As March draws to a close, we wanted to note a couple of egregious lapses on the tube, then move on to our regular programming. March is Women's History Month. We have seen not a single PSA about this (as opposed to Black History Month), nor have we seen one newsy segment on any network. This includes the all-news formatting of both CNN and MSNBC as well as the we-are-always-politically-correct scheduling on PBS.
This news blackout of half the globe was even true on March 8, which was International Women's Day. Not one network noted the day or its significance. Not. One. We remind everyone that women are 52.3% of the American population. More than half. There are 3.7 billion women worldwide. In a month with 31 days, with the vast array of achievements by women �" including lesbians like Jane Addams, who founded social work and Dr. Alice Hamilton, who founded occupational medicine �" it's egregious that none of these women have been given the notice they deserve.
It would have been seemly for the networks to address the continuing lack of recognition of women in American (and global) culture, society and history. Thanks for instead underscoring just how invisible and expendable women of all orientations, races and ethnicities are to you. Insert outraged expletives here.
Now, on the missing Malaysian plane and Crimea: These are major news stories, yes. They are not, however, the only news stories. American news outlets have utterly ignored the riots in Venezuela, and have also failed to report the 7 U.S. drone strikes in 12 days this month in Yemen (h/t Rania Khalek, Truthout) that killed more than two dozen civilians, including children. Didn't this horror deserve some mention?
And then there was this: on March 7 two lesbians, Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson, both 24, were brutally murdered in Galveston, TX, their bodies tossed behind a dumpster. The detective we spoke with for an article for Curve magazine described the murder scene, the house where the women lived, as "a bloodbath." Jackson died from a single gunshot to the head. Cosby's daughter, Britney, was bludgeoned to death. She had numerous skull fractures and a broken neck. She died from classic gay-bashing overkill. On March 14, Britney's father, James Cosby, was arrested after a preponderance of evidence suggested that he was indeed the (alleged) killer.
Not one mention on any national network news. But then the women were lesbians and African American, thus least likely to get news coverage even for such a violent hate crime. Cosby's father repeatedly commented on his daughter's lesbianism in homophobic ways, but our money is on him never being charged with a hate crime.
Meanwhile, on March 19, ABC News broke the story of Donna Perry, formerly Douglas Perry, an alleged serial killer of prostitutes in Spokane, WA. Perry says she changed genders to stop murdering women. ABC News reported that Spokane police linked Perry to the killings of three prostitutes, Yolanda Sapp, Kathleen Brisbois and Nickie Lowe, through DNA evidence. ABC also reported that Perry had told another prisoner that she had killed nine prostitutes because they were "pond scum" and not using their uteruses properly.
According to ABC, Perry, who says she had sex reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2000 to stop killing, is claiming she is not responsible for the murders because they were committed by another person, her previous male self. The Perry story got so major attention; the Cosby/Jackson story got none. The Perry story can be found at ABCnews.go.com/Health. The Cosby/Jackson story can be found nowhere. Draw your own conclusions.
And now for the fun stuff. Like when President Obama appeared on NBC's Ellen on March 19, ostensibly to discuss Obamacare and a little March Madness as the Prez is a bracket fiend from way back. Michigan State for the NCAA 2014 win, he says!
Ellen told Obama that she had broken his retweet record on Twitter with her Oscar selfie shot. He replied, "I thought it was a pretty cheap stunt, getting a bunch of celebrities together and feeding them pizza." It's a fun bit between the two of them about the President at home without Michelle and the girls, and with his two dogs, along with some other more serious stuff. You can see it here: http://www.ellentv.com/videos/0-6ydodlse/ . We have to admit, it still wows us just a bit to see the President talking to a lesbian talk-show host in a satellite feed from the Oval Office. We know it was all about the Obamacare pandering, but we really kinda didn't care. In a weak, utterly unpolitical moment, we enjoyed it. You will, too.
As much as we love Ellen, we love SNL 's Kate McKinnon playing Ellen almost as much. McKinnon, the first out lesbian cast member on the long-running NBC comedy show, has been a featured guest on Ellen, of course. But this week she was nominated for an American Comedy Award, which is, you know, huge. McKinnon's portrayals of Ellen and Justin Bieber are fabulous. You can see her at nbcsnl.tumblr or on YouTube. Prepare for hilarity.
