Your fifteen minutes of fame, at the cost of your dignity

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: I recorded it. I watched it later. Aaaaaand… I couldn’t sit through a full episode. I got bored, I guess. Here are some of my thoughts about it:

• The queer guys are mean, rude, and unashamed in their vicious put-downs of anything not meeting their standards.
• I feel sorry for the straight guys (kind of). The Queers degrade, insult, humiliate, and make fun of them, and treat them like they are stupid and utterly inept. And (as our lovely society dictates) they are just supposed to suck it up and take it, being men and all.
• At the same time, though, they did agree to be on the show in some quest for minor fame.
• The Queers are just reinforcing the stereotype that gay men are shallow, flamboyant, and obsessed with dick. I personally know a couple of dozen gay men, only one of whom fits that stereotype. Gay people have the full range of personalities and habits — just as straight people do.
• And that Carson guy… would he please Just Stop. Just stop. Really. Shut the cakehole every two or three minutes. Tone it down tenfold. Quit being A Complete Bitch! And shut up every once in a while!

Here’s the other thing: This show is being broadcast on Bravo. I have always thought of Bravo as a channel that shows more artsy and independent type films, shows, and projects. To wit: Inside the Actor’s Studio, The Awful Truth, Fishing with John. Now they are showing QEFTSG, which, with all its faults and annoyances, is pretty interesting… but they also have this new show called Boy Meets Boy, which is a dating show that looks just as vapid and ridiculous as any other modern “dating reality show,” except that this time it’s with all guys! And some of them are gay and some of them are straight! That’s the wacky twist! It looks as bad as something that FOX would show, and it’s on Bravo? Well, Doc tells me that Bravo is owned by NBC. So it would seem that a gay dating show is too controversial for network TV, so NBC loads it off onto Bravo instead… where it completely doesn’t fit.

Maybe we need The Reality Channel on cable. You could even have two or three of them, kind of like HBO2 and HBO3 (or whatever they are called). That is where we could put aaaaaaaallllll the reality tv, and we could get back to showing quality programs on the other channels (note that “showing quality programs” is not equivalent to “cancelling quality programs,” which is what usually happens because Americans apparently just cannot get enough fucking reality programming).