We sure love sweeps month. Since queers stopped being the TV flavor of the month and went back to being the easiest group in America to demonize, we only seem to appear on the tube during the ratings wars. Now you see us (February, May, November), now you don't (any month that doesn't have a Q in it).
There was our gal Oprah last week: one day, she's kissing and hugging her "cutie-pie" interior designer, the darling Nate Berkus, after he whips up a house for one of her wildest-dreams segments. The next day, she's kissing and hugging her delightful make-up artist Reggie Wells as he makes over some dowdy women and Oprah. Then the next day, she's dissing African-American author Terry McMillan's gay ex-husband, Jonathan Plummer. Loved, reviled, loved, reviled.
Since Nate and Reggie will always (rightfully) be loved, let us go directly to the reviled Mr. Plummer. Oprah could barely contain her animosity toward Plummer when he appeared on the November 10 show. She didn't even shake his hand, and she's shaken the hands of murderers. The interview was waaaaay hyped by ABC, and hints of what would be revealed were passed onto CNN (as if this were actual news) and other media outlets. No leaked preview tapes, alas; we had to watch with everyone else.
McMillan looked stunning but was very angry. Now, far be it for us to suggest that marrying the 20-year-old pool boy on your vacation to Jamaica might not be the wisest choice when you are either 20 or 30 years his senior, depending on who's cooking the books. And perhaps all the beach boys in Jamaica look just as queer as Plummer does, so McMillan was fooled, much as our grandmother was fooled by Liberace.
Here's the big reveal from the Oprah interview: McMillan is still very much in love and lust with the cute and buff Plummer. Her fury is decidedly that of the woman scorned. She dissed, dissed and dissed some more in the first part of the show. Tapes of her vicious phone calls to him were played (she likes the F-words a lot, fuck and faggot).
Then Cabana Boy came out, and her body language was all slithery and flirty like Karen on Will & Grace.
McMillan still wants him. She said so. But she wants the man she married (the straight guy), not the gay guy. Yet (more reveal) she and Plummer were naked in her hot tub just a few nights before the show, and he spent the night. And she does not want to hear that he fell in love with a man while married to her.
It was like Jerry Springer for literate people who have never been to a trailer park.
Neither McMillan nor Plummer is particularly nice. These people go for what they want and take it: in her case, a gorgeous boy-toy; in his case, a green card. But what's Oprah's excuse? She was mean, grilling Plummer but barely prodding McMillan, and demanding to know why McMillan should pay him a dime in alimony (or severance pay, depending on how one views the marriage).
But would our feminist Oprah have said that to the younger wife of an older man? Somehow we doubt it. The gay part got in the way for Oprah. Loved, reviled.
And Oprah, despite her "some of my best friends are" speech, disbelieved that Plummer didn't know he was gay before he came out after six years of marriage to McMillan. She asserted that every gay person she knows has known they were gay since toddlerhood. And besides, she believes people are born queer. So there.
It was very voyeuristic.
We think Oprah saw herself in McMillan: a rich woman taken for a ride by a gay gigolo. Not that we are saying Steadman is gay, of course. There's plenty of other people to say that for us.
One can only wonder what Oprah thinks of Sheryl Swoopes. The African-American athlete became only the second woman in the WNBA to come out (conveniently for sweeps month). Swoopes is arguably the most superb female basketball player ever: a three-time MVP and three-time Olympic gold medalist. She has dazzled us on the court, and we come from Dawn Staley country.
But Swoopes, who was previously married to a man and has an eight-year-old child, told ESPN in an exclusive interview pretty much the same story that Plummer told Oprah: that before she fell in love with her partner, Alisa Scott, she had not been attracted to women. Before Scott, asserted Swoopes, "The thought of being intimate with her or any other woman never entered my mind. I've had plenty of gay friends I've hung out with, but that thought never entered my mind."
See, Oprah, it happens. (For more info on both interviews, check out Oprah.com and ESPN.com.)