Also entertaining was world-class swimmer and out lesbian Diana Nyad on the debut of ABC's Dancing with the Stars. Amid a plethora of innuendo about "cutting the rug," Nyad became the first out lesbian to perform on DWTS in 18 seasons. Bruno called her the "million dollar mermaid," and while she is definitely more graceful in water than she is on the dance floor, she gave it her all. We were, however, irked by the negative tone DWTS used on both Facebook and Twitter to frame her dancing (something we also saw a lot of when Chaz Bono was a contestant). Whereas viewers were asked, for example, who loved Billy Dee Williams, DWTS asked about Nyad, "Was she a fish out of water?"
Not a jellyfish sting, perhaps, but a sting nonetheless. Is there a homophobic taint at DWTS? Don't they know their main audience is straight women and gay men? We hope Nyad gets to stick around a few more weeks, but it definitely looks like she has a target on her back.
Speaking of targets, the March 18 season finale of ABC Family's (lesbian) mystery drama Pretty Little Liars left us with our mouth wide open. Wide. We're not sure we can take the wait until next season. Soothing the pain of loss has been Shay Mitchell, who plays the lovely lesbian Emily. Mitchell has been doing the rounds of talk shows because, well, everyone wants to see her because everyone loves Emily.
We admit we even lowered ourselves to watching the Bethenny Frankel show because Mitchell was on. (We know, but it was just the one time.) What we love about Mitchell is she gets "ally." Though not a lesbian in real life, she totally understands the importance of her character to young lesbians struggling to come out. She talks about it in every interview, and we love her for it.
We also love how ABC Family has become such a gay-friendly network. Other networks might want to model that. ABC Family has "family" in their name, yet seems not to have lost a single sponsor. Hmmm.
You know Jack
Speaking of gay-friendly, Chris Meloni has been somewhat off the grid since leaving Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2011 after 12 years. He then did a brief turn on HBO's True Blood in 2012 as Roman Zimojic. Meloni debuts March 27 on Surviving Jack, a dark comedy of the sort Fox excels at. The show is hilarious, so definitely worth DVRing in the tough Thursday night lineup. We also like to support our allies, and Meloni is a major one. The actor whose breakout role was playing the bisexual Chris Keller on HBO's Oz has received awards from both GLAAD and HRC for his work benefitting LGBT causes. We're hoping for a little gay to break out in Surviving Jack.
Speaking of breaking out, we are absolutely loving NBC's new drama Crisis. We weren't sure about this hostage/terrorist/conspiracy drama set in Washington, D.C., but we will watch anything with lesbian heartthrob Gillian Anderson at least once, and that was all it took. Crisis debuted March 16, so catch up on demand or on Hulu.
We're beyond pleased to see three new shows debut this month with African-American leads: Crisis (Lance Gross), NBC's Believe (Delroy Lindo) and ABC's Resurrection (Omar Epps). We hope this signals a tone change on the tube, which has, as with lesbians and gay men, yet managed to match the black demographic in the country with comparable representations on the tube. Two NBC shows with black leads were cancelled early on in the past two seasons: Deception and Ironside.
These three new shows are superb dramas with stellar casts, but having three black male heroes for kids (and adults!) to see on the tube? That's priceless. Lindo is a particular favorite of ours. He also starred in Fox's short-lived The Chicago Code (which also had an African-American lead, Jennifer Beals) in 2011.
I Spy, the first TV show with a black lead (Bill Cosby), debuted in 1965. It shouldn't have taken nearly 50 years to have other network shows with black male leads. The only other dramas with black male leads are Showtime's House of Lies, starring Oscar nominee Don Cheadle, now in its third season, and BBC America's Luther (which we have written about extensively here over the past few seasons), starring Idris Elba, who previously starred for two seasons of The Wire.
We're pretty sure kudos are due to Shonda Rhimes for making ABC's Scandal such a huge hit with an African-American lead. Not that Kerry Washington doesn't deserve full credit for making Olivia Pope such a complex and engrossing character, of course, but Rhimes is the power-broker with her ironclad ratings bonanza on Thursday nights, one of the two highest-rated nights on the tube, the other being Sunday, where those three new dramas are featured.
The reality is, as we have been saying for two decades in this very space, we have to have minorities behind the camera to get them in front of the camera. This is true for LGBT people, and it's true for people of color. And alas, although women are the majority, they read as a minority on the tube, so it goes double for women. If we want representation, we need writers and directors from our always marginalized groups.
