As far as major sporting events go this past week, the 2006 Gay Games was the proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.

First held twenty-eight years ago, the Games this year had twelve-thousand athletes from 65 countries participating in thirty-three venues. Tens of thousands of spectators attended the opening ceremonies at Chicago's Soldier Field to watch more than 400 dancers, a 500-member choir, and fireworks. Tens of thousands more attended the closing ceremonies on Saturday.

Gay publications, gay radio programs and gay networks covered the games thoroughly. Of course, covering gay is what they do.

Chicago's Sun-Times and Tribune were tremendously thorough in their coverage, but it's hard to ignore the gorilla when it's sitting in your lap.

But ignore the games was what most of the rest of the country did.

Leading up to the games, The Louisville Courier-Journal published a piece about 40 athletes from Kentucky and the 150 from Indiana who planned to participate.

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, out of Georgia, did itself proud by running a genuinely long and well-balanced article written by Josh Noel of the Chicago Tribune.

The day the games began, the AP's Don Babwin wrote a solid piece about the games and their history, as well as some of the participating athletes.

AP stories are sent out across the country to subscribing newspapers that then decide whether or not to carry the story. A search of Google news shows that fewer than 30 US media outlets picked up Babwin's article. Those included SI.com, MSNBC.com and the Kansas City Star. The San Francisco Chronicle also ran a supplemental article that reiterated the ongoing dispute between organizers of the Gay Games and alternative games being held later this month in Montreal.

For comparison, another AP article published yesterday concerning a joke made about crack cocaine by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin had been picked up by well over a hundred media outlets.

Had you looked for information about the games in New York City's Village Voice, The NY Post, The Seattle Times, The Rocky Mountains or most any other daily paper you would have scored zero.

The New York Times was an official sponsor of the event, but nothing turned up there, either. Although L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of on-line Media Research Center, went apoplectic in an on-line article that warned that the Times, by even supporting the Games, was “rooting for the homosexual revolution” and “actively spread[ing] the gay gospel.”

During the games themselves you might have thought, judging by the lack of media coverage, that last week's heat wave had caused a brown-out cutting Illinois off from the rest of the world.

The Fort Worth/Arlington, Texas, Star-Telegram was a pleasant exception. It ran a nicely balanced piece, by Associated Press's Carla K. Johnson, that ended on the positive-note: "It feels like how the world should be, where gay people could be everywhere, holding hands and not ashamed. It's amazing."

Johnson's piece was picked up by the Bradenton Herald, San Luis Obispo Tribune, Monterey County Herald, Miami Herald, Duluth News Tribune, and Akron Beacon Journal.

Surprisingly, even the homophobic Washington Times managed a whole five paragraphs. More surprisingly, there wasn't derogatory or filled with negative connotations.

The Buffalo News reprinted a piece by Chicago Tribune's Kathy Bergen , about corporate America opening its eyes to the “lucrative but once-taboo [gay] consumer sector.”

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