Code pink
Our favorite late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson (you still aren't watching The Late Late Show? Is it too late? Then tape it, you cheeky wee monkeys, because he is utterly fabulous, does great impressions, including many queer ones) did a monologue on election night (we actually refer to them as his opening rants) in which he said running for governor of New Jersey would now become the new encoded way of telling one's parents one is gay: "Um Mom, I'm thinking of running for governor of New Jersey."
At the end of the election-night rant, after declaring himself a candidate for President because if Schwarzenegger could do it, he could too, he tossed out this line: "And if I'm President, all the governors of New Jersey will be able to marry each other."
Nice. But we already loved him. Please watch so he doesn't get canceled. CBS, after Letterman. This is what VCRs and TiVo were created for.
Speaking of canceled, our favorite sit-com you're not watching may or may not have already been canceled. Fox hasn't quite decided what to do with Arrested Development, which has a queerish character in comedian David Cross and a real-life queer in Portia de Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres' partner, among the many talented cast members in the dark little comedy.
Shooting of the second season seems to be on hold. This hilarious and super-smart show deserves a second season — come on, Joey got a second season! And we love de Rossi. Stay tuned.
We also are still in love with the opening monologues of Jimmy Kimmel, who is the low-brow version of Ferguson (minus the Scottish accent) and who never misses an opportunity to get a queer thing or two into his openers. Right now, Kimmel is fixated on rapper R. Kelly's pansexual rap opera, Trapped in the Closet. When Kimmel's not playing clips from this down-low extravaganza, he's doing his own burlesque version.
Here's what we recommend: Watch ABC's Nightline, still the best news show on TV. Then watch Kimmel's opener (his guests are generally only middling). Then flip to CBS for Ferguson. Then flip back to ABC for the late-night repeat of Oprah. Then go to bed, you're watching too much TV.
Speaking of late night, after 25 years, the last of the old news guard, Ted Koppel, makes his final Nightline appearance on November 22. Koppel's been on network news for 42 years and is the last of the major news mavens to grace the tube. Brokaw retired, Rather was forced out of CBS, Jennings died, Walters retired from prime time.
Koppel has always been one of the best newsmen on TV. A real journalist, not a news reader. Smart, funny, no-nonsense. Our fondest memories of Koppel are of his holding various feet to the fire (the most recent example of this was last week when Dr. Tony Fauci of NIAID was equivocating on bird-flu preparedness). But he's also a funny man and a decent man. He did a lot over the years to work some rapprochement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including some amazing town-hall events he held in Israel with opposing sides.
Koppel told David Letterman on Letterman's Veteran's Day show that other legendary newsmen like Edward R. Murrow had retired, and new but just as excellent people had taken their places. Dave and we are unconvinced.
Meanwhile, Koppel has ripped the lid off scandal after scandal over the years, and we wish he would get his hands on the Fallujah tape of US artillery hits using the hideous compound white phosphorus (WP). WP causes fourth-degree burns to any who come in contact with it. The Army's own Field Artillery magazine notes that white phosphorus was used on civilians in 2004. There is a videotape. Nightline (with Koppel) should air it. Talk about a war-stopper.
Although it falls under the heading of "things we're glad we can't see on American TV," the video is available. We tried to confirm, but couldn't get a nailed-down answer, that BBC News, shown twice daily on PBS in the US, will be broadcasting the atrocity. Photographs provided by the Studies Center of Human Rights in Fallujah show dozens of close-ups of bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved by WP.
It's an image you will never get out of your mind, so beware. But we believe if Koppel aired it, the war would end. Melted children, even foreign children, seem to be a show-stopper for most Americans.
Finally, there's little doubt that ABC's Commander-in-Chief is playing to conservatives and paving the way for Condi Rice's candidacy in 2008.
On November 15, Chief Aide to the President Vince Taylor (Anthony Azizi) was outed by a random drug test showing that he is HIV-positive. Political rival Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland) will try to use this information to his own advantage. Creepy. Just like the show. But just like The West Wing takes us behind the scene in a White House we ache for, C-i-C is very much about this conservative, leaking, vicious, backstabbing White House.
Sweeps are nearly done, so enjoy the excitement before the holiday specials and endless reruns begin. Stay tuned.