Summer has ended, and as usual, one of the last big huzzahs was the VMAs. We know they were last week, but can we just say, the VMAs were super gay this year. That's all: we just wanted that noted. Super. Gay. We loved that part. Other stuff, not so much. We didn't think Nicki Minaj was brave, as some have said, because it's never been brave to call other women bitches. Do better. And while it led to a bizarre back-and-forth of mutual admiration between Kanye West and Donald Trump, which was creepy, we thought Kanye's rant was tedious, and we wish he would just do music and not talk.
We did love Miley Cyrus' drag queens. A lot. In her closing number, Miley brought out a troupe of queens including Laganja Estranja (how did she manage that death drop without breaking her left leg?), RuPaul's Drag Race champion Violet Chachki, Ms. Vivacious, Alyssa Edwards, Gia Gunn, Miss Fame, Pearl and others. Not everyone approved. We don't care. We did.
Speaking of MTV (oh, that felt so 80s, made us think of Madonna and Big Hair), Ellen Page, who came out last February saying she was "lying by omission," was talking to MTV about being a lesbian and her new film Freeheld, with Oscar winner Julianne Moore. Freeheld, written by out gay screenwriter-director Ron Nyswaner and directed by Peter Sollett, is based on the true story of Laurel Hester (Moore), a New Jersey police officer. After she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2005, Hester appealed to the county to ensure her pension benefits could be passed on to her domestic partner, Stacie Andree (Page). The film details their struggles.
MTV News reported Page saying she knew she had to come out when she began making the film. "I remember thinking, 'Ellen, how in God's name could you make this film and not be out?' Stacie and Laurel's story is incredibly inspiring and did take a lot of courage, particularly in a time of such unimaginable difficulty. It really did make me go, 'Dude, just tell people you're gay. Just get over yourself, honestly, and support those who are not as privileged.' It's like, 'You have f-ing privilege, so do something with it.'" We can think of some others who should read that last line to themselves in the mirror every day till they come out. Just saying. Freeheld will be in theaters in Oct.
From the sublime to the we're-not-sure-what, but ABC's World News Now reported on Sept. 5 that Rosie O'Donnell, who has been somewhat unlucky in love and is in a messy divorce with second wife Michelle Rounds, and is currently hush-hush over a new TV project, is now dating Tatum O'Neal, who used to be a stellar actress and is now best-known for being in rehab, doing scary reality-TV with her father Ryan O'Neal on OWN, talking to herself on Oprah, and being one of the most ill-mannered guests in the history of Fox's Hell's Kitchen last season. You know that saying, "Out of the frying pan, into the fire?" That's what comes to mind. Rosie joked to TMZ that O'Neal is her "new wife." The only person who could make John McEnroe look like a good guy is O'Neal after their split.
O'Neal came out in May, telling People, "Women are the most amazing creatures on Earth. They're gentle and also more intelligent than the men that I've met recently. I don't have a steady right now, but I look forward to it." We look forward to being wrong about this, but Rosie's having a pretty bad year, and O'Neal seems to have only been having bad years since her split with McEnroe in 1994.
Dancing fools
Speaking of crazy, the cast for this season's Dancing with the Stars was revealed this week, and the name that made us Nae Nae was Paula Deen. We know Fitzgerald was wrong when he said there were no second acts in American lives, but then Gatsby ends up dead in the pool, and Deen is on DWTS. The show likes to have a heroic figure and someone to hate-watch (yes, we're looking at you, Bristol Palin and Chaz Bono), and this season (21st for the ratings giant) has both. We'll be hate-watching Deen and hope she lasts through the first week (we're pretty sure she will: people will vote for her just to keep her around for further humiliation). Deen told GMA on Sept. 2, "I hope I'm going to get out a bunch of new friends and maybe lose some weight and a little better body." Oh, okay.
Alek Skarlatos, the U.S. serviceman who helped stop a terrorist on a Paris-bound train last month, is a late admit to the line-up, but he's super-handsome, has a great body and that will carry him for a while. The rest of the line-up includes the great Chaka Khan (we would watch just to see her), Backstreet Boys alum Nick Carter, Real Housewives of Atlanta bad girl Kim Zolciak-Biermann, singer Tamar Braxton (Toni's youngest sister, one of the stars of Braxton Family Values ), Victor Espinoza (the jockey who rode American Pharoah) and Bindi Irwin, the 17-year-old crocodile-wrestling daughter of the late Steve Irwin. Gary Busey, the oldest cast member at 71, made us raise an eyebrow. Busey is always a wild card in his reality-TV show stints. DWTS returns Sept. 14 on ABC.
The trailers are out for Ryan Murphy's latest chapter of American Horror Story, and they are wow. We know AHS has been uneven, but we have loved some of it. Be prepared to love AHS: Hotel. Season 5 premieres Oct. 7 on FX. It's the first season without Jessica Lange, which makes us sad, but it stars Lady Gaga as you've never seen her, which makes us happy. Many of the show's mainstay actors will be back, including Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, Angela Bassett, Chloe Sevigny and sexy Matt Bomer. According to Billboard, this season will be connected to the first season, and will feature an appearance by the Murder House and its realtor Marcy (Christine Estabrook). Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk told Billboard other characters will be reprised. The move from Louisiana, where the past few seasons were set, back to LA was driven by the incorporation of the earlier seasons, Asylum and Murder House.
