Sarah Palin wants to produce a TV show about her husband’s life as a snowmobiler, but so far, networks have been cold to the idea.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Palin and producer Mark Burnett are pitching a show that would turn the camera on Todd Palin’s winning career on the circuit, but the price tag has driven bidders away. Discovery Networks, the company that ran her last show on TLC, paid over $1 million an episode for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which ran in 2010.
Now, Discovery is unwilling to pay that price, as is A&E Networks. “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” debuted to massive ratings, with network record audienceof five million, but fell precipitously, including a 40% drop from its first to second episode.
Todd Palin, as I’ve said before, isn’t too bad on the eyes, but he’s scarier than he is hot. Besides, you can bet that even if the show was about him, Sarah would probably grab as much camera time as she possibly could anyway.
Back in the 1990s, I read a book called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90′s. It was a pretty controversial book when it came out. Many in the gay community criticized the authors’ assertion that the segments of the LGBT community least palatable to middle America should be relegated to the “back of the bus” in the movement, for the sake of better PR. The right latched on to it as the “PR manual for the homosexual agenda.” (They still call it that.)
A new documentary looks at the black-gay civil rights divide by centering on Massachusetts Rep. Byron Rushing (D) during the commonwealth’s push to legalize same-sex marriage. The African American legislator eloquently weaves the two movements together in the 15-minute film. Following a screening of the movie last month, I moderated a panel discussion at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City that looked at the marriage equality push in New York state from a black perspective. The panel was filled with luminaries, including media and fashion mogul Russell Simmons. But the star of the event was a soft-spoken man named David Wilson.
In the film, Wilson tells the heartbreaking story about the death of his then-partner. The trauma of finding him lying in the driveway. The terror of being arrested by the police on suspicion of breaking and entering or assault and battery before neighbors convinced police otherwise. The indignity of being denied information by the hospital because he was a legal stranger to his partner. Only after his partner’s 75-year-old mother told the hospital who Wilson was did they inform him that his partner of 13 years was dead on arrival.
Wilson swore he’d never go through that again. And he would find love again. In 2003, he and Rob Compton became one of the seven same-sex couples to sue for and win the right to marry in the 2003 landmarkGoodridge vs. the Department of Health case.
It wasn’t until the panel discussion that the power of Davis’s example was fully displayed. As he said in his moving opening statement, which I run in full below, this gracious, soft-spoken man wanted “to put a black face on the Marriage Equality movement.”
Anti-gay marriage amendments and ballot initiatives like Proposition 8 only harm Black gay and lesbian famlies, many of whom are already economically disadvantaged. Cannick may think marriage equality is “secondary” to other issues, or can wait until others are addressed. But that also means that thousands of our families will continue to suffer injustice, economic and otherwise, indefinitely and without remedy.
For them, inequality is a daily burden added to the rest: making ends meet, putting food on the table, keeping a roof over their heads, and simply providing for their families.
For many of our families, equality is not a “luxury,” as Cannick calls it. It is justice.
Marriage isn’t the only solution to these problems, by any means, and it for many it may not be the right solution. It shouldn’t be our only focus or strategy, but neither should marriage be rejected out of hand for everyone.
There are many paths to justice. We each chose ours for different, often deeply personal reasons. Sometimes they weave together in places where we need help and can help one another to keep going. They part, but inevitably cross again. We will meet each other many times on our winding paths to justice. We will need each other again. Let’s not put roadblocks in front of one another.
I won’t ask Cannick to change her priorities. I wish she wouldn’t decide for my family, and other Black gay families, what our priorities are or should be.
I won’t watch a movie if I’ve missed the beginning, and I hate missing endings so much that I won’t start watching a movie I can’t see through to the end. As a writer, the beginning and end are two of the most important parts of the story to me. They answer two important important questions in any story: “How did we get into this?” and “How do we get out of this?”
Monday night, I watched Too Big To Fail — HBO’s eponymous adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book — from start to finish. Yet, I still ended up feeling like I’d missed the two most important parts of the story: the beginning and the end. Thus, I never got answers to those important questions: How did we get into this mess? How do we get out of this mess?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about one of my odd celebrity crushes. Some of them are not so odd, and then some of them are kind of odd. I’m not sure where this one falls, but it came to mind when I read the latest news in the media industry that the Charlie Sheen implosion has become.
I wonder what Lena Horne would say to Miss USA Rima Fakih.
Much has been written and will be written about Fakih’s pageant win. Not being a big fan of beauty pageants, I didn’t watch this one. So, my thoughts about it are pretty simple: Obviously, she met all the qualifications to participate in the competition, and lacking an ability to read the minds of the judges I can only assume she met and likely exceeded their standards for beauty and poise, and thus beat out her opponents. Leave her alone and let her enjoy her year-long reign.
On one hand it seems silly — given the unresolved fate of financial reform, the BP oil disaster, and any number of issues — that so much attention is being given to the outcome of the outcome of a beauty pageant. On the other hand, after while it made perfect sense to me. Because I thought of Lena Horne.
I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, even after the power came back on. Frankly, I wasn’t interested. Never have been. I’d rather they put the ads on — maybe even put them in a show of their own — and left it at that.
Well, that’s kinda what’s happened online. Now I can see the ads without having to sit through the game. This one is my favorite, hands down.
Some things have to be seen and head to be believed. [Via Huffington Post.]
I’m writing something longer that will incorporate this, but I was so blown away that I wanted to go ahead and post it now. I’ll connect it up to some other things in a bit.
Marrying other species? Wait a minute. Other species?
Grey is the color of ghosts. Grey is the color of a dead garden. Grey is not darkness. It is the color of not-quite-dark, of just-enough-but-not-enough; just enough light to see the edges of your world, but not enough enough light to see way out; enough to see the edges of the world beyond yours, but not enough to see a way in. Grey is just enough, where the blinding nothingness of darkness would be a comfort. Grey is the color of giving up.
