Pajiba

Second paragraph second sentence, it should read “that’s so gay.”

(Thanks, Pooks. -- DR)

So is the "Do you think HOMOSEXUALS should have special rights? Congressman Frank does" ad ironic or satirical?

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Football is one of the most homoerotic sport there is. And I love it. "There's nothing better than a nice tight end taking it deep up the middle" John Madden. I watch football just for the subtext and the unintentional hilarity.

Heh, hear you, anikitty.

Terry Bradshaw, at his Hall of Fame induction:

"What I wouldn't give to put my hands under Mike Webster's butt just one more time."

So just remove the word "football" from my comment.

For me, the "personally-selected by Google" ad beside this posting is for napkins from Crate and Barrel. They come in assorted colours and are stacked to make a rainbow. Big brother is here y'all and he wants you to buy, buy, BUY!

sansho1 put it very well. I think it is clear that in the movie Vince Vaughn's character is using the term gay in

a. the grade 5 sense of the word
b. a way consistent with the obnoxiousness of his character

Isn't this all part of the gradual process of enlightenment regarding gay people currently taking place (their much needed civil rights equalization etc.) and maybe when we are going through a cultural shift like this, there will be periods of hypercorrectness and vigilance. In the meantime, take it out of the trailer, but not the movie.

Gay people want to be treated equally. This means they have to accept that they are fair game to be the butt of jokes just like everyone else.

I understand that GLAAD is worried that this will perpetuate bullying, but the thing that perpetuates bullying even more is the idea that gay people are different. They aren't. GLAAD wants them to be. Thus undermining their very purpose.

It's funny when I use "that's so gay" because I do it ironically. Frankly, I find that people really enjoy looking for trouble where there is none and that those kinds of people usually have too much time on their hands.

My personal hero Simon Amstell has, I think, the final say on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSD7jb-7x4

Gay jokes are just fine, so are jokes about blacks and jews and Christians and everyone else. The only problem I have is with gay marriage. You never see two hot broads gettin’ married, it’s always a female that looks like Bea Arthur trying to marry another female that looks like Justice Ginsburg. Can you imagine Ginsburg waking up in the morning with Bea Arthur holding her down and licking her snatch? If the gays wanna marry let them, so long as they’re hot.

ugh, gays.

Good ole' Pookie, boiling things down to their essence once again.

Also, gp is gaycist.

I disagree with you completely Dustin. What Howard says makes perfect sense, whether you believe the joke is lame or not. Most of comedy is inappropriate. The reason the greatest comedies of modern times are funny is because of their inappropriateness. That being said, "that's so gay" has more to do with notions of masculinity (like you said) then it has to do with actual homosexuals. "That's so gay" can easily be replaced by "that's so feminine" or "that's for girls", jokes that are all based on the ideas of what is male and what is female.

If you want to ban those jokes then you have to ban all jokes about race, religion, politics, or anything else that plays off of stereotypes and "archaic" notions.

That being said, this article is so gay.

It's a very lame joke (that led the trailer I saw).

I wonder, though, if comedians like Don Rickles (who made a living out of insulting his audience in amusing/non-hurtful ways) would be considered "edgy" today.

"That being said, 'that's so gay' has more to do with notions of masculinity (like you said) then it has to do with actual homosexuals. "That's so gay" can easily be replaced by 'that's so feminine' or 'that's for girls', jokes that are all based on the ideas of what is male and what is female."

Yes, and maybe someday we will realize that telling guys they are lame and uncool by comparing them to girls is also offensive.

The joke wasn't funny, but the fact that it was pulled from the trailer is ridiculous. As much as it sounds weird for Howard to defend an unfunny joke so legitimately, he's completely right. Getting hung up on the fact that it was a weak joke isn't the point.

There are hundreds of comedians and writers who can do hilarious gay jokes. If the social climate gets to a point that jokes as tame as the one in the trailer suddenly aren't allowed in movies, shows or comedy specials, we're even more fucked.

Hell, if jokes that tame are banished because they might offend, comedy itself ceases to exist, without exaggeration. So let's forget that the particular joke Howard is defending sucked and remember that it needs to be defended.

What mandasarah and Mrs. Julien said.

I'm gonna de-lurk here because this is a topic that has really started to get under my skin.

When I was in primary school (about 30 years ago) we had no idea that gay was being used as a term for homosexual (I'm not even sure if it was back then). Hell, we didn't know even that there was such a thing as homosexual, let alone what it meant. To us, the word gay meant something that was lame, stupid, idiotic and generally uncool. I even remember a picture book of nursery rhymes or something that had a picture of a boy and a girl skipping and the line was something about being "happy and gay" or "gaily gadding about" and that pretty much summed it up for us - holding hands with a girl? not cool; skipping? ditto; and there was no mention of Chewbacca or Darth Vader. Definitely not cool.

I would understand if the word gay, like the n-word had always been used in the pejorative, as a slur. If this were the case, I would have no problem exorcising it from my vocabulary. But this is not the case. Quite the opposite.

If anything, this word has been usurped by a small percentage of the population and now everyone else has to be careful how they use it. Patton Oswalt has a bit where he likens marijuana legislation to school yard games of tag - kids would make up rules about how "the gravel path is lava and if you step on it you're dead" but if you weren't there when these rules were made up then they don't apply to you. He uses this as an argument to defend smoking pot, I use it to defend my continued use of that's so gay when I think something is lame or stupid.

Having said all this, I think the real problem here is not the word but the meaning behind the word, or rather, the intent behind it's use as a negative adjective. And that's what pisses me off even more - rather than fighting to change the views of people who think that homosexuality is something negative, the more dim-witted members of the LGBT community (who unfortunately also tend to be the loudest) spend all their time crying about a bloody word. Don't they realise that all this petty bitching is actually hurting their cause more than advancing it.

My mother is a very vocal and active feminist (she took our church to the Human Rights Commission when they refused to hire her for a superintendent position because she was a woman - she won) but not even the most in-your-face-chauvinism got her as riled up as when, what she called "distraction feminists" declared a victory for the women's rights movement when the term chairman got changed to chair person. She actually saw it as a step back - in her mind she saw a room full of old boys smoking cigars and patting themselves on the back saying, "Let the broads have this one, maybe they won't notice that we're not paying them as much for a while longer."

I could go on about this, but I'm sure it's probably for the better if I just shut up now. Either way, I'm still gonna use gay when I see something that is lame and if somebody gets their tits in a knot about it, that's their problem.

I think the real problem here is not the word but the meaning behind the word, or rather, the intent behind its use as a negative adjective.

Hmmm. I agree with this, but disagree with your conclusion. The tendency among the young to describe something stupid, lame, and generally inadequate as "gay" does tend to reflect a belief that being gay is stupid, lame, and somehow inadequate. Words have meanings, and when a 13 year old says someone's backpack is "gay," they are very knowingly casting aspersions on that kid's sexuality. As a middle-school teacher, I don't let any of my students use "gay" as an adjective in class - both because it suggests that they are equating being gay with being "retarded" in the old school sense, and because, as a language arts teacher, there are just so many better words for what they are trying to say, if they are, in fact, just trying to say something is inadequate, deficient, odious, moronic, or weak. If they are specifically attacking someone's sexuality with the word, well, that's not tolerated in my classroom.

Considering how deep Anderson Cooper is in the closet, it's understandable how sensitive he is about the whole thing.