The former Glee and AHS: Freak Show alum Matt Bomer will have relationships with women in the hotel, including Gaga's Elizabeth, which means we'll get to see him naked again. He also has a closer-than-close relationship with his mother, Iris (Kathy Bates, sans beard this time). The brilliant Sarah Paulson will take the lead as Hypodermic Sally, and she will only have one head, unlike last season. Chloe Sevigny will be front-and-center as well. She's playing a grieving doctor, Alex Lowe. The fabulous Angela Bassett plays Ramona Royale, and guess who her love interest will be? Yes. The Lady herself. So expect a very gay and twisted season.
Ron Perlman is one of the most over-the-top characters you'll see this season, in the new Amazon Prime series Hand of God, which debuted Sept. 5. The opener began with Perlman, a big guy with a huge head who has starred in Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy and the long-running Beauty and the Beast, standing naked in a public fountain and speaking in tongues. That gives you a clue about the tone of Hand of God . Perlman plays Pernell Harris, a corrupt judge who suffers a breakdown and believes God is compelling him onto a path of vigilante justice. Sounds legit. Hand of God is, like the second season of True Detective and NBC's Aquarius, California neo-noir, which can be a sketchy format if you aren't Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy. Created by Ben Watkins (Burn Notice), it boasts a stellar cast that includes Dana Delany (Body of Proof), Andre Royo (The Wire), Jon Tenney (The Closer), Julian Morris, the gorgeous Erykah Badu and Perlman, who is larger than life yet not overstated.
There's a lot going on in Hand of God, because corruption is rife and people have issues. This is the dark side of God, the retributive side we've seen a lot of in the news lately. Harris' son has attempted suicide and is in a coma. Something �" grief, madness, miracles �" has turned the comatose boy into an oracle for Harris. The mystery at the heart of HOG is more compelling than the treatment of religion, and the show lives up to the neo-noir subtext. Perlman gets more riveting with each episode, and the characters who at first seemed oh-so-normal are revealed as maybe not. It's not The Wire, but it is multi-faceted. Available now on Amazon Prime.
As we delve into the new fall shows we are reminded that before our stint at B.A.R. we never watched TV, and now, well, we love it. September is our anniversary month at the B.A.R., and it makes us happy to have been associated with such a fabulous paper for more than two decades. We started here the same year ENDA was first introduced in Congress. Maybe one day we will actually get to report ENDA's passage was the lead story on every network. Maybe. But for now, we remain separate and unequal. Just ask Kim Davis. Our inequality is underscored by the fact that Davis wasn't ordered to jail until Sept. 4, even though she's been denying lesbians and gay men marriage licenses since June 26, when the SCOTUS ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges was announced. Her actions were, until this past week, the news you're not seeing. Then Davis became the lead story on every national newscast because a gay couple sent their video of her denying them a marriage license to ABC's Nightline, and the story went viral. Good for us, not so good for Davis.
On Sept. 4, Davis was ordered to jail indefinitely. It didn't take long for the Republican candidates for president to weigh in on the case, looking for free airtime. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) hopped on CNN seconds after Davis was led away in handcuffs, saying, "I think it's absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberties. This is really the problem when from on high we decide to get involved on a federal level with something that has always been a local issue." You know, like segregation. And "on high" is where Davis says her instructions come from. SCOTUS is our third branch of Constitutional government. All of which someone running for president should know.
Sen. Ted Cruz said, "Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. Or, if Christians do serve in public office, they must disregard their religious faith or be sent to jail. Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America. I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion."
Never to be outdone, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took hyperbole to new heights, comparing Kim Davis to Lincoln, then decrying the state of America when Davis was in jail and Hillary Clinton was "walking around free," apparently forgetting that Davis had committed a crime (has been committing one every day since June 26) and Clinton hasn't. Huckabee told MSNBC's Morning Joe that Davis was following Kentucky law, as if Kentucky weren't covered by the same laws as the rest of the nation. Huckabee asserted, "This is a direct attack on our God-given, constitutional rights," which was actually what gay male and lesbian couples were saying. He added, "We must end the criminalization of Christianity!"
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has also been trailing in the polls. He used Davis to assert his extremism, telling reporters, "I don't think anyone should have to choose between following their conscience and religious beliefs and giving up their job and facing financial sanctions."
Carly Fiorina, who has been climbing up the ranks in the Iowa polls, had the most measured response. Fiorina, who has stated her objections to same-sex marriage, said in an interview, "Is [Kim Davis] prepared to continue to work for the government, be paid for by the government, in which case she needs to execute the government's will, or does she feel so strongly about this that she wants to go seek employment elsewhere where her religious liberties would be paramount over her duties as a government employee?"
MSNBC and NBC ran video of Jeb Bush telling a town hall in New Hampshire after Davis was jailed, "[Davis] is sworn to uphold the law, and it seems to me there ought to be common ground, there ought to be big enough space for her to act on her conscience and, now that the law is the law of the land, for a gay couple to be married in whatever jurisdiction that is."
Trump said he had not followed the case closely and "didn't know enough about it," while Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Dr. Ben Carson all said public officials should uphold the rule of law.
Hillary Clinton was succinct: "Marriage equality is the law of the land. Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law. End of story." At press time Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had not commented on the Davis case. So for the so-called Christian being hauled to the slammer on national TV for denying us our civil rights (you'll never see that again, so relish it), for Matt Bomer naked, and for all the other fun stuff soon to be revealed in the fall season, you know you really must stay tuned.