aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, February 16, 2007

Fox news fake news show debuts this weekend

Fox News Channel’s Daily Show knockoff, The 1/2 Hour News Hour, debuts Sunday night; anticipation’s been building all week. Best of the bunch of posts was The Comedy Central Insider’s take on the show’s producer, Joel Surnow:

So what else is going in with Joel, other than harboring dreams of making a pro-Joseph McCarthy movie? Why, he’s also producing "The 1/2 Hour News Hour," a show that’s turning out to be a giant stinking turd of an excuse for political satire. Don’t believe us? Check out this clip of Rush Limbaugh as the President and Ann Coulter as VP. 

Why even undertake such a venture? We’ll let Joel explain it in his own words to that arbiter of comedy, TVGuide:

TVGuide.com: Why do you think there needs to be a conservative version of The Daily Show?

Joel Surnow: One of the things you always look to in the TV-content business is what’s not out there. One of the things that’s definitely not out there is a satirical voice that skews to the right as opposed to the left. You can turn on any comedy satire show on TV and you’re going to hear 10 Bush jokes, 10 Cheney jokes, but you’ll never hear a Hillary Clinton joke or a global-warming send-up. It’s just not out there.

To which we say, OH REALLY?:

Mr. Surnow, meet Mr. Colbert:

MORE

For more on the politics of Joel Surnow, the man behind 24, see Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.

On Hardaway’s homophobia

I gather we’ve all heard by now that Tim Hardaway’s a confessed homophobe:

Well, you know, I hate gay people. I let it be known, I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people…Yeah, I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world, or in the United States. So, yeah, I don’t like it.”

Hardaway’s issued a second apology and his weekend appearances on behalf of the NBA during All-Star weekend have been canceled. Dan Savage thinks we’ve missed a teachable moment:

...a perfect opportunity for gay groups and gay people to patiently make a this very important point: No one has to like homos. You can sign off on full civil rights for gays and lesbians without having to think we’re nifty or be all that comfortable with the idea of sharing a locker room with us. (Hell, I’m sometimes not comfortable sharing a locker room with other gay men.) The gay and lesbian civil rights movement would make more strides if we could separate the issue of liking us from the issue of not discriminating against us.

Personally, I’m not interested in being liked by the likes of Hardaway. And I sincerely believe that the gay rights movement’s Sally Field complex—“You like me, you really like me!”—is holding us back. We should be out there make this case to bigots like Hardaway and Washington and Dobson and Falwell and Musgrave: No one wants to change your mind about homosexuality. You can think we’re naughty, you can think we’re sinful. And you know what? You can sign off on granting us our full civil rights, tolerate our living openly, marrying, having families—and go right on hating us! Heck, you can go right on trying to talk us out of being gay. [...]

Of course as more and more of us live openly—with or without our full civil rights—the hatred and fear that people like Hardaway espouse becomes less prevalent and less socially acceptable. But not everyone is going to like us or approve of us, whatever the law says, however socially tolerant our society becomes. And it is precisely these people—the haters, the Hardaways—that have to be made to understand that no one is going to force them to change their minds.

Dan’s proposed respone?

Mr. Hardaway is entitled to his opinions—and his prejudices. He is not entitled to live in a world or a United States that’s free from homosexuals. We are ‘in the world,’ we always have been, and we always will be. And gays and lesbians should not be subject to discrimination because some people are homophobic anymore than African Americans should be subject to discrimination because some people are racist. But if Mr. Hardaway doesn’t care to know associate with gay people in his private life, that is his right. It is also his loss.