From: MediAction@aol.com Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 07:16:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: MEDIAlert! ["B"] - 9.16.97 (Media/Briefs & Web Watch) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INDEX: "MEDIAlert!" - 09.16.97 [Part "B" ONLY] "MEDIA/BRIEFS" -ITEM 1: "Grand Stand" [MTV; Apt. 2F]. -ITEM 2: "Changing Tunes" [Janet Jackson; The Velvet Rope]. -ITEM 3: "Half-Witless News" [Today's Lady; Susan Gingrich]. -ITEM 4: "Classy Reporting" [National Scholastic Press Association]. -ITEM 5: "Gay Basher's Gospel" [Kirk Franklin; Vibe]. -ITEM 6: "Gay Tail" [Comedy Central; South Park]. -ITEM 7: "Race to Judgment" [GLAAD; Liz Smith]. "WEB WATCH" -ITEM 8: "Womyn Works" [Womyn.org]. -ITEM 9: "Outer Base" [Manbase; Navigaytor]. Part "A" posted SEPARATELY. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- M E D I A l e r t ! _____________________________ M E D I A / B R I E F S September 16, 1997 Al Kielwasser [1] *** GRAND STAND . . . . "Apt. 2F" -- MTV's latest sitcom -- is the saga of two, twenty-something twin brothers, living the hip life in a big city. The twins' grandmother visits, and comes out, during a recent episode (Sept. 7, 12 and 9). Immediately upon her arrival, grandmother reveals that her new boyfriend is not a boy at all -- but a "Doris." "I'm completely out of the cupboard," she explains. Her grandsons respond to the news in opposite ways -- each exaggerated to its comedic extreme. Jason pulls away in a homophobic daze, because "grandmas aren't supposed to be gay; they're supposed to knit you bad sweaters and smell funny." Zach rejoices at having "the coolest grandma in the history of grandmas," because it's "so hip to be gay now." While Zach undertakes a documentary film of his grandmother's love life with Doris, Jason broods and pouts. After some (largely unseen) soul searching -- and a dose of public ridicule for being a homophobe -- Jason finally comes around. Grandson and grandmother reconnect for a happily-ever-after ending. Joking that it's "hip to be gay" has now become a regular punch-line on situation comedies. On the one hand, such humor can be dismissive. The very idea -- that gay is not only good, but better -- is literally laughable. On the other hand, such humor reveals an underlying heterosexual anxiety, that being straight is just too common to be creative (or "cool"). Conversely, being gay or lesbian is not simply acceptable, but exceptional. These messages could represent a radical departure from previous plot lines, evolving beyond the traditional themes of toleration -- toward those of CELEBRATION. C o n t a c t : Judith McGrath, President, MTV, 1515 Broadway, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10036, tel. 212-654-6000, fax 212-258-8718, e-mail feedback@mtv.com (or mtvap2f@mtv.com), web site http://mtv.com. [2] *** CHANGING TUNES . . . . "Billboard" magazine reports that: "Gay bashing, domestic violence, and the AIDS crisis are among the social issues that Janet Jackson addresses on 'The Velvet Rope,' her seventh album, due worldwide Oct. 7. Virgin, which is backing the project with its biggest promotional blitz ever, hopes such topical issues, combined with the project's stable of party tracks and romance ballads, will bring the superstar to new career heights." According to "Billboard" (August 29), Jackson conceived of the new music "as a way to enrich her soul." "It's kind of like therapy,'' she said. "I'm at a point now where self-discovery has become important, and this album is kind of like a self-examination. "I've always had this need, when I discover a truth, to share it musically," Jackson added. "Maybe this album will strike a chord with some people out there when they're going through difficult times.'' As hailed by "Billboard" critic J. R. Reynolds, the album's single -- "Free Xone" -- is a song about "the fear and misery that homophobia can cause in the gay community." Another selection -- "Together Again" -- is an "anthem-style dance music track," says Reynolds, which "lyrically and musically celebrates the joy-filled arrival into heaven of people who have tragically succumbed to AIDS." C o n t a c t : Virgin Records America Inc., Foothill Blvd., Bell, CA 90201-1606, tel. 310-278-1181, fax 310-278-8695, e-mail virgin@media.virginrecords.com, web site http://www.virginrecords.com; Janet Jackson ("Official Fan Club"), c/o Fan Asylum, 625 Second St. #202, San Francisco, CA 94107, e-mail mary@fanasylum.com, web site http://fanasylum.com/janet/; "Billboard," 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, e-mail web site http://www.billboard.com. [3] *** HALF-WITLESS NEWS . . . . Of Newt Gingrich's two half-sisters, Candace -- his better lesbian half -- is also the better known. However, Susan Gingrich -- Newt's conservative and heterosexual half-sister -- has announced plans for making a media splash of her own. To counter