LGBT stereotypes: Modern Family vs. Desperate Housewives

Last Thursday, Tuc Watkins, who played the Bob half of Bob and Lee, a Desperate Housewives gay couple, vented a bit on facebook at what he thinks is stereotyping  in the portrayal of Cam and Mitch in Modern Family:

Hmm. I think “Modern Family” is clever, hilarious, even terrifically subtle at times. But, for the most part, I have a hard time laughing at the gay guys. In fact, I kinda cringe. It feels a little bit like the gay equivalent of “blackface.” It doesn’t feel “modern” at all. Sure, people come in all shapes, sizes, etc. So why are we fed such 80s stereotypes every week?

When the above was reported by Greg In Hollywood, Jesse Tyler Ferguson responded in a comment:

Sorry you feel that way Tuc. I know lots of guys who are just like Cam and lots of guys who are just like Mitch. We can’t be expected to represent every gay person. We can only represent these two people. Also, Mitch is basically a version of me…so I never know how to take it when people say that he is stereotypical. And in defense of Cam, I still can’t figure out how a clown & football coach who also happens to be gay is a stereotype. When all is said and done, it’s a family sitcom. I feel our writers do a fantastic job of servicing 11 characters each week in just 22 minutes. I am incredibly proud to play Mitch and I have a lot of pride in our show. As a closeted kid of the 80′s I would have loved to have had a show like Modern Family to watch with my parents. It would have meant a lot to me to see who I secretly was reflected on television. TV has come a long way and it continues to forge new ground. I am thrilled with the work that you did on Desperate Housewives. It opened the door for shows like ours and hopefully we can hold that door open for many more shows to follow us. At the end of the day we can’t please everyone..and we shouldn’t try to. Kinda just like life, right? Take care. Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Now Watkins has walked back the "blackface" remark but not his principal objections:

Dear Jesse,
     I’m glad to see that a FB post can stoke a fire that burns in the LGBT community, and supporters of our community.
     Many doors have opened in gay people’s fight for equality. Civil rights, marriage rights, and depictions of us individually and collectively on television. Great strides have taken us from tolerance into acceptance and towards true equality.
     Stereotypes still exist. They probably always will. And while the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, stereotypes polarize us. No news there. But while an explanation of a stereotype can make good, logical sense, it still leaves the stereotype intact.
     I’m glad to have played gay characters, but at the same time have been frustrated by the stereotypes I feel I’ve been party to in playing those roles. I’ve begged wardrobe designers so      I wouldn’t have to wear paisley shirts, directors to reconsider a “snap” at the end of a scene, and writers to remove “Hey, gurl!” from dialogue.
     I did it because when I was growing up, trying to figure out where I fit it in, I couldn’t seem to locate a role model. The stereotypes I saw made me think, “Well, I don’t identify with that so I must not be gay.”
     I can appreciate that one man’s roadblock may be another man’s role model. I feel like my growth was stunted, but understand that another person’s may have been bolstered. I believe that, as a community we want to make the path easier for those who come after us. I want that. I’m certain you do to.
     Some audience members can laugh through a character, but it can also distance others. We each come to the fight with our own baggage…as well as our own weaponry. “Revolutionary times call for revolutionary means.” My comments were extreme, and my use of the word “blackface” inexcusable. I regret creating dissension among the ranks, especially when we’re all in this fight together.
     I see your point. I hope you’ll consider mine.

Yeah, OK, as brilliant as the portrayals (and writing) of Cam and Mitch are, we're kind of on Team Tuc. Modern Family is hilarious, inventive and incisive and really is TV's best comedy, but Desperate Housewives could break through stereotypes and preconceived notions like nothing else on broadcast television when Marc Cherry and the program's other writers put their minds to it, as they often did. For one of many examples of that, watch the last video.

The one line in The Sound of Music that drives gayborhood audiences wild

AKSARBENT followed yesterday's dreary twitterfeed of ABC's singalong broadcast and only one person picked up on the line. Evidently every drag queen in America was doing something else Sunday night.

Guardian of the Galaxy costars psychoanalyze Rocket Raccoon

One of the stars of the Marvel hit, now flirting with $800 million in international box office receipts, is a CGI creation with a sad backstory, a genetically engineered raccoon for whom there can be no mate, which may explain why he is such a mean drunk.

