“That’s so gay”

A lot has been made of Big Hollywood opening last week, the supposed opening salvo in the war against Hollywood rampant liberal totalitarianism. I still say the biggest weapon against Hollywood stupidity is Hollywood itself.

I turn on my TV and am inundated with the new “That’s So Gay” public service annoucement, featuring the talentless and eternally bitchy Wanda Sykes telling off some poor teenage kids in a diner for mocking a figurine with the “gay” tagline. How evil.

We’ve turned real corners in this country. Forty years ago we were hosing blacks in the streets. Minority rights have improved to the point that gays and lesbians can mock and harass high school kids for daring to have private conversations with themselves.

The ads suffer from a fatal case of “shoot the messenger.” Sykes is the worst person to star in any ad preaching about judgemental assholes. She has hurled insults and meanspirited stereotyping for years to meek out her dwindling career. What a lesson for the youth: “Leave the insults and stereotypes to us upper class entertainers.”

The ads are reminiscient of the “Truth about Smoking” campaign which began at the turn of the decade, using money funded by tobacco companies themselves to show a bunch of obnoxious, 20-and-teensomething EMO rejects running around planting body bags and staging arty protests to disrupt operations at tobacco firms. The ads backfired, with one study suggesting the effects of having snotty brats airing their righteous indignation upon you constantly was more liable to make you smoke than an army of Joe Camels and Marlboro Mans.

Personal feelings aside, is the verbage insulting to gays? I no longer care. If sensitivity was the goal, someone should be airing public service annoucements on disparaging Christians, suburbanites, southerners, middle class folks and whites in every Producers office on the West Coast.

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