APRIL 7, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 25

ON THE AIR OFF THE PRESS

Get ready to see a new 'Twinkie' murder defense

by John Graves

Jenny Jones made headlines recently when a guest on a show about secret crushes killed another guest when he found out his admirer was a gay man. The incident has sent shock waves through the whole talk show circuit. Jenny Jones' producers have announced that the show which resulted in the murder of the gay guest three days later will not be aired.

Since the murder, the media, including Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Dick Feagler and TV critic Tom Feran, have been quick to blame the murder on TV talk shows they like to call "sleaze TV." The prosecutor charged with convicting the perpetrator was, himself, one of the first to blame TV talk shows, clearly giving an indication that he intends to file reduced charges against the defendant.

The prosecutor's statement gives defense counsel a ready-made way to exonerate the man with a defense similar to the infamous "Twinkie defense" that got the murderer of gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk a light sentence. If successful, this type of defense could go down in history as the infamous "Jenny Jones" defense.

If you check into his records you might find that this is a prosecutor that throws the book at those who kill their domestic violence and abuse tormentors out of fear for their lives.

As far as "sleaze" goes, talk shows are nothing like the sleaze of the saturation coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. Nor are they like the sleaze of the recognized sport of boxing where millions cheer as two contenders beat each other until wounds or brain damage ends the match. Nor do they match the sleaze of politics in America today.

Put the blame where it belongs, the insecure bigot who pulled the trigger, and the institutionalized homophobia taught to children by our society.

GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, has asked talk shows to be more responsible and not put on shows that degrade or dehumanize our community.

GLAAD has posthumously given MTV Real World star Pedro Zamora its Stephen F. Koziak award for combating homophobia.

If you liked Kathy Long single-handedly fighting renegade cyborgs and saving women in Knights, try another of her films, The Stranger, in which she singlehandedly destroys a murderous motorcycle gang. Long, a world-champion kick-boxer, never needs men to help her fight the baddies, and her films usually end with a woman longingly watching her ride off into the sunset, hoping she will

return.

In the 1993 film Bitter Harvest, the Thelma and Louise-like characters are lesbians, and do not kill themselves by driving off a cliff together. The film has been airing on cable's Showtime.

According to Associated Press reporter Marilyn August, Gazon Maudit, a new film comedy about a yuppie couple and their lesbian houseguest, “has, for the first time, squarely placed gay women in the mainstream of French cinema." A spokeswoman for producer Calude Berri said the film would probably be released in this country next fall.

John Lithgow, in a dual role, played gay identical twin brothers, one of whom is HIVpositive, in the fact-based CBS film, My Brother's Keeper, which aired recently. The real-life twins had wanted to have bone marrow transplanted from the non-infected twin to his HIV-positive brother but were denied medical insurance payments for the expensive procedure. The insurance company's denial of coverage forced the brothers out of the closet to take their fight to court.

In an interview in TV Guide, Lithgow said, "It's as much about coming out as it is about

the horrors of AIDS; the hero of the story, in a way, is the community which did not turn on them, but in fact embraced them." Although it came to late for the HIV-positive twin to benefit, the brothers won their suit, so that now insurance companies must pay for bone marrow transplants for HIV-positive people.

Lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge is dubbed "the new Boss" in a feature article profiling her in the March 17 Special Music Issue 1995 of Entertainment Weekly magazine. According to a report in USA Today, Etheridge and her lover, Julie Cypher, took comedy star Ellen DeGeneris with them to the Breakthrough awards recognizing Hollywood's new elite.

The award festivities were held at the Love Lounge in West Hollywood and were hosted by publisher Jann Wenner, who was outed a few weeks ago. Details on how Wenner was outed in the press are revealed in an article in the March 20 edition of Newsweek.

Etheridge and DeGeneris appeared together at the opening of the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. Melissa Etheridge is one of the players in MTV's sixth annual charity ball game, Rock and Jock Softball. Etheridge and openly gay pop star Elton John are the only performers to have performed solo on MTV's Unplugged acoustic music specials.

Elton John and k.d. lang were among the honorees at the Brit Awards, the British equivalent to our Grammy Awards. The awards were televised on ABC.

Openly gay actor Simon Callow plays a gay man in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral. Callow is interviewed in the current isssue of OK!, a new celebrity news magazine.

Lesbian comic Kate Clinton is now a featured writer for Progressive magazine.

In case you haven't noticed, in the final installments of Berkey Breathed's comic strip Outland, Steve Dallas, the strip's notorious

womanizer, reveals that he is gay. In one of the last strips, Dallas and Doonesbury's openly gay character are riding a bus together, holding hands and planning a family.

Although sales of Greg Louganis's recently published biography, Breaking the Surface, have been extraordinary, Newsweek reports that the world-famous diving champion has received a number of death threats since he revealed that he is gay and living with AIDS.

Edited by Dorothy Freeman's granddaughter, Martha Freeman, Always Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman is a compilation of the intensely romantic love letters between the two women, even though Martha never characterizes the relationship as lesbian. After a brief stay together in New York City, Dorothy Freeman wrote to the famous environmentalist from their hotel room:

"Darling... Thank you so much for staying last night. I realize now what a desolate night I would have had alone... Oh my darling, how wonderful to have had these hourshow many?-approximately 44 I think. Thus far I have no regrets. How wonderful also. Bye for the moment, darling. You do know what, don't you? I LY. Dorothy."

Thanks to the Cleveland Call and Post, and reporter Roland Forté, for the very sensitive stories on the passing of Cleveland entertainer Mona Desmond, which ran on the front page of the weekly for two weeks in a row. To date, I have seen neither a news article nor an obituary in the Plain Dealer.

Congratulations and much success to feminist bookstore Gifts of Athena on its grand re-opening. Gifts of Athena, located on Lee Road just south of Cedar in Cleveland Heights, sells books, records and gifts for lesbian and straight women, acts as a community center for women and also has a nice selection of books for gay men.

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