There we were, watching one of our favorite summer TV dramas, Fox's superlative "Gang Related," with the ultra-hot Ramon Rodriguez, when President Obama broke in with the announcement that he was going to bomb Iraq. Deja vu all over again. Ironic that one of the characters on "Gang Related" had just been talking sangre por sangre.
It's the news you haven't been seeing, because no one has deemed civilians being killed in Syria (remember Syria?), Libya (remember Libya?) and Iraq (you have to remember Iraq, we were there for a decade) worthy of attention. It's been all Gaza, all the time. Meanwhile, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has been killing with impunity and taking over that part of the world. Oh, and ISIS is also banning gay men and lesbians from the earth, just in case you weren't aware of that, because that's a thing with ISIS: get rid of all the lesbians and gay men. Just like it's kind of a thing in Gaza. Gaza leads the world in honor killings, a fact reported by Al Jazeera in March, including for lesbians who shame their families by being lesbians.
In Gaza, same-sex acts between men are illegal. According to Al Jazeera, lesbian and gay Palestinians flee to Israel, fearing for their lives, often from their own families. BBC World News has reported that gay Palestinian men are risking their lives to cross the border into Israel, claiming they feel safer among Israelis than their own people because of death threats for being gay. But BBC reports in Israel they risk being detained and deported as a security threat, meaning Palestinian gay men are truly trapped between house arrest in Israel or death threats in Gaza. Yet another example of LGBT news you're not seeing.
We don't want to tell network news how to do their job (actually, we do), but we are pretty sure with hours of news time each day they can cover more than one story at a time. This ISIS-driven humanitarian crisis President Obama called "genocide" has been going on for over a month. ISIS has killed five times the number of civilians killed in Gaza in the Israel/Gaza conflict. Meanwhile, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has also had little news coverage until now. One American doctor has died and two others have been brought back to the U.S., still infected and near death, for experimental treatment. We'd just like to remind people of a disease called AIDS that started in Africa also. In the global village, pandemic illness with no known cure is news. Not after the fact.
CNN's Jake Tapper reported on The Lead on Aug. 8 that Nigeria is the latest country, following Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, to be at risk from an outbreak. Tapper reported WHO saying, "The possible consequences of further international spread are particularly serious in view of the virulence of the virus, the intensive community and health-facility transmission patterns, and the weak health systems in the currently affected and most at-risk countries." Where have we heard this before? This is a story that will not be going away, particularly since Americans are now involved.
While GLAAD focuses on TV programming and Hollywood representations, they might want to add news coverage. LGBT people are virtually invisible on the news unless we do something to bother str8 people, like asking bakeries to bake our wedding cakes or something equally traumatic. Like did you know the International Gay Games have been going on since Aug. 9 and run through Aug.16 in, of all unlikely places, Cleveland?
Yeah, that didn't make the news. Yet more than 8,000 people have registered to participate in more than 35 events, from track-and-field and basketball to rodeo and ballroom dancing. The participants come from 51 countries and 48 states. This is why we need gay news: Because without it, we'd never know anything about what was happening for LGBT people worldwide. Given the 24-hour nature of all network news, this is not just infuriating, it can mean, as is the case with reportage on ISIS and Gaza, life and death. We did like trans singing star Dana International saying on Aug. 6 that Europeans should "shut their mouths about Gaza" since they were getting skewed news. It's not often LGBT people actually from the Middle East are able to speak out about issues.
We often think drama series do more justice to the news than the news itself. This is certainly the case with Sundance TV's stellar new eight-part miniseries, "The Honorable Woman," which debuted Aug. 7 and runs through September. Maggie Gyllenhaal is superb as Nessa Stein, Baroness Stein of Tilbury, an Anglo-Israeli businesswoman and philanthropist with a political past that haunts her. She gives the role depth and heart, torn by a world that is simply not right, morally or any other way.
Show creator, writer, director and producer Hugo Blick said in a BBC interview, "The series centers around a woman who is deeply conflicted about past events that have haunted her. She is battling a consuming internal struggle for reconciliation with her past, and her search for personal equilibrium is manifested in her political activities to try to reconcile a conflict that has haunted a region of the world, countless lives, and political agendas for many years."
The Honorable Woman focuses on the Israel/Gaza conflict, and as Gyllenhaal told TV Guide, does not take a side but "asks the viewers to consider how they feel about an issue that is terrifying and upsetting. There are people on either side with a vice-grip on their points of view. The show asks them to loosen it, even the tiniest bit, for a few seconds." Sundance TV repeats airings, so catch up and watch. There could not be a better time to view this compelling and gut-wrenching series.
Name-droppers
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is not going away. She "surprised" Stephen Colbert on Aug. 5 in what turned into a hilarious visit. Colbert, who plays an ultra-conservative of the Glenn Beck sort on his show, was complaining about how Hillary "drops names constantly" in her new book, like "Tanzanian Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda and Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi." Suddenly the former Secretary of State walked onto the stage to cheers and chants of "Hil-lar-y! Hil-lar-y!" The two played a name-dropping competition that was progressively more hilarious. Finally, seemingly outdone, Colbert tried to stump the potential presidential candidate: "Which would you rather fight? One horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?"
Not skipping a beat, Hillary responded, "We'd have peace-peace here. Peace-peace there. Here a peace. There a peace. Everywhere a peace!" The crowd went wild. And no, she did not announce. Except perhaps to say what her plans were long-term with that "everywhere a peace" rhyme.