Reason for the season: an opportunity for Sarah Palin to hustle her new atheist-bashing book

The real reason for the season, of course, was the hostile takeover of pagan Winter Solstice celebrations by early Christians, who suddenly start celebrating the birth of Christ about 400 years after his alleged life, even though biblical descriptions of the allegedly immaculately-conceived savior's birth almost certainly rule out a winter delivery.


(Via JoeMyGod) 

Dr. Evil interrupts 'Sam Smith' on SNL to trash talk Sony and North Korea

Mike Myers even ripped one of his own theatrical bombs...

New York Times: prosecute Dick Cheney et al.

A word salad of extracted phrases in the Times' editorial alone is enough to give pause:

actively defended the indefensible; abhorrent; false patina of legality; depravity; sadistic; blinkered apologists; fabricating a legal foundation; shopped around for the answer they wanted; vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law; not made in good faith; Republicans who have gone hoarse braying; rationalize and conceal

Here's an excerpt in complete sentences:

     Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. 

     ...Who should be held accountable? ... any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos.

     There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.

     ...Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments ...The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

#StopRush pushback to advertisers is starting to get to Limbaugh

He's now telling his listeners that the outrage to his vitriol is being manufactured by bots created by Democrats.

RT @JuneArbogast: @SUBWAY You advertise on Rush Limbaugh's show? I'll be making my own subs from now on. #stoprush pic.twitter.com/usmh66WtTh
— Nora Wahlquist (@DahmPublishing) December 21, 2014

Annotated: the celebrities in Colbert Report finale

Dan Savage was there. So was Burning Man alumnus Grover Nordquist. And Terry Gross.

Bangin' Craig Ferguson's last show: Bob Newhart in Secretariat drag revealed last 9 years was a dream

Craig's sole guest, Jay Leno, proclaimed: "They can take away our talk shows but they can never take away our freedom!" After an unexceptional monologue, Craig and Geoff answered an email inquiry about the meaning of "Ass Mode," then got into a final fight, after which Ferguson informed Geoff he would be living in a Van Nuys storage unit.

WaPo: hacked Sony emails prompt Google to sue Mississippi AG, alleging collusion with Hollywood

Wow. This may be the most significant fallout yet from the hacker data dump of Sony emails. And no one saw it coming...

In a blog post Thursday, Google said that the e-mails revealed a campaign that sought to stifle free expression and to revive the Stop Online Piracy Act. That bill, which died in Congress in 2012 after massive populist and tech industry opposition, was criticized by many free expression advocates who said it would set a dangerous precedent for censorship in its effort to stop access to stolen material online.
     Among the main concerns of opponents were that SOPA would allow creation of an Internet "blacklist" that could be abused to keep average people from finding sites that the government found objectionable.
     "We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood," said Kent Walker, the company's general counsel and senior vice president.
     Google also launched a campaign Thursday asking users to "take action" by telling the MPAA to stop trying to revive "#zombieSOPA."

Should moviegoers punish theatre chains who caved to censorship by staying home on Christmas Day?

Thursday, Rachel Maddow pointed out that it was bookbuyers themselves who ended the ban on sales of Salmon Rushdie's The Satanic Verses by picketing the chain bookstores that sur­rendered to empty threats by radical Muslims by refusing to carry the acclaimed book.
     The same thing seems to be happening now. The nation's biggest cinema chains have refused to exhibit The Interview — Regal, AMC (now owned by a Chinese billionaire), Carmike and Cinemark. Comcast, owner of NBC, has said it won't offer The Interview on-demand. Paramount has said it won't allow screenings of Team America, which some theaters said they would exhibit in place of The Interview.
     Despite isolated court rulings to the contrary, AKSARBENT doubts picketing a shopping center cineplex would get you anything but kicked off the premises by a shut-up-and-shop mall cop, but what if you just didn't show up at the box office on one of the most profitable days of the year?
     Maybe it's time for moviegoers in 2014 to teach the movie industry the same lesson that chain booksellers learned from their customers in the 90s. Conspicuous censorship isn't a very good business model. #BoycottAppeasers

The continuing, outrageous unfairness of the annual Army-Navy football game

Despite the built-in handicap, Navy won the 2014 contest 17-10.

