Morning Meme: NBC's Fall Looking Gayer, Ashton Kutcher Replacing Charlie Sheen, and Alex Pettyfer Strips for Channing Tatum

NBC keeps making moves for the fall. They’ve passed on Wonder Woman, and Mann’s World, which sounded horribly offensive (but that may get shopped to cable). They renewed Parenthood. And they picked up Awake, which sounds doomed to fail. And more importantly, they picked up The Playboy Club, which we wrote about back in February as having a significant gay element. Did I mention the cast signed nudity clauses? They also picked up fairy tale based Grimm, which has gay connections via executive producer Sean Hayes (becoming quite the behind-the-scenes mogul), and Caprica’s Sasha Roiz.

In other television news, this week marks the anniversary of the first regularly scheduled television broadcasts back in 1928, when they put out thirty minutes of programming three days each week. Now, Americans watch on average of five hours each day.

Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi provides a stunning investigation of Goldman Sachs that begs the question: Why aren’t these people in prison?

Meanwhile Dr. Senator Rand Paul says that if you believe in a right to health care, you believe in slavery. Seriously – he used the word slavery, repeatedly.

Attitude Style is running a poll about which of the CK One models you like most. I wouldn't kick any of them out of bed for eating crackers, but based on the videos, there’s just something about River Viiperi that oozes sex. Also, River is campaigning to win via his Twitter, so he's a good sport.

It looks like the Tennessee “Don’t Say Gay” bill vote has been postponed again, perhaps until next year, when hopefully cooler heads will prevail. But they still voted to void any locally-passed laws preventing discrimination against GLBT folks.

Locally, West Virginia is having a primary election on Saturday for governor. Fairness WV has put together a list of the candidates (it’s a wide field since this is a special election) position on gay rights. And we’re not even ambitious in WV – we’re just after employment and housing protections, not marriage. Also, if you live here, be sure to vote on Saturday. I’m personally throwing my support behind Natalie Tennant, but there are other appropriate choices.

Under questioning, the House General Counsel Kerry Kircher says he has no idea how they intend to pay for the defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. Queerty helpfully points out paying for something without defined money is a violation of the Antideficiency Act.

Ashton Kutcher is evidently replacing Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. Chuck Lorre has a funny way to write him into the plot. It could be interesting, since Kutcher is notoriously gay friendly, and the show has a spotty record at best. He also has much better abs to live in a beach house.

We spend $10 billion each month on a war in Afghanistan that was supposed to be chasing Osama Bin Laden and his organization. What else could be done with that $10 billion?

The Wall Street Journal, not exactly known to be friendly to gay or liberal causes, puts forward some interesting information about King & Spalding, Paul Clement, and DOMA. It seems that Clement made some major assumptions when he signed the contract, and he didn’t have authority to do so in the first place. Maybe King & Spalding wasn’t so bad, and HRC wasn’t so powerful?

Happy Endings is still a bubble show, but TVLine, TV Guide, AfterElton.com and most critics are pulling for it to get another season.

If you wonder what it means for former Speaker Gingrich to run for the presidency, look no further than this right wing-buzzword bingo quote: “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.”

We had mentioned Magic Mike, the Stephen Soderbergh-directed male stripper movie starring Channing Tatum as the title character, mentoring a younger stripper, based on his own life. We now know the younger stripper will be played by Alex Pettyfer. Please, Santa, let this movie be a hard-R. I promise to be good.

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