Mark Steyn: Lights! - Laughter! - Lesbians! (TEN YEARS AGO)

SteynOnline ^ | May 6, 2007 | Mark Steyn

[UnklGene]

Mark Steyn: LIGHTS! LAUGHTER! LESBIANS!

Ten Years Ago Sunday, 06 May 2007

Three or four years ago in Britain, on a Sunday Times list of "funny people," I found myself directly under Ellen DeGeneres - which is not something many guys can claim. So, if only for old times' sake, along with so many Americans, I was happy to be swept along by the tide of lesbian fever that briefly engulfed the country last week, much like the swollen Red River as it burst its banks and spilled over the border into Manitoba. In both cases, the populace cowered nervously before "a vast network of dykes." The headline actually referred to the Red River defences, but by this stage most of us assumed it was merely ABC launching its fall schedule.

Howard Stern, the "shock jock" whose radio show includes Lesbian Dial-A-Date, has long maintained that, just as in real estate it's "location, location, location", the formula for showbiz success is "lesbians, lesbians, lesbians". But not until now has a female star tested the theory. First, it was announced that Ellen the sitcom character would be coming out; next, the actress who plays the sitcom character came out; then, the movie star girlfriend of the actress who plays the sitcom character came out; then, at "Come Out With Ellen" parties thrown by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Resource Center and other groups across the fruited plain fans of the movie star girlfriend of the actress who plays the sitcom character also came out. The lesbian publicity blitzkrieg was in the end so successful that there was no one left to come out except the publicist. So she did. ABC publicist Jill Lessard came out on the set of "Ellen" after "getting swept up in the moment." She didn't issue a press release - but Ellen mentioned it to Chastity Bono, lesbian activist daughter of Sonny and Cher, who then passed it on to Newsweek. On the big night, after the episode itself (9-10pm) and an interview with Ellen's older brother (10-11pm) - "I think we dated a couple of the same girls" - most of the 11 o'clock news shows still found time to send star reporters to the hundreds of "Come Out With Ellen" parties across the nation.

For non-lesbians, it was hard to get a look in. In other news, John Major led Britain's Conservative Party to electoral defeat, no doubt because he lacked the courage to come out as a lesbian; in Zaire, President Mobutu's regime crumbled because of a lack of visible lesbian role models. Needless to say, America's chief of state, with his usual opportunist cunning, managed to wangle himself a bit part in the only story that mattered. At the black-tie White House Correspondents dinner in Washington, Miss DeGeneres and the other half of Hollywood's first out celebrity lesbian couple, Anne Heche, were graciously received by President Clinton. There were two types of photos taken to mark the occasion. In one, the president is trying, as usual without success, to look presidential; in the other, he's grinning like a travelling man who's decided to blow the last night of the convention on the two-girl double-action special. Meanwhile the celebrity lesbians - celesbrities? - can't keep their hands off each other. Most of us - gay, straight, or swing voters - would be appropriately awed at meeting the leader of the free world, even this one. But there's no mistaking who the real stars are in these pics: Miss Heche's left arm is extravagantly entwined around Miss DeGeneres, while the right flaps breezily towards the president in a gesture of exquisite Sapphic disdain - a kind of lez-majeste. Try to imagine, say, a gay Victor Meldrew and Hugh Grant snuggling up in front of Her Majesty.

The photos are, in their way, emblematic of the Clinton administration - like FDR with Churchill and Stalin, or Carter with Begin and Sadat, they perfectly encapsulate the ambitions of his presidency. Perhaps, in Ellen, Bill recognized a soulmate. He too has been confused about his identity - sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes triangulating all over the map according to the whims of his sponsors and ratings. And, like Ellen, he's had a bewilderingly high turnover amongst his supporting cast. Yet alongside Anne and Ellen, Clinton was superfluous - a gooseberry.

Ellen, of course, had no shortage of celebrity cheerleaders: the coming-out episode itself boasted Laura Dern, Oprah Winfrey, Demi Moore, Gina Gershon (star of the lesbo-erotic gangster movie Bound) and lesbian singers Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang. It began with Ellen getting dressed for a date. "You've been in there forever!" yells her flatmate through the closet wall. "Are you coming out or not?"

Quite. This was the longest coming-out in history: those Peruvian hostages, the Republic of Texas separatists, the Montana Freemen, the O.J. civil jury - all of them came out quicker than Ellen. The show was first rumored to be going gay last August. And after eight months of "will she?/won't she?" from the star , her network, and her producers, Time magazine's cover two weeks ago ("Yep! I'm Gay'') had a news value somewhere between "Jesse Jackson: Yep! I'm African-American" and "Helmut Kohl: Ja! I'm German."