the "liberal bias of American women's magazines," Susan Gingrich intends to launch a new publication -- "Today's Lady." "We will not have any male bashing,'' she explains. "It will be a magazine that will always look at women as being victors, never victims; we're not going to have sad stories about women being abused and mistreated.'' According to Reuters (Sept. 12), the first issue of "Today's Lady" is due out next Spring. Gingrich is "considering story ideas on such topics as etiquette, children's health, women and guns, Christian diet programs and what it means to be a lady today." C o n t a c t : Reuters, 199 Water Street, New York, NY 10038, fax 212-859-1717, web-site http://www.reuters.com; Susan Gingrich, Conservative Lady Inc., 3920 Rauch Street, Harrisburg, PA 17109-2226, tel. 717-657-0206. [4] *** CLASSY REPORTING . . . . Coverage of lesbians and gay men in student newspapers seems to be improving, according to a report by Tom Rolnicki, executive director of the National Scholastic Press Association. Rolnicki analyzed the content of more than 200 high school newspapers and found an encouraging range of lesbian and gay articles. Speaking at a recent convention of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, Rolnicki said that not only the number of stories seems to have increased, but the range of topics as well. Rolnicki cited articles on homophobia, coming out, same-sex marriage and gays in the military -- all written by young reporters. To illustrate a story about being out at school, one student newspaper in Pleasant Valley, Iowa "even ran a large photo of two boys kissing" (NLGJA, Sept. 1997). The National Scholastic Press Association is a member-supported organization, founded in 1921. NSPA is dedicated to promoting excellence in student journalism and helping schools to train "the next generation of media leaders." C o n t a c t : National Scholastic Press Association, 330 21st Ave. S., 620 Rarig Center, Minneapolis, MN 55455, tel. 612-625-8335, fax 612-626-0720, e-mail info@studentpress.journ.umn.edu; National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, 1718 M Street, NW, # 245, Washington, DC 20036, tel. 202-588-9888, fax 202-588-1818, e-mail nlgja@aol.com. [5] *** GAY BASHER'S GOSPEL . . . The October issue of "Vibe" magazine features gospel musician Kirk Franklin -- who speaks "candidly about keeping the faith and keeping it real, contends he's not a 'gay basher,' and talks about the Nation of Islam." "We've tried crack, we've tried politics, black rights, gay rights, this, that. But you can only drink so long, screw so long, buy so many clothes," says Franklin. "It doesn't satisfy the total man.... People need to get high off something spiritual, and I'm the holy dope dealer. I got this drug -- I got this Jesus rock. And you can have a type of high that you've never experienced." On his downbeat view of homosexuality, Franklin explains: "I don't believe that a person is born gay. That's what I believe, that's what I study. That don't give me the right to condemn you, but I do believe there's a better way. However, I also don't want to come across to the gay community as a gay basher, because I'm not." Earlier this year, Franklin rejected "a major sitcom deal with UPN" -- because the network wanted him to play a preacher who proclaims that homosexuality is "perfectly normal." "The church community would have eaten me alive if I had said that was 'perfectly normal,'" Franklin insists. According to Entertainment Wire (Sept. 8), "Franklin's latest album is the hottest on the R&B charts and is likely to become the biggest gospel record ever; only records by Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley have sold more." As rated in a recent issue of "Gospel Today" ("America's Leading Christian Lifestyle Magazine"), two of Franklin's records hold spots on the gospel "Top-40" list -- including his #1 ranked "Watcha Lookin' For." C o n t a c t : "Vibe," 205 Lexington Ave., 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10016, tel. 212-522-1722 (or 212-522-7092), fax 212-522-4578, e-mail vibeonline@nyo.com, web site http://www.vibe.com; Franklin's latest record appears on the GospoCentric label. [6] *** GAY TAIL . . . . Comedy Central's "South Park" is a brash, intended-to-shock cartoon series, fashioned in the off-beat mold of "Monty Python" and "Saturday Night Live." The show's half-hour plots revolve around a cast of school-age characters, joined by a spattering of unsavory adults. In a recent episode (Sept. 3, 6 and 10), the main character's new dog -- Sparky -- essentially "comes out." At first, Sparky is introduced by his proud owner, Stan, as "part Doberman and part wolf... He's the toughest dog on the mountain!" Soon, however, Sparky takes a liking to male dogs, prompting crude insults from the other children: "Stan's dog's a homo! Stan's dog's a homo!" "I'm sure glad my dog's not