seriously. What, if not this, was their staff working on?
So what were the lessons of the day? One is that advertisers still think that homophobic humor sells -- a probable falsehood and an issue about which the Commercial Closet Association is hoping to learn more about through a quantitative research study, they told me today.
But perhaps the biggest lessons were two I already knew: 1) Gay men and lesbians still have a long fight ahead before we get to the point that we aren't fodder for anti-gay jokes and harassment; and 2) We, along with our allies and our laptops, are up to the fight.
Kenneth Hill
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Then woodland creature Todd comes in and explains that they have $8000 to design rooms for some discriminating clients and they are only getting a few bits of information about them, like one is a figure skater and another has a cat, and immediately I know that these must be kids, but nobody on the show realizes this and (again) this proves I am smarter than everyone on reality TV <breathe>.
So John (left) gets kicked off and that leaves me feeling really bad for him, but I think that the clever editors and producers intended that. And when they show the faces of the other contestants I say "Wait – are they even on this show?" so that does not bode well either. Regardless, I'll watch episode three because Jonathon Adler has the potential to be the most evil TV star ever this side of Joan Collins. Now that's top design.
