New York Newsday - Thursday, March 23, 1995 JENNY JONES CAN AMBUSH ME ANYTIME by Gabriel Rotello New York - Shortly after 11 p.m. the phone rang. "Turn on Jenny Jones," a friend said. "You're not going to believe this." I had never watched The Jenny Jones Show before, but this episode was almost enough to turn me into a fan. It was called something like "Secret Admirers," and was a variation on what I later learned are called "ambush" shows. Guests came on and told Jenny of a secret, unrequited crush they had on a friend or neighbor or co-worker. And then the friend or neighbor or co-worker was brought on to discover who their secret admirer was. The catch was that the admirers were all gay or lesbian. And the objects of their affection were not. When they found out that the person who admired them is gay, the guests were surprised but genuinely, sometimes hilariously, cool. Some flirted. Some laughed. Some were sheepishly embarrassed. One woman said she had never had a lesbian affair but would consider one now. Everybody seemed to take things in remarkably good spirit. Afterward I raved about the show. A big step forward in the treatment of homosexuality on TV, I said. Perhaps some of these talk shows aren't so bad after all. Especially when they contribute, as this show clearly did, to the normalization, even the casualization, of homosexuality. Then, two weeks ago, Jenny Jones taped a similar episode. This time a few days after the taping one of the young straight objects of infatuation, Jonathan Schmitz, allegedly bought a shotgun, went to the home of his secret gay admirer and blew him away. The media immediately called Jenny Jones irresponsible for treating homosexuality so casually. "Did Jenny Go Too Far?" screamed the front page of the New York Post (hardly a venue to complain about media excess), and most people seemed to answer yes. Even Richard Thompson, the DA slated to prosecute the Schmitz, sounded like he really wanted to prosecute Jones. Her "cynical pursuit of ratings and total insensitivity to what could occur here," he said, "have left one person dead and Mr. Schmitz now facing life in prison." Gay and lesbian commentators rushed to point out that it was homophobia, not talk show sensationalism, that prompted the crime. The fact that most mainstream commentators condemned Jones instead of the killer, they rightly said, shows that lots of people in this society still consider homophobic murder a natural response. But while homophobia is certainly at the root of this crime, I worry that in general we may be making too much out of one disturbed gunman's deranged and impulsive act. If we attempt to read some universal lesson into his irrationality, we run the risk of being irrational ourselves. Not that there would be anything new about that. Americans have a long tradition of over analyzing the actions of a lone nut with a gun. Every time some idiot blasts his way into the headlines - from Lee Harvey Oswald to Colin Ferguson - we tend to reexamine ourselves, our culture, our values. This particular reexamination seems likely to steer talk show producers away from treating homosexuality as a natural part of life, while leaving them free to push the boundaries of everything else. That would be a shame. Producers should perhaps screen guests more carefully on "ambush" shows, but they should not tread lightly around gay themes. The Jenny Jones episode I saw a few months ago was terrific, one of the most honest treatments of real gay lives I've ever seen on talk TV. The results were refreshing, spontaneous, liberating. So while I grieve for the innocent victim of this vicious anti-gay murder, I'd hate to think that his death will result in a silencing of such honesty on the tube. One deranged nut with a gun has already done enough damage.