gay!," they tease. "Hey Stan, your dog been to any pride marches lately?" In an effective parody of the stupid "advice" offered by homophobic adults, who claim to "know better," Stan's teacher tells him: "Gay people are evil... right down to their cold black hearts.... Now, you go out and practice football like a good heterosexual." Significantly, such meanness and stupidity comes from the mouths of characters who have no apparent redeeming qualities. Quite the contrary, in fact. They are relatively disgusting people -- and so, by extension, is their homophobia. Dejected nevertheless, Sparky eventually takes refuge at "Big Gay Al's Animal Sanctuary" -- a magical place where homosexual pets can be themselves. Stan finds him there, only to realize that: "Wow, it seems like the animals here are really happy." Big Gay Al -- the queeny, life-affirming proprietor -- takes Stan on a "big gay boat ride," giving him a theme-park's view of "the world of gayness throughout time." In the end, Stan concludes: "I'm sorry I tried to change you Sparky. I just didn't understand.... Being gay is just a part of nature, and a beautiful thing." Still in its first season, "South Park" has become the highest rated series on Comedy Central. By 1998, the cable network expects to be available in 50 million homes -- and "a few million in the black." C o n t a c t : Doug Herzog, President and CEO, Comedy Central, 1775 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, fax 212-767-8592, e-mail dherzog@comcemtral.com (or mail@comcentral.com). [7] *** RACE TO JUDGMENT . . . . As the coverage of Andrew Cunanan continues to reverberate, several critics have attacked the media's "gay killer" label. Speaking at the sixth annual convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (Aug. 28-31), GLAAD communications director Liz Tracey repeated a point made often by her group: because the media would not identify a murderer by race, they should not identify him by sexual orientation. Specifically, as picked up the Associated Press (Aug. 29), Tracey claimed: "Cunanan was a Filipino-American, but 'one would be outraged to see 'Filipino killer.'" In her syndicated gossip column (July 22), Liz Smith similarly objected to the "gay serial killer" label. "One doesn't find epithets describing other alleged murderers in religious, sexual or ethnic terms," she argued. "We don't read about... African American serial killers." Don't we? Smith seems to sidestep the fact that news media DO link race with crime -- often. Nevertheless, GLAAD called upon the community to congratulate Smith on the "level-headedness" of her observation ("GLAAD Media Watch," July 25); in making that brief statement, GLAAD argued, "Liz Smith looked beyond the hype and saw how the coverage unfairly affected the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community." George Gerbner is one of many media researchers to conclude that, in the reporting of crime, white victims and non-white aggressors are most newsworthy -- even though, in reality, people of color are the most frequent victims of violence. For example, he reports, "African Americans make news as criminals at least twice as often as other groups do, despite the fact the 62 percent of criminals are white." In their book "Channels of Desire," media analysts Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen concur: "While the majority of crime in America is perpetrated by whites, the media promote the hallucination that crimes of violence are mainly the province of dark-skinned people." Andrea Lewis, a journalist and woman of color, has suggested that crime on every scale -- from interpersonal to international -- is reported through this racist lens. "Black on Black violence" is a phrase used commonly to described conflicts in South Africa, for example. Yet ongoing clashes in Bosnia or Ireland are never characterized as "White on White violence." Broadcast media offer no antidote to print. In fact, television seems quite a bit worse -- in both its news and entertainment programming. "Television with its visual orientation loves pictures of cops and robbers, people getting arrested, blood and guts and shoot-outs and that sort of thing," explains Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarance Page. "You wind up with a lot of pictures on TV of black and Hispanic people getting busted for crimes. "That would be my biggest complaint," says Page. "Too often crime is portrayed with a minority face on it." That the media refrained from specifically labeling Andrew Cunanan as a "Filipino serial killer," is no indicator of an enlightened desire to avoid racist stereotyping. Touting that "restraint" as a model for avoiding homophobic bias -- as GLAAD does -- makes little sense. By virtue of historic context alone, Cunanan was not only portrayed as a decidedly "gay killer" -- but an obvious "criminal of color" as well. His coverboy appearances