There's not going to be any peace on ABC's "The View" come September. The show hasn't even started its new season yet, but there's already trouble brewing. A contentious test-show taping had Rosie O'Donnell in a fight with CNN's S.E. Cupp. Isn't this why Rosie was brought back, to get into fights with people? TMZ says the Aug.7 taping went wild when Rosie and Cupp (who is hoping to grab the "conservative" seat on the show) "had a nasty debate over the Australian couple making headlines for asking their surrogate to abort a Down syndrome baby." That sounds like it could start a debate. Apparently Whoopi Goldberg upped the ante by asking Cupp if she ever had to consider an abortion. Silence.
But then Rosie, not about to let either Whoopi or Cupp get the last word, announced she was not interested in another Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the former co-host who regularly argued with Rosie. It was after a fight with Hasselbeck that Rosie quit the show. The coup de grace on this test airing came when production sources said Whoopi declared she'd been "working with a cranky 85-year-old woman who's mad about everything for two years, and I need a break." Ouch. Looks like next season on "The View" is going to be a lot more exciting than the last one if Rosie has any say, and Rosie has never been known to silence herself.
If it's intense you like, another new summer series worth a look is TNT's "Legends," which debuted Aug. 13. Legends stars Sean Bean, late (literally, as he lost his head) of "Game of Thrones." Here Bean plays Martin Odum, an FBI operative of the Jason Bourne school of multiple identities. If you're in the mood for a spy thriller, "Legends" is complex enough to engage, not so complex that you change the channel. The show also stars "Heroes" alum Ali Larter as Crystal McGuire, leader of Odum's Deep Cover Operations. Larter looks great pulling a gun on the bad guys. TNT hasn't managed to hit a series out of the park in some time, but "Legends" might just be the show to do it.
Speaking of holding one's attention, MTV's queerish "Teen Wolf" has a new wolf, Liam (ultra-cutie Dylan Sprayberry, who was younger when he was on "Glee" a couple of seasons ago). Currently recurring, he will be a series regular in season five next year. Worth howling over.
Speaking of things worth howling over, Laverne Cox did a snap diva on CBS "This Morning"'s Gayle King. When King said, "So, you were born a boy," Cox corrected her in no uncertain terms, saying she'd been "assigned male at birth," but had always "felt like a girl." Oprah's bestie, a longtime supporter of all things LGBT, was somewhat taken aback, but soldiered on, and did not push Cox on the issue. Cox's statement does have scientific ramifications, however, as Cox has an identical twin brother. Identical twins are always the same sex. We're waiting for some science folks to take this one on and see where it goes. Cox's brother Lamar has played her pre-transition on "Orange Is the New Black."
Speaking of LGBT fun, Lady Gaga took the entire audience of David Letterman's "The Late Show" to Roseland for the final performance before Roseland closed. We were thrilled to see this on the Aug 6 show. The show originally aired in April, so this was a re-run, but we hadn't seen it first time around.
For her big 55th birthday, Emmy-nominated "American Horror Story" star Angela Bassett decided to go big, and go lingerie. Check her out at VioletGrey.com, where she talks about Ryan Murphy's Emmy-nominated "AHS," and what it means to be a black actress in her 50s. She looks amazing in the black-and-white spread. It's always good to see actresses who have not wrecked their faces with plastic surgery.
Speaking of actresses who look great, lesbians love Mad Men star Christina Hendricks, and they loved her even more after her Aug. 7 Funny or Die sketch about women in the workforce. Thank the goddess there is still an actress in Hollywood not afraid of the F word (feminist). Hendricks lampoons both her role in "Mad Men" and some truly awful facts about what women are paid. Even we didn't know that 70% of all minimum wage workers were women. Yikes. MTV has it here: on.mtv.com/1yb8uCE
We could watch this, and Hendricks, over and over.
We could also watch some of the gay acts from this season of NBC's "America's Got Talent" on their own show. Neither the Latin dance duo John and Andrew, wonderfully, fabulously good and gay (where else are you going to see two men dancing together?) nor flaming roller skater Juan Carlos made it from the semi-finals to be one of the 10 final acts on Aug. 6, but they had incredible competition. This season of "AGT" has had a plethora of gay acts, which has been fantastic. Everyone loved Juan Carlos except "AGT" judge Howard Stern, who found him irritating, and asserted that fellow judges were just humoring him.
Conversely, Stern loved John and Andrew, and urged the voting audience to vote them through. But the audience loved the aging queen, and so did the other three judges. Critics noted that Juan Carlos should have his own show. We'd definitely watch. And we hope he'd have John and Andrew on as his first guests. "AGT" is up for an Emmy at the awards ceremony on Aug. 25 on NBC, and we think it has a shot. It's the best of the contestant shows, it has the best judges, and it has the most queer contestants. "AGT" never disappoints. We hope the Emmys don't, either. We love "SNL" writer Seth Meyers, so at least we know the show will be funny.
Finally, it's fangs for the memories as HBO's queer-laden vampire series "True Blood" comes to an end in the series finale Aug. 24. The show has had its ups and downs, but the writers definitely put some teeth into this final season. If you haven't been watching, the entire series will be available in September for viewing from the beginning. It's a bloody good time, too. So for the Bon Temps crowd, the honorable women, the cute gay werewolves, and to see who's bombing whom, you know you really must stay tuned.