He has been the voice for Major League Baseball and NASCAR on Fox, television shows CSI: New York and Cold Case, and for five years, Entertainment Tonight. Now Los Angeles resident Ben Patrick Johnson, a model, novelist, and former Extra senior correspondent, is stepping out in front of the cameras as the star of his own webcasts called Life on the Left Coast.
The online video blog launched in March and can now be found on MySpace, YouTube, and Apple's iTunes page. The 10-minute segments are a send-up of the day's political news framed by Johnson's civil libertarian views.
It is his attempt to motivate the LGBT community to be less apathetic and more involved with politics.
"We are so fucking apathetic as a group. We need to wake up as a community," he said. "I am as guilty as anyone for focusing on my body, the gym mystique, where the next circuit party is. Anytime I get photographed for a magazine spread I am promoting that. Hopefully, with the webcasts I now have more of a balance."
His monologues, taped in a two-camera studio he built in his home's guest bedroom, segue from critiques of the president and attacks on anti-gay groups to discussions about his own family dramas and sex life.
"I am a gay man and I speak about a lot of gay issues," said the 6-foot, 3-inch tall Johnson. "Our audience is surprisingly diverse and broad, and we have quite a few straight viewers. Maybe the issues I think are universal are indeed universal after all."
Registered as a decline-to-state, Johnson said he favors Illinois Senator Barack Obama among the Democratic presidential candidates and Texas Congressman Ron Paul among the Republican crop of candidates. Though he is also intrigued by the idea of an independent run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"I tend to vote more blue than red," he said.
Each episode takes up to six hours to produce. He starts by reading the day's news in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and wire services, and watches the BBC and Al Jazeera networks. Then he and a crew of three people – plus at times segments by guest contributors like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast member Jai Rodriguez – tape the program, which is then uploaded each weekday at noon Eastern time, 9 a.m. Pacific. [During the summer months he is only doing three shows a week.]
Sex sells
While the shows are heavy on political news and commentary, by far the most viewed episodes have something to do about sex, Johnson conceded. And he does not shy away from talking about his own sexual liaisons.
"Sex sells, especially on the Internet," he said. "We try to work within that. Sex is very interesting not only from a prurient gawker standpoint, but also from a psychological and sociological view."
Roughly 5,000 people download Johnson's webcasts each day, and the recently turned 38-year-old's reach continues to grow. When he had friend Clay Aiken, the former American Idol contestant who's been dogged by speculation about his sexual orientation, videotape a public service announcement about UNICEF to run during his show, Johnson found himself in the center of an online storm of rampant speculation that he was Aiken's lover.
The controversy led Johnson to confront the gossipmongers, writing on one blog that Aiken's private life is his own business and not something he has discussed with the singer.
"From the first I heard of Clay's activism, back in his Idol days, I was interested in his work and his foundation. Last year after I helped build a school in rural Thailand, Clay and I met to talk about how we could harness attention for what we believe in," wrote Johnson. "So ... yes, Clay and I are friends. We share beliefs and are both convinced the world can be made a kinder place. We meet on that level, and it's wonderful. I'm gay, and Clay? His private life is his own business. It's not yours, nor anyone else's. And it's not a part of my dialogue with him. We're busy talking about other things ... things that matter more."
Johnson said he found the whole controversy "really tacky and gross."
"People had trouble reconciling their teen idol Clay Aiken and my grown up, outspoken gay webcast. The people who groused and bitched made an unseemly insinuation about Clay and me," he said. "It is sad people wouldn't allow us in their heads to just be two people trying to do something good."
Political activist
More recently, Johnson, a board member of the Equality California Institute since December, which is an offshoot of the statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality California, become public enemy number one for anti-gay activists after he sent an e-mail (and devoted part of his online show) attacking the Capitol Resource Institute for lobbying against LGBT bills in Sacramento.
A debate on Fox News between EQCA's political director Seth Kilbourn and CRI's Executive Director Karen England over legislation to require school textbooks to include the contributions of LGBT people prompted Johnson to fire off an e-mail to England.
In it, Johnson wrote that while he supports England's freedom of speech rights, if she continued to spread her anti-gay message, then "we will BURY you ... with public opinion, with media, and ultimately with legislation. EQCA passed NINE bills last year to protect basic dignities and we have every intention of yours going down, as have others who oppose decency and human rights."
England, in turn, released the e-mail and claimed Johnson was sending "menacing e-mails and videos to CRI staff." She added, "For a group that purports to expand tolerance and civil rights, Equality California is not practicing what it preaches."