How is it fair that the Army-Navy game is always played on land
— Fake Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini) December 13, 2014

Note: @fauxpelini, college football's favorite parody account, will follow coach Pelini to his new Ohio job coaching the Youngstown State Penguins.

Anita Bryant: Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity of coming to Des Moines

Last Tuesday, the Miami Herald Media Company and WPBT-Channel 2 put The Day It Snowed in Miami, a regional Emmy-winning documentary, up on YouTube for free viewing (and for anyone who doesn't remember "the political activism behind an equal-rights statute in Miami, and how it galvanized the gay rights movement in Florida and beyond," it should be compulsory viewing.)
     While we don't like to see anybody assaulted by anything, we can't deny the visceral pleasure of seeing the condescending, character-assassinating, class-slandering Anita Bryant slathered with meringue.
     Go here to watch the entire documentary on YouTube. It was directed by Joe Cardona and narrated by Margot Winick and produced by Shed Boren of Genesis Fund, Cardona, el Nuevo Herald videographer Jose Iglesias, Miami Herald LGBT issues reporter Steve Rothaus and Miami Herald interactive editor Nancy San Martin.

USA Today: secret FBI database reveals cops won't extradite 330,665 fugitives

From USA TODAY:

In just the past year and a half, the total number of fugitives who police won't pursue beyond a state border swelled nearly 77%, to 330,665. The main reason was police agencies changing their minds about what to do with people who have been wanted for years.

KMTV's morning peroxide pundit wants you to know that the feds REJECTED 'Redskins' complaint; also, did you know that FOUR tornadoes hit Pilger?

This morning, Deanne Brink reported a story on the reconstruction of Pilger, NE after "a pair of twin tornadoes leveled the town."
     We don't know whether she wrote this idiocy or just read it, unfiltered by common sense, from a teleprompter, but whatever the cause, it aired at least twice thrice this morning. (We certainly hope the segment was played repeatedly and that she didn't actually read it that way multiple times.)
     When she's not intoning dumb narrations on KMTV, a CBS affiliate, Deanne apparently likes to slyly promote the ultra-right-wing competition by retweeting drivel from Fox and Friends (of Saturday Night Live fame) where the denizens are VERY EXCITED that the FCC has REJECTED a complaint about the racist name of D.C.'s pro football team.

Candidate vying to replace Joni Ernst in Iowa Senate is wanted in Nebraska on a sexual assault charge

     Iowa is holding a special election in District 12 to fill the Iowa Senate seat vacated by Joni Ernst, elected to the U.S. Senate last November. The Libertarian candidate, Donald Brantz, running against Republican Mark Costello and Democrat Steven Adams, has a slight problem: he's wanted in Sarpy County, Nebraska for 3rd degree sexual assault, interfering with a public service company and disturbing the peace. All charges are misdemeanors.
     Brantz, a former social worker, is a Libertarian — with a vengeance, we'd guess.
     May the best man win.

With 3 weeks left in term, NE AG Jon Bruning sues CO because its voters legalized pot

Nebraska AG Jon Bruning pictured
with Eames and Barcelona chairs

Just when you thought lame duck Jon Bruning, the pride of Nebraska's GOP, had run out of ways to squander his budget, he comes up with this stunt.
     He (along with Oklahoma's attorney general) is suing the state of Colorado, claiming in a news conference today that arresting Coloradans traveling in Nebraska is a financial burden on some Nebraska counties, and also claiming, in the same news conference that it wasn't about the money, it was about Colorado flouting federal law, so now he will spend Nebraskans' taxes to do Eric Holder's alleged job. Or, more accurately, he will start the process, leaving his successor holding the bag. He said he discussed his action with incoming GOP AG-elect Doug Peterson.
    Jon Bruning has also said that heterosexuals, as well as homosexuals, don't necessarily have the right to a divorce, and that gay marriage is similar to a man wanting to marry a chair. In support of the latter proposition, Bruning filed an anti-gay marriage brief supporting Utah's attempts to fight marriage equality despite the fact that Utah is in the 10th U.S. District Court of Appeals and Nebraska is in the 8th.
     In 2012, during a debate, Bruning broadly insinuated that his GOP primary opponent, former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg, was a pedophile.

