Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (April 6, 2007)

HE PULLED HER HAIR!
I don't know if you were as taken aback as I was last week when Kevin (Matthew Rhys) reached over during dinner and yanked a hair from the head of half-sister Rebecca (Emily VanCamp), but I was pretty damned appalled. What sort of adult does such a thing? Swiping a hair to get analyzed is bad enough, but doing it this way? It seems like our Kevin is showing pretty questionable judgment in every aspect of his life these days. He conspires to hide secrets from his mother. He meets with Chad's (Jason Lewis) agent behind his back. He confronts Perez Hilton Dan Silk after Chad specifically forbids him from doing so. Oy, oy, and oy! Alas, things don't get much better for poor Kevin this week, but at least he doesn't do anything quite so stupid as pulling hair.

BTW, last week I did a dumb thing myself when I wrote up a fake spoiler for the show without making it clear enough I was joking. Apparently the folks over at Television Without Pity spent a fair bit of time trying to solve my asterisk spoiler and have since decided I'm a ******* moron, a ***** ****, and a dip****. All I can say is sorry, sorry, sorry! It was late, I was on the road, and my laptop was acting screwy so I had to hurry to finish.

So to make it up to everyone, let me tell you that this week's episode Three Parties features not one, not two, but three Kevin/Chad smooches (and Lewis is getting much better at them), plus the two fellows waking up in bed and parading around in their underwear—not that I'm shallow or anything. And this time I've got a real asterisk spoiler for everyone. When **** finds out ***** *** with ****** and that ** *** Kevin ******* the ***** ********, he ***** ******, **** *******, and ***** Kevin. It's pretty sad. But the big twist this episode is when we learn ***** ***'* the *** **** **'* allowed ******** to *******. That should keep everyone busy until Sunday night!

BTW, take heart that Kevin isn't turning into a total clod. A few episodes from now he's actually going to get to be the hero. I think. I'm glad the show has already been renewed because Sunday night's numbers weren't as strong as I would've liked with B&S pulling a 3.3/9 in the A18-49 and finishing behind CBS' Cold Case. That's what ABC gets for not airing a new episode for a month.

OUT IS ON THE OUTS WITH A LOT OF FOLKS
Out magazine may have thought they were being clever with their Jodie Foster/Anderson Cooper cover, but methinks they may have shot themselves in the foot as the reaction has been less than positive. The readers over at AfterEllen.com pretty much excoriated the magazine for invading the privacy of the two celebs, and our readers reacted none too favorably either. The reaction elsewhere seems to be the same.

The issue at hand goes just beyond outing to questions of how the magazine made its selections and why. It seems awfully suspicious that Out only “outed” two of the most famous celebrities rumored to be gay while ignoring politicians who wield considerably more clout than quite a few folks who did the make list. In fact, it almost seems like Out wanted to put Coop and Jodie on the cover and this seemed like a cowardly clever way to do it.

Folks of color are plenty annoyed that the list only included two folks who are non-white, and while a case can be made that the list simply reflects who has power in this country, I think it's pretty hard to argue that porn director Chi Chi LaRue or Nate Berkus are more influential in any serious way than Keith Boykin who has been routinely showing up on CNN, author E. Lynn Harris who reaches millions of straight African-Americans with his novels, or Rod McCullom whose blog Rod 2.0 is one of the most popular in the gay blogosphere.

On the other hand, the folks at Out aren't completely off their rocker. They did single out my blog post on the topic as the most insightful they'd come across. (I'm being ironic here, folks!) I also find it interesting they decided to post Michael Musto's article "The Glass Closet" online shortly after the news about the cover broke. The new issue hits newsstands April 17th , but by then the news will be so old even The Advocate will be reporting it. (Oh, I'm gonna burn for that one!)

In my earlier post, I'd pondered whether or not the mainstream media would pick up on the story. CNN has been all over it, of course. (Yeah, right.) Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Herald discuss it in their online edition, but the Chronicle's short piece weirdly focuses on Foster, almost ignoring Cooper completely, which seems odd given his high profile these days. The Herald does a slightly longer analysis actually looking at the story. Otherwise, the news has pretty much stayed in the rags (Starpulse), the gay press, or on a few entertainment sites (Access Hollywood, E! Online). And somehow I doubt the New York Times “gay Mafia” (they clocked in at number seven on the list) will be having much to say.