From a Newsweek ( 1/30 ) cartoon reprinted from Newsday: Two little aliens in front of their flying saucer to two average Americans: 'Take us to your lesbians,' whereupon one says to the other, 'They must've picked up Howard Stern's satellite transmission.'
Neil Steinberg in his kvetchy column in the Chicago Sun-Times ( 1/22 ) observes the TV ads for Brokeback Mountain ( which he liked as a movie ) show 'scenes of huggin'-and-kissin'' and of the '... cowboys and their neglected wives, and not the star-crossed cowboy couple themselves.'
You did hear about the gay couple in the reality show who won a $300,000 home and were voted in by all their new neighbors, but whose sponsor, Disney, refused to broadcast the already filmed series because it might scotch their ad campaign to sell that Narnia movie to a right Christian ( or Christian right ) audience? No? Front page NY Times ( 1/21 ) .
Also on the front page and in big type is a review of Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again ( by Norah Vincent ) , that is inTthe New York Times Book Review section ( 1/22 ) . Vincent, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, goes in man-drag to see how the guys are when women aren't around. The prize ( or surprise ) in the Cracker Jack box? She's a self-proclaimed 'dyke.' The reviewer says the book is a serious fly-on-the-wall study of guydom and is not a men-are-scum diatribe. Vincent gets a lot of mileage apparently from being the worst bowler on a working-class men's team.
The same issue has a review of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino. Yoshino, a gay Japanese-American lawyer, is worried, not about coming out per se, but about his need to play down certain aspects of one's private life ( in his case, gayness ) in American society.
Richard Roeper's overview of movies in the Chicago Sun-Times ( 12/18 ) had this item: 'A partial list of actors who played gay or bisexual characters in 2005 includes Campbell Scott, Peter Sarsgaard, Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cillian Murphy, Felicity Huffman, half the cast of 'Rent', Evan Rachal Wood, Jane Krakowski, Val Kilmer, Phillip Seymour Hoffman [ and ] Bruce Greenwood.'
Neil Minow in the Chicago Tribune ( 1/19 ) reports on homophobic aspects of movies made for children and teens where gays are made targets. Included are Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Yours, Mine and Ours; Just Friends; and even the animated Chicken Little. Minow suggests movie-makers take a hint from rapper Kanye West, who repented his homophobia upon realizing how it hurt a gay relative.