The Day It Snowed In Miami, emmy-award winning documentary about 1977 gay rights fight, can now be seen free on YouTube

Steve Rothaus reports that The Day It Snowed In Miami, an regional Emmy-winning documentary about the 1977 fight for gay rights in Miami, can now be seen free on YouTube, courtesy of the Miami Herald Media Company (MHMC) and WPBT-Channel 2. The documentary was broadcast nationally and screened in South Florida theaters.

A look back at Cuban-American émigré Reinaldo Arenas via the biopic Before Night Falls

Against the backdrop of President Obama's steps to normalize relations with Cuba, we thought we'd try to find the sly dig at Fidel Castro's gay brother, Raul, in the Reinaldo Arenas biopic Before Night Falls on Youtube. We couldn't, but below is a nice clip, anyway (watch till the end!) Javier Bardem became the first Spanish national ever nominated for a Best Actor Oscar after he portrayed Arenas in this 2000 film, which also has a cameo by Sean Penn AND Johnny Depp in a dual role. From Roger Ebert's 3.5-out-of-4-star review:

      Arenas is played by Javier Bardem, a Spanish actor with a specialty in macho heterosexuality (if you doubt me, see "Jamon, Jamon"). He doesn't play Arenas as a gay man so much as a man whose body fits like the wrong suit of clothes. We accept Arenas as gay in the movie because the story says he is, and because there are after all no rules about how a homosexual should look or behave -- but there is somehow the feeling that the movie's Arenas is not gay from the inside out, but has chosen the lifestyle as part of a compulsion to defy Castro in every way possible.
     The film contains two more convincing homosexual characters, both played by Johnny Depp: Lt. Victor, a sleek, tight-trousered military officer, and "Bon Bon," a flamboyant transvestite who struts through Castro's prisons and proves incredibly useful by smuggling out one of Arenas' manuscripts, concealing it in that place where most of us would be most inconvenienced by a novel, however brilliant.

For his second inauguration, in 2013, Obama tapped gay Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco to compose a poem.

Amazon.com denies helping Sony strike back at hackers with denial-of-service attacks

On December 11th, ZDNet followed through on a report by Recode:

On Wednesday, tech site Recode reported that Sony had used hundreds of computers in Asia to initiate denial-of-service attacks on websites offering Sony's stolen data to the public. The sources of these attacks were allegedly Amazon Web Services data centers based in Tokyo and Singapore.
     A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services told ZDNet the alleged activity is "not currently happening" on the service.

Hillary Clinton's birthday card to Chelsea Manning seems to have been lost in the mail

“Hillary told staff that she could not fathom how an army private, Bradley Manning, with psychological problems and a drag-queen boyfriend could single-handedly cause the United States unprecedented embarrassment just by labeling massive downloads as Lady Gaga songs.”
— Vanity Fair

The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks, describes the State Department's then-energy envoy, David Goldwyn, as having "alleviated" Canadian officials' concerns about getting their crude into the U.S. It also said he had instructed them in improving "oil sands messaging," including "increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories.
— Chicago Tribune

NU's fired, $150k-a-month head coach takes vulgar parting shots, but is upstaged by fake twitter alter ego

Someone made a tape of the farewell speech to his players made by University of Nebraska football coach Bo Pelini after he was cut from the team. The World-Herald actually published the audio of the very NSFW outburst because in the Cornhusker State of Mind, football trumps any policy about journalistic dissemination of vulgar, sexist invocations of lady parts.
    By now Pelini-esque streaks of obscenity now revisit the same rut ploughed by the last surreptitiously recorded soliloqy, but Fake Bo Pelini (@fauxpelini) recaps of real Bo Pelini outbursts are ALWAYS fresh. And now, Fake Bo Pelini's bogus twitter letter to his successor has even made the august pages of the Washington Post. 

