“The noblest search is the search for excellence.”—Lyndon B. Johnson
By Nancy Ford
Obviously, OutSmart staff has had superlatives on the brain for the past several months as we have prepared our annual Gayest & Greatest issue. It’s always heartening for us to realize that we truly are a community of extremes. And we mean that in a good way.
But there are always a few categories that elude our vision. Below are just a few of them that deserve mention.
Best Unintentional Public Relations Stuntman
Catholic League President
William Donohue
By now you’ve likely heard the outcry regarding Kathy Griffin’s “Jesus can suck it!” comment, made as the comedian accepted the Emmy for best reality series. But what you perhaps don’t know is that Donohue got the condemnation ball rolling by stating on the worldwide web that Griffin referred to herself as “a completely militant atheist.” Where did Donohue Google that quote, you may ask? Why, in an interview in “OutSmart , Houston’s homosexual magazine,” as Donohue blogged. Thanks for the worldwide plug, Bill. Your complimentary subscription is in the mail.
Best Conversion Therpy
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders
Sanders, a Republican, recently had the opportunity to veto a bill decrying same-sex marriage, urging his city to adopt civil unions for same-sex partners to pacify those who clamored for equal marriage rights. Apparently, Sanders’ lesbian daughter convinced him that the “separate but equal” approach doesn’t cut it now, anymore than it did when it was applied to racial equality in the previous century.
Thanks for the change of heart, Mayor Sanders. Tell your friends.
Best Female Impersonation
Matt Barber, Concerned Women for America’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues
Barber says he believes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, currently awaiting Congressional approval, will turn all restrooms into rest stops. “Female employees would have to endure both systematic sexual harassment and a hostile work environment by being forced to share bathroom facilities with any male employee who got his jollies from wearing a dress,” he opines in a column headlined “‘Gay’ conquest spells the ENDA reason.” Cute.
Forget his interest in what is happening behind latched lav doors. If Barber is truly so concerned with adherence to biblical gender roles, why doesn’t he have a more biblically consistent job? According to the book of Leviticus, men have more important things to concern themselves with than the Concerns of Women, Matt. Read your Bible.
Best Understated Representation of a Gay Couple
Orbitz.com
Have you seen the commercial set in an airport touting Orbitz’s policy of alerting customers when their flight has been delayed? One version shows a straight couple snarkily discussing the dilemma. But another version of the same commercial depicts two men—possibly co-workers, possibly more—just as snarkily discussing the same problem. Best of all, the commercial airs on networks other than LOGO and Bravo.
Best Reason to Join NOW
The Heineken Draughtkeg Femmebot
I’m no screaming feminist. I prefer a high-pitched, humanly inaudible shriek that only dogs and evangelicals can detect. But that ad depicting a Femmebot giving birth to the new Heineken Draughtkeg pisses me off a little bit more every time I see it. Shapely and scantily clad, with her pouty, pursed lips, is that droid not the template for the straight guy’s idea of The Perfect Woman? She’s a silent, sexy, walking beer dispenser. Gross.
Best Idea for a New Product
The Heineken Draughtkeg Femmebot
I’m not made of stone. If we can have our rooms vacuumed by a mobile, robotic lint-stalker named Roomba, why not have our beer dispensed by its taller, more attractive sister? Let’s call her Boomba.
Best Reason for Elvis to Rise
Viva Viagra
Don’t think for a minute I begrudge any man who wants to make the most of his membership. But what is the real story with the “Viva Viagra” commercial, that blasphemous parody of the Elvis classic? Here we have a group of men spending the afternoon in an abandoned, remote roadhouse. No customers, no bartender—just these boys in the band who have apparently been away from home for no obvious reason, including one lonesome toad who’s mighty sick of the road, by his own description. There’s a black guy, a hippie guy, a biker guy. All told, they’re essentially one cop shy of the Village People, singing praises to their hunka hunka burning loves.
Maybe a good public-interest idea would be to follow these Viagra commercial, with condom ads. After all, a full nine percent of Houston’s new HIV infections occur in folks over age 49. And that’s nothing to sing about.
Best Show Stopper (tie)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Iranian president moved a Columbia University audience to gales of laughter late last month when he stated that there are no homosexuals in his country. Just because there is no active chapter of Equality Tehran in your homeland, Mahmie, that doesn’t mean the queers aren’t there. Granted, she might not be listening to Sleater-Kinney on her iPod, but we guarantee that some brave Iranian dyke is walking around wearing Birkenstocks under her burkha.
George W. Bush
Isn’t denying your country’s gay citizens just a stone’s throw away from denying your country’s gay citizens their rights?
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