[Ed. Note: Please welcome Bruce Carroll from the indispensable Gay Patriot blog, an early supporter of yours truly (thanks, Dan!) and my favorite gang of apostates.]
There’s a simmering civil war in my house on Tuesday nights. First off, I’m so disgusted with the lack of talent on American Idol that I can’t stand watching it anymore. But, my partner John still enjoys it so FOX is on Tuesdays. But the battle lines have now been drawn at 9:00PM. All over a little show you may have heard about: Glee.
Yes, we enjoy musicals and stage productions; but let’s not be too stereotypical, shall we? In fact, I was a late bloomer to Glee. John loved it from the beginning and got me to tune in by convincing me it was the next best thing to sliced bread. For a while, I agreed with him and thoroughly enjoyed watching the show. I especially enjoyed the music. Producer Ryan Murphy is a fellow Gen-Xer and you definitely know it from the 80s-inspired songs he has used to form the basis of much of Glee’s musical foundation.
So, like much of America (and probably all of gay America), I was hooked last year on the music, the kids and the story of William McKinley High School [fictional] in Lima, Ohio [not fictional].
And it was with the repeated insulting of Lima [again, an actual Ohio city] that I think I first started souring on Glee and its constant uppity dismissals of American values and culture. Lima is portrayed in Glee as a “typical Ohio town” – meaning no future, boring, with kids wanting to escape to the bright lights of…. New York…. or Los Angeles. You know, “the smart places” in America. Come on, give me a break. I grew up in a small town like Lima, but in Pennsylvania. And yeah it wasn’t Broadway – but it was a great place to grow up. The people are sincere, real, love their country, love their community, and look out for each other. I’d trade Lima, Ohio or Parkesburg, Pennsylvania for Hollywood any day of the week. So enough of the slamming of “fly over country” from Glee – it is typically liberal and so 2004.
But I kept powering through, even after the not-so-subtle dig at Sarah Palin, which Steven Crowder noted a couple of weeks ago. You know the cheap Palin jokes are getting tiresome and lazy. But it reinforced my impression that the Glee writing staff and producers are using the show to advance a liberal view of America – showing their contempt toward traditional, simple values and instead embracing complete dysfunction.
Producer Ryan Murphy even hints at Glee’s cultural mission during his acceptance speech at the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Awards on April 18 :
“The show is about education. We are using the show in a great way. Chris’ character [Kurt] will never be the victim. Never. Next year Chris is going to have a boyfriend on the show and they are going to be prom kings.”
I don’t mind the agenda – that’s the show’s prerogative, I suppose. What I do mind is the bait-and-switch. FOX advertises Glee as a show of wholesome kids breezily singing about life as they skip down the halls of their high school. Murphy helped create this kid-friendly expectation in an interview with Variety last year.
“It’s a 9 p.m. show, it’s not designed for 8, “he said. “But it is designed for families to watch together. It’s sweet, but it will appeal to both kids and adults, it’s written for both of them.”
So do these families watching together really know that Glee (according to Murphy) is about educating America on the liberal wish-list for kids?
What sent me over the edge was the episode three weeks ago called “The Power of Madonna.”
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Again, led into false excitement about reliving some fun songs by Madonna updated by the kids of Glee – I was completely shocked at how the show twisted into a celebration of teenage sex, pre-marital sex, and unsafe sex. All at once, three couples (two of the sets being high school kids) “hooked up” with the sole intent of deflowering three virgins. Really?!? And not that I was surprised, but there were no condoms to be seen in any of the bedroom scenes. I don’t consider myself prudish, but the scene was way over the top.
All I could imagine was my neighbors’ watching it with their tween-age kids and being forced into explaining things that don’t need Glee to introduce into a family evening. The scenes were beyond racy, very sexually tinged and completely inappropriate for a family audience. I walked away from the TV and allowed John to win the Glee Civil War forever. I was over. Glee had jumped the shark for me.
However, I decided Glee would not defeat me. The best way to tackle this stain on American television was to counter the blind fan adoration with a reality check. So I chose to watch again this week and start shining the light on the obvious liberal agenda and contempt for “Middle America.”
This week, I noticed something else about Glee I hadn’t before. The McKinley high school students are not complex and interesting as characters at all. In fact, there is a surprising amount of stereotyping given that the writers are all supposedly liberal and open-minded. There is the overweight black girl with a large voice who is picked on by the dumb blonde cheerleaders. The only “good girl” is a great singer, socially inept, and appears to be the only Jewish girl in Ohio – convenient for the cheap Jewish jokes that have popped up from time to time.
The most ridiculous stereotype is, ironically, Kurt the gay Glee club member. Despite what Murphy said at the GLAAD awards, Kurt puts his full gay victimhood on display. Kurt demonstrates his complete lack of self-esteem and stereotypically effeminate ways in the episode called “Home” aired on April 27. Watching that episode made me cringe and wonder how liberal gays are not livid about this over-the-top caricature of a gay teen. Here’s a thought – why not make the gay guy a football player? Kurt makes Richard Simmons look like John Wayne.
Oh yeah, did I mention the gym teacher is a manly woman? Sue Sylvester, the meanie of the show, is played by Jane Lynch who has become a poster child for the Gay Left’s push for marriage. Come on, how stupid do the producers of Glee think we are that we can’t see through this crap?
For the sake of humanity and to shine the light on the Glee agenda, I’m going to force myself to continue watching each week. So for now, there is a temporary household truce on Tuesday nights.