There's no good segue into this, so we're just going to drop it in: Bates Motel, Orphan Black, Mad Men. Set the DVRs, you just don't want to miss these shows now that they are (or almost are) back. And Orphan Black fans, two words: Tatiana Maslany. Because Cosima is possibly the best lesbian ever on the tube.
With so many new shows on prime time right now as well as returning faves, forgive us for neglecting daytime a little bit. Yet not one, not two, but three new gay male characters on ABC's General Hospital made us sit up and take notice. General Hospital has had one gay male character for a little over a year now. We wrote about Felix DuBois (newcomer Marc Anthony Samuel) when he first flitted onto the GH landscape as the ultra-queeny black gay nursing student friend of the show's (then) only Latina, Sabrina (Teresa Castillo), another nursing student.
Like oh-so-many gay male characters on the tube, Felix was solo with no one to be gay with and filling that two-for-one slot of being gay and of color. He also wasn't connected to any of the major players on the GH landscape initially, so he was expendable and very much a recurring character. But all that changed when Lucas Jones (Ryan Carnes) returned to Port Charles. Lucas is the adopted son of Bobbie Spencer (Jackie Zeman) and Tony Jones (Brad Maule), and nephew of Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary), one of the two longtime male leads on GH. Lucas has also been revealed as the bio-son of Julian Jerome (William deVry), a new major player in Port Charles.
Now Felix is involved in a three-race three-way with Lucas and the other gay male character on GH, Brad Cooper (Parry Shen), head lab tech at GH whom Felix has been seeing, and with whom he is in love. When last we left the trio, Lucas and Brad were talking about going to a party together very cozily by the elevators while poor, love-struck Felix looked on from the nurses' station. Whut?! It seems very unfair that Felix has been on the landscape for more than a year, has been wooing Brad for a few months, and now Lucas, who literally just arrived, is moving into position with Brad.
We also would add that there has been no sex happening here. We don't mean to be pushy, but in real life, gay men have sex. They don't do a Jane Austen-style dance as they prepare to prepare to prepare to have sex. We're all for romance on the soaps with everyone, gay or straight, but we see the straight couples falling into bed with amazing regularity, and we do not see that with the few gay and lesbian characters on the soaps. We'd just like a little continuity. It makes no sense to believe that sisters will steal sisters' husbands (Bold and the Beautiful) or grief-stricken friends at a support group for parents whose children have been killed would have sex outside their marriages (Young & the Restless) while gay men and lesbians languish, hoping one day for a kiss.
We'd also like to find a way to move gay and lesbian characters past the coming-out story. On GH, Lucas told cousin Lulu that he's not sure what dad Julian thinks about his being gay. Well, you're 30: say something. You aren't in high school or college like Bianca Montgomery was when she came out on All My Children.
We expect this boy-boy-boy story to move front-burner, because triangles always do. And Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst) is urging Felix to be sure Brad knows how he feels. So it could move fast and furious. Maybe.
Meanwhile, over at Days of Our Lives (which has just been renewed for two more years, so these characters will be around for a while), Will (Guy Wilson) and Sonny (Freddie Smith), Salem's gay power couple, are getting married. This will be a first for daytime. All My Children and One Life to Live both had lesbian weddings, but no gay weddings on daytime yet.
Will and Sonny have also been seen in bed together, so that is huge, considering just a few years ago the endless wait for the gay consummation between Noah and Luke on As the World Turns happened behind closed doors. And that there's no sex over at General Hospital.
Now if only The Young & the Restless and Bold & the Beautiful could manage to find some gay characters. It has always astonished us that B&B, one of the most popular soaps in the world (it has a huge European market), has never had a gay character and only got lesbian characters last year because a character turned out to have two lesbians for her parents. But those women have only been seen sporadically since, neither even showing up for their own daughter's wedding. (Attention to detail, people!) Imagine the actual fashion industry (as opposed to the fashion industry of B&B ) sans anyone gay. Seriously, you can't say anything past that, can you?
So in the hope that gay men will come to Los Angeles on B&B, or that the women of Y&R will finally realize they'd be happier with each other, and of course to see some of the fab new series as well as your old favorites, you really must stay tuned.