A TOTALLY SERIOUS, INDEPTH LOOK AT ABSOLUTELY ALL THE NEWS THIS WEEK
I've got cool straight brothers, not cool straight radio hosts, cool film directors, a not cool DVD release, a hot-under-the-collar Whoopi Goldberg, and a not at all cool Eurovision winner.
The New York Times has an interesting visual/audio feature on their website called "One in 8 Million" profiling different typical New Yorkers in some aspect of their lives. This week they included a segment about two brothers — one straight, one gay — who play on the same gay rugby team. Since the two brothers had never been tight, straight brother Paul Bockwoldt wanted to get closer to his brother John and thought sports would be a good way to do it, hence he joined the gay rugby team. Kudos to the brothers and the Times for bringing us their story which you can check out here.
Norway's Alexander Rybak may have won Eurovision, but his comments about gay Russians protesting for their rights being "a little sad" and missing Eurovision "the biggest gay parade in the world" makes him a big-time loser in my eyes. On the other hand, what were those silly GLBT Russians thinking? Maybe Rybak's right — it's ever so much more fun acting campy and silly than getting arrested just because your government abuses you. It's not like fighting back ever got the gay right's movement anywhere.
There are few people I dislike more than Fox's lying "sack of dog poo", Glenn Beck, so there is little that makes me happier than seeing him get the sort of comeuppance he got on Wednesday's The View. A little while back, Beck fabricated a story about how Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg treated him on an Amtrak train, which Barbara and Whoopi confronted him about when he was a guest. Beck was all "Oh, I know it didn't happen that way, sorry, wah, wah, wah" trying to make nice. Then that night he was right back on his show accusing the ladies of making a big deal out of nothing when there are so "many more important issues in the world."
Like him flogging his crappy book? (Which is why Beck is doing press.) Beck embodies everything wrong today with the far right as well as with a punditocracy that thinks the truth is whatever they want it to be at a particular moment in time. I don't like to wish ill will on anyone, so I'm going to stop talking about him now.
Director Ang Lee was at Cannes this week for the premiere of Taking Woodstock which features Demetri Martin as Elliott Tiber, the gay man who helped bring Woodstock to fruition. As to the movie's gay elements, Lee told the The Hollywood Reporter:
Our lead character could be anybody. It just happened to be Elliot Tiber, who just happened to be himself. He's a closeted gay at the beginning, but he comes to terms with it. We didn't make big deal out of it.
A movie that just happens to include a gay character and his being gay isn't a big deal? What a concept!
I've never found talk show host Adam Carolla to be particularly bright (if he were a star, I'm thinking he'd be red dwarf), but according to GLAAD, on the May 11th broadcast of Loveline, Carolla showed just how dim he is when he offered this rant on same-sex parents:
We just get it spoon-fed to us [that] everything’s great, everything’s perfect, there’s no difference between, you know a couple of dads, a couple of moms, couple of bis and a couple of pre-op transsexuals, and a mom and a dad … no difference. Now look, I’m all for gays adopting but let’s not mistake it for being nearly as good as a mother and a father. It’s not nearly as good as a mommy and a daddy… all things being equal, it is much better for a mother and a father to raise a child than it is two of anything, all things being equal.
Two of our favorite gays (and yours since both made the Hot 100 list), just landed new projects about which we're excited. Fresh off winning his Oscar for Milk, Dustin Lance Black scored the directing gig for What's Wrong With Virginia starring Liam Neeson and Jennifer Connelly. Black also wrote the script about a mentally disturbed mother having an affair with a Mormon sheriff.
Meanwhile, in a considerably lighter project, hottie Scottie John Barrowan will take over the role of Albin/Zaza in the production of La Cage Aux Folles currently running in London. John debuts September 14th.
AfterElton.com reader JohnPaulFan alerted us to the fact that the "Complete Series of Battlestar Galactica", set to come out on DVD and Blu-Ray in July, is chock-a-block full of cool extras, including the webisodes the show ran in between the seasons. Well, apparently all of the webisodes except The Face of the Enemy which finally outed Lt. Felix Gaeta. I contacted some folks at BSG who said they were looking into it, but so far no answer. Hmm....
This week USA Today posted an article detailing the survey results of mainline protestant clergy and I found the results interesting and encouraging. Those surveyed were 80% male, 74% age 50 or older, and 93% white, but even so fully 65% say there should be some sort of legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The survey found 29% of clergy to be supportive of gay issues in general, 30% to be not supportive and and 41% what they called the uncertain middle. But even the uncertain middle generally breaks toward being supportive on most issues. Can I have an "Amen!"
Next page! The Laughing Gay Babies gaze into their crystal bottles!
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