on magazines across the nation can only be weighed against precedent, or the media's eagerness to portray people of color when they are NOT criminals. From 1950 until the mid-80s, NO Asian-American/Pacific Islanders -- none whatsoever -- appeared on the covers of either "Time" or "Newsweek." Novelist Ishmael Reed describes the effect of most crime reporting as a "pathologizing" of minority groups. "The difference between white pathology and black pathology," says Reed, "is that white pathology is underreported." This "pathological" bias warps coverage of sexual orientation IN ADDITION TO race -- as the reporting on Andrew Cunanan has demonstrated. This fact is obscured, however, in GLAAD's repeated suggestion that racist pathologizing is somehow less-permissible (and thus less-pervasive) than homophobic pathologizing in the mainstream press. In a month-long study of minority coverage, journalist Kirk Johnson examined several thousand news reports and concluded that "most reporters failed to acknowledge racism as an underlying mechanism." "Indeed, the very word 'racism' was rarely uttered in the major media," Johnson reported. "When racism WAS mentioned, it was treated not as a continuing tradition, but as a mere historical footnote." RACE is overemphasized in crime reporting, yet RACISM is unaccounted for -- just as HOMOSEXUALITY is stressed, while HOMOPHOBIA is ignored. By emphasizing a disparity in the media's coverage of "Filipino" and "homosexual" criminals, GLAAD tacitly stresses the "unfairness" of a bias favorable to people of color. Instead, critics should focus on the pernicious COMMUNION of racism and homophobia in mainstream journalism. To suggest that more outrage would be expressed over labeling Cunanan a "Filipino killer," as opposed to a "homosexual killer," is to cloud the issue. The critical contrast, rather, is the label mainstream journalists have never used: "HETEROSEXUAL killer." To paraphrase Reed, there is only one difference between homosexual and heterosexual pathology. "Straight crime" is never reported (at least, not as such). C o n t a c t : GLAAD, 8455 Beverly Blvd., Suite 305, Los Angeles, CA 90048, tel. 213-658-6775, e-mail glaad@glaad.org; Liz Smith, c/o Los Angeles Times Syndicate, 218 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, fax 213-237-4992. W E B W A T C H ________________________ [8] *** WOMYN WORKS . . . . Announced as "the webs newest addition to the Techno-Grrl movement!," the Womyn's site offers searchable links and other resources "to assist all lesbians and their friends on the web." "Womyn would like to have a friendly, warm, accurate place for womyn to visit to exchange ideas," the mission statement suggests. Any profits from this site "will be used to offset site costs, and will be donated back to the lesbian community" [http://www.womyn.org]. [9] *** OUTER BASE . . . According to editor-in-chief Sebastian Richter, "Manbase" ("The European Gay-Zine") offers "something for everyone, in German, English, French and Italian, from advice on safer sex to the latest, the best and the worst in popular entertainment." The web site's success has landed it among "Germany's top 5 percent," says Ricther. With a European focus, international in scope, Manbase covers a wide beat. Recent media features, for example, have included items on Euro-pop artist Jimmy Summerville ("Breaking The Silence - Jimmy Summerville Supports Amnesty International") and German-based cartoonist Ralf Koenig -- who has sold more than two million copies of his comic books. "Navigaytor," a European Gay Web Directory, is also accessible at the Manbase site [http://www.manbase.com]. [End - Part "B"] -------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT MEDIALERTS Distributed continuously since 1992 as a community press service, "MEDIAlert!" [TM] is a biweekly action and advocacy-oriented column of media criticism, focused on lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender issues. Recipients may print, publish or post this material, in whole or part, under this or any title, without prior permission. When appropriate, attribution can be made to "Al Kielwasser" and/or "MEDIAlert!" File copies of publications using all or part of any "MEDIAlert!" are always appreciated. Contact: MEDIAlert!, 163 Park Street, San Francisco, CA 94110-5835, voice-mail/fax 415-826-5203, e-mail MediAction@aol.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR NOTES The editor of "Gay People, Sex and the Media" (New York: Haworth Press), Al Kielwasser's media criticism and research have appeared widely in both mainstream and academic publications; he was twice elected Chair of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation/San Francisco Bay Area. ________________________________________ Shape the forces that shape our society . . . Challenge homophobia in and through the media! ________________________________________