But then lesbian fever seems to have addled almost everybody's news judgments. Diane Sawyer had done an interview with Ellen DeGeneres which was supposed to run on "Primetime Live" on Tuesday April 22. But April 22 was not part of the networks' crucial sweeps ratings period, so the interview was delayed until April 25, when it ran on a sister "news" magazine show, "20/20." But there was more than enough lesbian fever to go round. On "20/20," at the urging of an anguished Diane, Ellen revealed her dissatisfaction with heterosexual sex. On the following Tuesday's "Primetime," she lent her support to the campaign for gay marriage. By Wednesday's "Primetime" special, following "Ellen" itself, they were down to an exclusive interview with her mother - "Tonight Betty DeGeneres on the day she learned the truth!" (Rival programs even featured the actress who plays her mother, talking about how she reacts when she learns the truth in the following episode.)

The "news" magazines weren't alone in recognizing the earth-shattering nature of the event. The Miami Herald hailed Ellen as "a gay Jackie Robinson" - although, in fairness, he'd been black all along, rather than deciding to turn black at the end of the fourth inning. But it was ABC's willingness to conscript its entire news output in the service of puffing "Ellen" that was most brazen. From the start, the decision to come out was presented as "controversial," with the allegedly pro-family Disney said to be considering nixing the move.

Oh, come on. Between their annual "Gay Day" and their same-sex employee benefits, Disney is in the forefront of the drift towards formal recognition of gay relationships. So ABC cast around for other bogeymen. Religious groups were invited to comment, but were apparently too preoccupied with such drearily parochial issues as abortion and African famine to rise to the bait over a TV sitcom. "I was thinking," Diane Sawyer told Ellen on "20/20," wearing that favourite pained expression she likes to do, "of someone we hadn't heard from in a long time - Vice President Dan Quayle." Dan had nothing to say about "Ellen," but sportingly tossed ABC a tidbit by challenging it to create a show about a pro-life Christian Republican.

Although I was pretty lesbianed out by the time the show aired, I actually found the episode sweetly endearing. There's a reason why Lucille Ball plays a character called Lucy, and Mary Tyler Moore plays Mary, and Roseanne plays Roseanne - successful sitcoms aren't about acting so much as projecting a recognizable and truthful part of yourself. "Ellen" has never had that. Despite good writers and a fine ensemble, the central character has fumbled around in search of an identity. Miss DeGeneres's memoir, My Point...And I Do Have One, was even more excruciating, an attempt to talk about yourself without saying anything. On the coming-out episode, the character at last began to swim into focus. And at least they had fun making jokes about gays, which is more than those grimly earnest news shows do.

Forty-one percent of Americans said they approved of "Ellen" coming out, forty-four percent disapproved. An ABC affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama refused to broadcast the show and several sponsors withdrew, though a lesbian cruise line picked up the slack and, frankly, the blanket coverage was hard for any advertiser to avoid. Anne Heche's coming out is the bolder move: ABC is gambling with a sitcom that's never quite found its feet, but the 27-year old Miss Heche is one of the fastest-rising stars in Hollywood. She writhed naked atop Alec Baldwin in The Juror and enjoyed vigorous sex with Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco. Her next scheduled onscreen coupling is with Harrison Ford, and executives are known to be concerned as to whether America's second most famous lesbian -- the only authenticated sighting of that hitherto mythical species, the "lipstick lesbian" - will be accepted as a heterosexual romantic lead. Miss Heche's agent and managers shared these concerns, so she sacked them and signed on with her girlfriend's representatives.

As for "Ellen," Disney and ABC will crunch their numbers and figure whether her re-orientation has worked. For my own part, I'm inclined to modify the old biblical injunction and love the sinner, hate the synergy. In that sense, April's lesbiana-a-go-go may or may not prove a great advance in "gay integration," but it certainly represents another milestone in America's descent into narcissism - the notion that who we are is all that matters; identity is everything. That said, "identity" is increasingly narrowly defined. We're so narcissistic these days that even the past has to be shoehorned into our dreary preoccupations. Eleanor Roosevelt can't be seen in her stole, FDR can't be seen with his cigarette holder; on the other hand, he has to be dumped into a wheelchair, or some tunnel-visioned physically-challenged activists' group will be out in force. But then, given that the Roosevelt memorial was dedicated at the height of Ellen fever, we should be grateful that activists didn't insist on chiseling a statue of Anne Heche and her wandering hands on Eleanor's lap.

from The Sunday Telegraph/The American Spectator, May 4th 1997

[Mr. K]

"the populace cowered nervously before "a vast network of dykes." The headline actually referred to the Red River defences, but by this stage most of us assumed it was merely ABC launching its fall schedule"

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...!! that's funny.

[SwedishConservative]

Anne Heche got married in 2001 and now has a son. So that didn’t work out so well either.