Blogger de Andrea on the Bottom Line site called Johnson "heterophobic" and said his language called to mind Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev "pounding his shoe on the podium of the United Nations when he declared that communism would bury America."
The blogger added that, "I wonder if they are going to bury us after they kill us, or before. Either way it sure sounds like a threat of war to me."
Johnson, who for the second year in a row is chairing EQCA's Los Angeles awards dinner in August, said he takes the attacks in stride.
"I found out over the years I tend to polarize people. They adore me or they despise me. There is not a lot of middle ground," he said. "I have given up on trying to manage people's perceptions of me."
Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors, who met Johnson two years ago, said he found the anti-gay groups' attacks against Johnson spurious.
"Obviously, he is free to use whatever language he wants as an individual," said Kors. "It is surprising to hear folks invoke oppressive regimes that limited speech as a way to limit speech."
Last year's L.A. fundraiser was the most successful event since EQCA began the events seven years ago, said Kors, who credited Johnson for his leadership skills and many connections as contributing to the success.
Kors said he has watched several of Johnson's webcasts and applauded him for using his celebrity to focus viewers' attention on serious topics.
"He is incredibly passionate and I think he is using his celebrity to advance equality and justice," said Kors. "What he brings to, I think, the effort to win true equality in California is his passion, his deep sense of purpose and belief in equality."
Johnson credits his friend John Duran, the mayor of West Hollywood, with inspiring him to launch the webcasts. It was after hearing Duran give a speech that Johnson created his blog.
"I was watching how he, as a trial lawyer and politician for many years, moved this crowd and motivated them by using his words and inspired them to action in a really positive way," recalled Johnson, who has spent $250,000 of his own money on the shows.
Duran said he first met Johnson about eight years ago when he tried to pick him up at a Koo Koo Roo Chicken outlet.
"He is absolutely physically stunning and I made a complete fool of myself. We became good friends," said Duran. "I think he is fantastic, but I am heavily biased. I adore Ben Patrick Johnson and have for a very long time."
As president of EQCA's board of directors, Duran recruited Johnson to get more involved with the group and its lobbying efforts. He said Johnson brings a different perspective to the state's politics.
"I am a very lefty liberal and he always reminds me Left Coast does not mean left necessarily," said Duran.
As for Johnson's webcasts, Duran said he found them articulate, funny, and similar to a certain cable television show that skewers the day's news.
"He is carving out a niche for himself as the Jon Stewart of the gay community, which I think is just wonderful," said Duran. "I think what really startles people is Ben has both brains and brawn in the same person. People assume he is mentally addled or just pumps weights for hours and hours a day and doesn't care about the world. None of which is true.
"He cares very passionately, not just about gay issues but the environment and immigration and civil rights," added Duran. "The day we get marriage equality is the day I get down on one knee and propose to him."
Family strife
The single Johnson said he has no plans to marry anytime soon. He is returning to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he grew up, to attend his niece's wedding to her girlfriend this September. The marriage has caused much strife in his family – not to mention fodder for his webcasts.
His left-leaning political parents, former African missionaries and now proud PFLAG members, support the wedding. (His mother, who at first found Johnson's webcasts offensive, now sends him items for his shows.)
His 45-year-old brother, a conservative Catholic, has denounced the couples' marriage. The reaction has puzzled Johnson, who said his brother was okay with his being gay and the two have a cordial relationship.
"My brother does not welcome them in his home," said Johnson. "It was relatively uneventful, my coming out. Fifteen years later my goddaughter comes out and there is drama, drama, and drama."
Apart from sharing his public struggles on his webcasts, Johnson's private life also influences the stories he weaves in his novels. His first book, In and Out in Hollywood, is loosely based on his being demoted as anchor of Extra in 1994 after the show's producers found out he was gay and he refused to pretend to be straight.
His new book, One Size Fits All , is a comedic look at a gay fashion designer who promises the same dress to three actresses up for an Academy Award.
With each book he tries to discuss taboo topics, such as his own battles with depression or the death of his former boyfriend, Jason Raize, star of the Broadway musical The Lion King, who killed himself. The plot of his second novel, Third and Heaven, is modeled partly on his relationship with Raize.
"A couple of my main characters struggle with depression. It is something to me that is real and something we typically don't talk about," said Johnson. "It is something that can be brought out more from the shadows and seen as something not as menacing as we might take it be."
Johnson will read from his latest novel at 7 p.m. Friday, July 13 at A Different Light Bookstore in the Castro.