Cry Me a Gay River ...

The gay community is so dramatic, but is it surprising? In their latest hissyfit, they're charging the American Idol show with becoming "increasingly homophobic", according to Contactmusic.

Officials at the Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) were appalled by homophobic remarks made by judges SIMON COWELL and RANDY JACKSON on the first show of the new season, which aired in America on Tuesday (17JAN06).

On the programme, Brit Cowell told one effeminate wannabe to "shave off your beard and wear a dress," while Jackson asked another audition hopeful, "Are you a girl?" Both contestants were rejected.

Now GLAAD bosses are fighting back, demanding an audience with Idol bosses.

A spokesman tells entertainment news website TMZ.com, "GLAAD is reaching out to the show's producers to discuss our concerns and the concerns of community members and allies, who have contacted us about this matter."

Let's put this into perspective, shall we? Is it not perfectly reasonable to tell a man who acts like a woman to look more like one? Are we so sure that these contestants were offended by the remarks, or is GLAAD just jumping the gun on this one? Here's a nice comparison, one liberals wouldn't accept as logical soon as calling day 'night' and light 'dark'. Jane Smiley, in a piece written for Slate online magazine immediately following the election, says the following:

The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not.

In fact, she admits that most of her family voted for Bush, but were not ignorant, just "greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority." However, her statement regarding her family represents a rare absence of the word "ignorant" being used to define a conservative. Smiley uses the words "ignorant" or "ignorance" twelve times in a 1000+ word essay. That's nearly 1.2% of the article devoted to a single term in various forms.

It sure is a good thing she's teaching impressionable college students at the University of Iowa. Perhaps she could've consulted a thesaurus and used some synonyms for the word. There are plenty of them, including but not limited to: uneducated, primitive, and oblivious, to name but a few. Plenty of terms a distinguished author of Ms. Smiley's standing would have no trouble comprehending. Apparently common sense isn't a prerequisite for receiving the Pulitzer Prize (1992 for A Thousand Acres).

An accomplished author and university instructor labels conservatives "ignorant" a dozen times in a single sitting and the she is embraced by the liberal community. Notoriously sarcastic and brutally honest reality-show host tells an effeminate man to "shave off [your] beard and wear a dress" and the gay community is up in arms. The double standards are endless from the not-so-honorable opposition.

Whether it is campus "free-speech zones" or hypocrisy in what constitutes "hateful speech", radical leftists will never admit that their speech crosses any lines of decency. But hey, it's the reactionary right-wing of the Republican Party that is hateful, intolerant, and bigoted.

And don't you forget it!