Director's cut of 1998's Studio 54 puts back 30 minutes of footage, including excised gay scenes

Writes Greg Hernandez in Greg In Hollywood:
     Film editor David Kittredge who worked with [director Mark] Christopher on the director's cut for Berlin, wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday (16 December) that the studio-ordered 90 minute film was 'very different' from the original vision.
     Kittredge said he and Christopher have worked 'tirelessly' for the past several months 'trimming things and adding over 30 minutes of newly-digitized dailies that have not seen the light of day since 1997.'
     The re-cut version includes even more restored footage than what was shown at a well-received 'secret screening' of Christopher's vision at the 2008 Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles.
     'Incredibly excited to have been the editor of what amounts to a massive cinematic restoration of a really great movie that would have blown people's minds in the '90s,' Kittredge wrote.

Meet Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) who introduced that Citigroup legislation to bail out bank losses on risky investments with your taxes

Second-term Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-$) really represents CitiGroup in the U.S. House of Representatives but is supposed to represent the third congressional district of Kansas, including Wyandotte and Johnson counties, which include Kansas City and the surrounding suburbs of Overland Park, Lenexa, Shawnee and Olathe.
     He is the man who slipped lobbyist-written legislation into a must-pass spending bill too late for debate. The bill is called the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act and will gut a section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act called the "push-out rule" that forbids banks from trading certain risky derivatives (which are complicated financial instruments with vales derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices or interest rates) with money insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). If this bill passes the Senate, taxpayers will be on the hook for more of Wall St.'s reckless gambling losses. The vote is here.
     Mr. Yoder's constituents and non-constituents are not happy with him and have been registering their disapproval on his Facebook page. The Huffington Post says Rep. Yoder isn't saying much these days:

Yoder has been mum about the spending package since it passed the House. His office hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment on why he slipped the Citigroup language into it. The press statements on his website say nothing about the provision or the spending bill. There are no posts about it on his Facebook page. He's said nothing in his Twitter feed.

Rachel Maddow shocked that demonstrations against police misconduct occurred 'even in Nebraska'

Evidently the members of Maddow's staff who carry out daily raids on YouTube to pillage free amateur footage (but which they at least no longer seem to plagiarize) must have missed that outrageous 2013 viral video of the warrantless police home invasion over unregistered cars in North Omaha.
     They also must have missed the story about the Omaha police accidentally shooting to death a crew member of the long-running reality show Cops during a ride-along, although to be fair to the Maddow show, that video was professionally made by a TV production company and not a YouTube amateur so the event was mostly covered by obscure old media outlets like NBC(!), The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, etc.

Rock Hudson's last words

"No, I don't think so." (He was asked if he wanted more coffee.)
     This via the web site "Famous Last Words."
     Hudson, like Judy Garland, was quite witty in private.
     AKSARBENT's favorite Hudson story is when he welcomed a buddy of his (a suit at Universal) to one of his private pool parties. He took his guest to a balcony overlooking the patio and drunkenly explained, "The blonds are named Todd and the brunettes are named Grant."
     Bonus: Bob Hope's last words were to his wife Delores after she asked him where he wanted to be buried. "Surprise me," Hope said.

Stephen Colbert on Bill O'Reilly: 'No one's gonna pay me to watch him anymore, so fuck that noise'

Almost as good as his scary interview with Smaug, the dragon, the other day.

Whoa! HRC goes Wonkette on FL attorney general

Memo to HRC. Please notice Jon Bruning.

Cute Chicago Fox weatherman flips off camera, now knows which way the wind blows

Why is it always Fox talent that gets caught making life difficult for the nuns at the FCC?
     We're guessing that meteorologist Bill Bellis will just get his knuckles rapped and not fired.
     Oh — for you youngsters, the headline allusion leads directly to the end of the second verse (1:02) of this song.






     We don't expect the above video to last long on YouTube.
      Like a cat leaving the litter box, Fox is usually pretty good at burying the telltale evidence of whatever it just did.
     Regardless of what happens, we do expect Bill to land on his feet.
     With his range of expressions, we're guessing he could do any number of things in front of the camera besides weather.

Trio of Catholic high school alumni accused of gay-bashing fail to get Philly court to dismiss charges

Defense lawyers tried to have the case dismissed at today's preliminary hearing by arguing that both parties were at fault. That ploy didn't work.