Today the 300 parody Meet the Spartans opens in theatres everywhere. Don't pretend you're not excited.

Of course, given the fact that Spartans is spoofing the homophoberotic nipple opera that took the world by storm last March, we figured that it would feature gay jokes of some kind: it could either blindly follow the implicit homophobia of the source film and pile on the gay jokes (while simultaneously being a film carried by a bunch of men hanging out together in thongs), or - if we were lucky - it could smartly lampoon the homophobic choices made in 300 and feature proudly gay and masculine characters or mock the origin's skewed take on masculinity and sexuality.

We can't say for sure which (if either) will happen, because the film didn't screen for critics (Really? Noooooo....). But from the looks of these gay-joke-packed ads - which feature everything from a rooster-headed Sanjaya lookalike screaming "I'm not gaaaaaaaaay!" as he's kicked into a pit to the Spartans laughing at Chris Crocker to a cross-dressing Rambo (?!!), we shouldn't really get our hopes up. Not that there was much chance of that happening in the first place.

Will actor Sean Maguire, who played a gay character in the short-lived sitcom The Class, undo any goodwill he had with gay audiences by starring in this mess? It's a shame to see a man in a leather Speedo go to waste, but "class" is something that this project could used a bit more of.

Check out two of the ads here and here.

So, being a girl and everything, I can be either annoyed or flattered at the way gay men sometimes use feminine terms. One day it’s all “You go, girl” and the next it’s “Oh, her!” But while gay male culture might give me whiplash on the girly man thing, I like it a lot better than the way mainstream culture uses it.

I recently blogged about a Seattle radio station gay-baiting American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar, a 17-year-old singer with long hair, a sweet smile, an interesting sense of style, and let’s just say not as much as might have been hoped for in the way of talent.

That’s not why people had a problem with him, though, and his talent – or lack of it—was not the subject of all the catty comments on YouTube and other Internet hotspots for the cultural intelligentsia Idol fans. They were way too busy calling Malakar a sissy – that is, when they weren’t taking a page from self-described “queen” of all media Perez Hilton and calling him “Sangina.”

Like probably forty million other queers reflecting on this issue and unlike Jimmy Kimmel, I sincerely don’t know or care if Malakar is gay. He has a loyal fandom of screaming teenaged girls, and he says he’s straight. But I do know one thing for sure: that boy’s a sissy. And I say that in the most positive way.

One compelling argument in favor of sissydom is that it can extend your lifespan. “The rules are simple, and stretch back to the first backlot MGM ever built,” said Johann Hari in an article about the popularity of Brokeback Mountain. “There are two types of Acceptable Gay Man: you can be a sexless sissy who is fairly happy with his female friends and waspish one-liners, or you can be masculine and actually have a sex drive – in which case, you will die.”

On the other hand, it apparently wasn’t that much of a leap for Don Imus’ producer to go from calling Malakar “sissy Sanjaya” to saying that he should be the victim of a hate crime, so the lifespan argument might not hold up to much scrutiny.

Wow, making fun of someone by suggesting they're gay. Are people still doing that?

Apparently so. Tabloid Baby at TVGasm reports that radio station KISS 106.1 thought it would be really extremely humorous and clever to get American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar onstage and gay bait him:

The station invited good-natured and charismatic Sanjaya Malakar to appear at a promotional concert over the weekend, featuring the busty Idol also-ran Katharine McFee, Fergie, Lily Allen and Hillary Duff-- but when he got onstage, he was blindsided by a bunch of drag queens-- and the song "It's Raining Men"-- apparently in a bid to to turn him into a "gay" joke.

Sanjaya has already been forced to "declare" himself straight in an interview with People magazine. But even if he did happen to be gay, so what? And why make fun of anyone for that reason?

Radio stations are big these days on suspending and firing jocks for offensive behaviour on the air. How about suspending or firing these homophobic clowns? Oh, right. They can't-- because management was obviously in on it.

Lucky for Sanjaya, he's bigger than Seattle.

However you feel about Sanjaya or his stint on Idol, aren't we all getting a little tired of hearing how femmey and gay and faggoty he is, as if that's some kind of problem in and of itself? Is he the first willowy boy with a sweet smile and long hair to ever sing to an audience of screaming teenaged girls? Can America please just get over it now?

Here's a clip from YouTube showing the incident, which from now on will be what you find in the dictionary when you go to look up "blindside."

It's ironic that in today's BGWE column I mentioned Jimmy Kimmel's clumsy at best (transphobic at worst) interview earlier this year with Ugly Betty's Rebecca Romijn for which Kimmel's "people" later had to apologize. Via Rickey.org I found this YouTube clip of Kimmel interviewing American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar.

While Kimmel didn't approach the heights of offensiveness he reached with Romijn, he none the less managed to come off like quite an ass as he interviewed the soft-spoken 17 year old. Kimmel referred to Malakar's soft, luxurious hair, compared him to My Little Pony, showed less than flattering drawings of him and then asked Sanjaya about his recent interview with People Magazine. Here is how that went.

Jimmy Kimmel: You did an interview with People Magazine and you almost went out of your way to tell them you’re not gay. Why did you do that?

Sanjaya Malakar: I didn’t go out of my way to do that.

K: You didn’t? Because it seemed like you specifically…I told them a similar thing but they didn’t believe me. Do you feel like you had to say that?

SM: (shakes head)

JK: No, you didn’t? It was just something you threw out there?

SM: Yeah.

JK: Okay, because it a little bit odd to throw out there like you feel you have to clear the air. And, of course, as you hear, not that there is anything wrong with that if that was your thing. And you’re a kid. You don’t even know what you are. At this point in your life. I was humping furniture at this point when I was your age.

I realize Sanjaya put himself out there and his bad singing and wild hair certainly seem like fair game for comment. But was it really necessary for Kimmel to put this kid on the spot over his sexuality in front of a nation-wide audience? I suspect it comes from the same place that much of the Sanjaya ridicule comes from. The kid isn't stereotypically masculine so therefore everyone feels more free to go after him.

Here is the whole clip:

I’m still reeling from last night’s American Idol. Gwen Stefani was “guest mentor” (apparently sales for her latest album are flagging a bit so she needs the exposure). She was pleasant enough but, unlike Lulu from the week before who actually seemed to give the contestants useful advice, Stefani mostly just offered platitudes like “Lakisha’s singing makes me sweat” or, to Melinda Doolittle: “I’d tell you good luck but it sounds like you don’t need it.”

As for the performances, LaKisha and Melinda were near flawless as usual. Resident rock chick Gina Glocksen was also a standout doing a Pretenders song. Chris Richardson and Jordin Sparks (my two favorite contestants) both did well with a couple of No Doubt tunes. Blake, Phil and Haley were all just so so to me.

Chris Sligh (or the “Pillsbury ‘Fro Boy” as I like to call him) butchered “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” Time for him to go I think.

In the “so bad it was good category” I’d have to put Sanjaya Malakar. Continuing with his streak of absurd hairstyles, this week Sanjaya sported a “Faux Hawk” and wound up looking like a deranged cockatiel. Also, he forgot the words to his song. That poor kid. Whoever is voting for him every week – PLEASE STOP!

So far in the competition Melinda has delivered consistently flawless performances. But she’s just not that interesting to me. I think it could wind up being a race between Jordin Sparks and Chris Richardson. (I was shocked as hell last week when he wound up in the bottom two).

Any American Idol fans out there with thoughts/opinions on who might win the whole thing?