The darkest moment in HBO’s Grey Gardens — the hardest to see, and (for me) the hardest to watch — was appropriately grey.
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP. If you haven’t seen it yet, and don’t want to know what happens in the “drama” part of the
Earlier this week, in the middle of a conversation in which it was said that someone or another was “born to do” something or another, Parker interjected, “And Daddy was born to sing!” I hugged him, and even teared up a bit.
I’ve been singing to Parker for a while now, whenever it’s my turn to put him to bed. It started with a couple of songs and as I added to my repertoire, grew into something special between us, in part because his favorite is one that has a special significance for me. But also because Parker’s requests brought me back to a love of singing that I haven’t pursued for a while.
One of my long-held, unfulfilled ambitions is to be a professional singer. I don’t remember when I discovered I had a voice. But, by the time I was in the second grade, I thought maybe I had something. Plus, I had the confidence of second grader, at the time.
I won’t bemoan how the failure of media to do its job necessitates his role. I will simply give thanks that, in the absence of reliable media criticism, at least we have Jon Stewart — making us laugh while telling us truths that are far from funny. By now, you’ve heard about and seen his now-legendary Santelli-inspired CNBC takedown.
And perhaps you’ve read Jim Cramer’s Main Street column, in which he complained about Stewart taking his remarks out of context. To his credit, Stewart owned up to his error. And then some.
This one-hour special looks at the current economic meltdown in the US and compares and contrasts it with what led up to the Great Depression, the 1929 Crash, its immediate aftermath and what helped to bring us out of the Depression. Threading first person accounts with expert interviews, the special lets viewers understand how much history is repeating itself and what does history tell us about our future?
Tonight, it followed (appropriately enough) the “Greed” episode of the History Channel’s series The Seven Deadly Sins.
I haven’t written much about the whole Rick Warren controversey yet, though I have something in mind. (Let’s see if I actually get time to write it.) But in the meantime, I wanted to point to a terrific appearance by Mike Rogers (of Blogactive and PageOneQ) on MSNBC.
I’m a big fan of Mike’s even moreso after his deft handling of a right wing minster, there t defend the Warren pick, etc. Mike threw him completely off his game.
After the kids go to bed, the television in our house is usually turned to one of the channels of the Discovery franchise. And, once he’s had his fill of my crime shows, the hubby usually declares that it’s time to watch something in which no one dies a horrible death. Last night, in the course of flipping channels, I caught a commercial about a show I’m definite going to watch.
I’d have missed it if I’d been a little close to the remote, because a commercial for the Duggar family — those conservative Christian darlings of the Quiverfull movement — came on, and my usual reaction is to dive for the remote while mutter something about Discovery giving these folks a platform. But fortunately, I was to slow and the remote was too far away. Otherwise I’d have missed the commercial for “Quads with Two Moms.”
What’s up? Well, now we know. First Dumbledor, now this.
Only a week after the announcement that the character Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series is gay, the fictional world is again shocked with the revelation by Steven Blanc, son of voice artist Mel Blanc, that the perennial prankster “Bugs” Bunny of Looney Tunes cartoons is also gay. This announcement, while unexpected, give new and clearer meaning to many of the on-screen exchanges between the smart-aleck “wacky wabbit” and his put-upon nemesis, Elmer Fudd.
Bugs Bunny was in love with his male rival, Steven Blanc says.
The author of “Bugs and Elmer: A Forbidden Love,” stunned fans at the Academy of Motion Pictures annual Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Night, when he answered one young reader’s question about Bugs by saying that he was gay and had been in love with Elmer Fudd for years.
I wonder if the Fundies have heard about this yet, and if they’ve called the Cartoon Network yet. If not, somebody tell ‘em, quick. It might keep them busy for a while
Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.
Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.
In classic Craig-like fashion, Carlson’s response raises more questions than it answers.
First, it’s markedly different from what he said on MSNBC. How did it go from “hit[ting] him against the stall with his head” to holding him until the police arrived?
So, what was last night? Macho posturing for “the boys”? Why embellish the story with violence that he now says didn’t happen? And as for fighting back, Carlson “yelled and pulled away from him” and was already gone. Long gone. For 25 minutes. Why then would he return? Did he know the guy would still be there? How did he know the guy would still be there?
And was it unsolicited sexual attack or an unwanted advance, of the kind that most women have experienced at some point or another? Would Carlson have reacted the same way to a woman making the same kind of sexual advance to him?
And while I’m asking questions, what park does Carlson take his kid to that has a thriving “tearoom”? I’ve got a five year old myself, and I’m pretty familiar with area parks. But he doesn’t go into public restrooms unless one of us goes with him, and I’ve yet to go into one where there’s any cruising action going on? And if I did, I probably wouldn’t take my kid back to that park.
Like I said, Tucker just raises more questions than he answers.
OK. I plead guilty to this When I got my iPhone 4, I gave Parker my old iPhone 3G (with parental controls in place, phone service deactivated, everything restored to factory settings, history wiped clean, and internet access and the App Store on lockdown) to play games on, etc. But does that make me a “Scrooge”? Puh-leeze. An eight-year-old needs the latest iPhone?
It’s happening again. I’m getting that “I’ve got a book in me, if I can make time to write it,” feeling. Of course, that “if” is the big, and the deciding, factor.
It’s not that I don’t trust the guy, and maybe the whole Weinergate thing has me a little gun shy, but am I the only who thinks Obama tweeting for himself may not be the best idea?
Sarah Palin wants to produce a TV show about her husband’s life as a snowmobiler, but so far, networks have been cold to the idea.
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