'BRAVO hit show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has just landed a $1 million advance from Random House for a lavishly illustrated makeover book in which five gay men impart their wisdom to a hetero guy ... . The book will carry the subtitle: 'The Fab Fives' Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better and Living Better. ... It is not clear exactly how the advance money will be divvied up between the company that conceived the show and the stars and their agents.' — New York Post Page 6, Aug. 27.
''It's a Gay World After All!' screams VH1 in a press release pumping up their Aug. 18 documentary, Totally Gay. The show, VH1 says, will capture a phenomenon that has built to a fabulous crescendo this summer. 'In the early 90's, the entertainment landscape was a virtual gay wasteland,' the promoters scold. 'Fast forward to 2003, where 'gay is the new black'' Gay is the new black. In one sentence, they're telling us that the gay-rights movement has met its moment, and now stands to rank with the greatest culture war of our time, the civil-rights movement; and they're also telling us the movement is well-dressed. It's as if we're talking about a movement that takes orders from a glossy-magazine editor searching for this season's answer to an age-old industry question. Picture Anna Wintour standing on the sidelines of a gay-pride march calling, 'What is the base color this fall?' and meeting a resounding cheer: 'Gay!'' — 'Shmomo Erectus,' by Tom McGeveran in the Aug. 19 New York Observer.
'Is this liberation, or is it stereotype? Is the current increase in gay visibility progress, or is it a retrograde throwback to the homosexual caricatures of the 1950's, of a Nelly Nation of queens, hairdressers and interior decorators? Should we all just sit back and enjoy the show, as the caricature of the aesthetically obsessed, sweet-smelling gay man joins the American ranks of the non-threatening interloper: the funny little Jew, the tap-dancing Negro, and last year's model, the fumblingly illiterate Italian mobster˜the lovable social misfits for a new age? Not if we have anything to say about it. Call us the shmo-mosexuals: gay men who use the same moisturizer for their hands and face, if they use it to 'moisturize' at all. Gay men who thrill to the prospect that Oscar, not Felix, might have been the latently gay character in The Odd Couple. Gay men whose daydreams of a wardrobe splurge are set against the efficient, Muzaked quietude of the Men's Wearhouse on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea. (It's all in one place!) Joe Shmo, that is, but gay.' — 'Shmomo Erectus,' by Tom McGeveran.
'Shmomosexuals—untelegenic, too smart by half for the pop-mania version of homosexuality—have to steal a part of this limelight if the culture wars are not to devolve into wan affirmations from marketeers and product-pushers at the cost of rights granted by the government and supported by voters. Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank is a shmomosexual of the first order. 'It's like the equivalent would be Two Guys for the Poor Goys, with Jewish people showing people how to cut corners and save money,' [Frank] said of Queer Eye.' — McGeveran You can e-mail him at tmcgeveran@observer.com .
'And WHAT do I get??? To be made an asshole on national television? For caring about these people? For having somebody fucking fool me? That's fabulous! You're not the fool. I'm the one who has been shoving them down your throat!' — Andra, learning that some of James's Boy Meets Boy mates were straight.
'Wes is 100% gay— unless he's the greatest actor of all time!' — Andra.
'The majority of students at Harvey Milk are poor, 10 percent are in foster care, 75 percent are black or Latino. And yet in filing suit last week to block financing for the school, State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., Democrat of the Bronx, complained that resources were being diverted from poor black and Hispanic children.' — The New York Times.
'Beyond the fact that Will & Grace has been doing the gays-are-just-like-straights-except-they're-wittier-and-more-stylish shtick for five years, QE isn't really about mutual understanding between homos and heteros. It's about mutual understanding between Bravo/NBC and Diesel ... and Roberto Cavalli and Ralph Lauren and Via Spiga and Persol and Baskit Underwear and etc. It's about, duh, product placement.' — Simon Dumenco writing about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy at NewYorkmetro.com .
'If you were watching America from somewhere in a low orbit for the past few months, you'd think we were the most gay-friendly country on Earth. ... The Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't make gay sex illegal. New York City is setting up a full-fledged high school for gay students. ... The openly conservative New York Post put a gay couple on the front page—and applauded their union—after they got married in Toronto. A major church made history by electing its first gay (or at least openly gay) bishop. One of the final three couples on The Amazing Race is a gay team, Chip and Reichen, who met, lest we forget, while Reichen was in the Air Force! (And, of the three teams left, America has made them the 'most popular' on the CBS Web site. Forget popularity, they deserve to win. They're so ... together. [And they did win.]) And, finally, one of the most popular shows on television right now is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a show that posits that 'straight' men are so inept socially, stylistically and culturally that they need a team of gay men to make them over.' — Columnist Gersh Kuntzman, Newsweek, Aug. 11.
'If Americans are so repulsed by gay sex, perhaps the solution is to just allow gays to marry and have kids. After all, everyone knows that parents of young children have no time for sex.' — Kuntzman.
'I know exactly who y'all are. I'm working so that people don't have heartburn over your issues.' — George W. Bush to former Log Cabin Republicans chairman Bob Kabel, about a year ago, according to U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 18, 2003.
'Within our community, many see [same-sex] marriage as the shining pathway to equal rights under the law. Others see it as the antithesis of liberation, the epitome of assimilation, and forever short circuiting the progress we have made in winning new forms of legal recognition and protections for families that don't come with all the negative baggage of marriage. And still others are ambivalent, downright confused, or both.' — National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman in an Aug. 13 commentary.
