Fox's Animation Domination Has Holiday Cheer for All: Homophobia, Strippers, and Bloody Rapture

Flashback guest appearance by Herbert

Fox aired an all-new Animation Domination block last night, and offered up a decidedly mixed bag of humor.

Now before people try and tell me that I have no sense of humor, I feel the need to go on record and say that I found some of this really funny. And I found just enough of it over the line to ruin the whole evening. Let’s start with the newest member of the comedy block, The Cleveland Show.

A couple weeks back, we had mentioned that The Cleveland Show had raised the ire of some trans activists at The Bilerico Project who wondered where GLAAD was with these shows. GLAAD eventually responded to those concerns with a statement that they had ongoing issues with Fox concerning their Sunday night programming, and had scheduled meetings with Fox on that topic which should have been held last week.

Our Director of Entertainment Media, Taj Paxton, had a meeting with producers of The Cleveland Show and Family Guy scheduled and also contacted them after this specific episode aired. The meeting is set for next week is part of an ongoing discussion that GLAAD is having with Fox regarding consistent homophobic and transphobic jokes in its animated programming. The problematic transgender episode is one of several instances that Taj and her team will be discussing with them - as well as advocating for more fair LGBT inclusion on the show.

Obviously, they didn’t make a great impression on them, because The Cleveland Show that aired this week should have never seen the light of day in the form viewers saw.

The gay segment was nearly standalone in the episode, and frankly, most of it had some seriously chuckle-worthy jokes. I was impressed that Rallo understood gays and passed no judgment even in an episode where they’re billing him as young enough to believe in Santa. And the bits with the wife and the beard were laugh-out-loud funny.

The problem comes when Cleveland chooses to compare this “homosexual Christmas  party” with the last one he went to. You get a flashback to his days on Family Guy, and him in a room with Herbert singing “Silent Night” to a bunch of children. Herbert is an established pedophile on the show, and the fact that the title character equates a homosexual with a pedophile is grossly irresponsible on the part of the writers.

The scene with Herbert was throwaway – there was no reason in the world for that to have been included as it didn’t advance the plot in any way and while I assume they only wrote it for laughs, it's a noxious joke because it once again confuses and equates being gay with being a pedophile.

And anyone that says that the audience of this show is sophisticated enough to tell the difference is missing the point. The idea that gay men are child molesters is something we've been fighting for decades and as anyone who pays attention to the battle for gay rights knows, that bigoted belief is one that some folks on the religious right are still more than happy to exploit.

Another point that skated past me was just how raunchy these shows were – both the Cleveland Show and Family Guy went to strip clubs. The tamer Cleveland Show clip seems to show vacuum-powered strippers.

But it is the Family Guy episode, with Carter finally having the bachelor party he never had forty years ago, that takes the cake. With a stripper gyrating in front of him, Carter questions whether he should “just shove the money inside her” and then asks when he can hit her.  To stretch out the joke about shoving money into a stripper, we get a segment where we find out Peter has actually tried it, and a barely-beeped f-bomb. TV-14 or not, this is more graphic than anything Adam Lambert tried much later at night.

And lest you think I’m devoid of a sense of humor, the show that likely has the right-wing upset the most was American Dad last night, which in light of Hanukkah and Christmas, chose to go with a Rapture episode. Naturally Stan gets left behind. My favorite bit is Rapture Watch, as the news, and life seem to go on with those left behind.

Granted, this show wasn’t all that respectful of religious beliefs, but I’ll worry about that when their beliefs stop stomping all over my life.

I know that Seth MacFarlane is very pro-gay in real life, but every time he makes a positive statement about us to the choir on Real Time with Bill Maher is completely destroyed when he chooses to equate homosexuality and pedophilia.

Frankly, with friends like him, who needs Bill Donohue of the Catholic League?