July 28, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Will Truman might get a love life next season

by John Graves

After spending this past season in separate apartments, NBC says that Will and Grace's title characters will move back in together next season. And that's not all. This time around they find romance, and not with each other.

Will and Grace's new time slot in the tightly-contested Thursday lineup is a tribute to the show's success and a clear signal

The cast of Will & Grace.

that mainstream America is much more accepting of a prime time network show with a primarily gay theme.

"We've accomplished what we tried to do, to make the show mainstream,” Will and Grace producer James Burrows told USA Today's Peter Johnson. "Here we are, doing a show about gay people and homosexuality, and the biggest problem was over the word tamale. So, that will show you how far the show's come."

Early in the 1999-2000 season a flap ensued when Grace's sharp-tongued assistant Karen used the word to refer to her housekeeper. NBC changed the line before the show aired, but tamale reappeared in the

summer rerun.

Beyond the hetero myth

PBS is set to air Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore, a six-part documentary series to educate Americans about the reality of the site of the upcoming Olympics, produced by cultural critic Robert Hughes.

When USA Today asked Hughes what he thought was the biggest misconception Americans believed about his homeland, Hughes replied, "I've lost count of the number of nice American girls that I've met who think that Australia is this kind of gigantic open-cup mine full of heterosexuals, so all they have to do is get there and they'll be paired up."

"In fact," Hughes continued, “Australia is probably the queerest nation of the West... Anybody who really thinks they're going to meet this exemplary country filled with massive, macho, freakishly heterosexual indigenes, I'm afraid, is barking up the wrong tree."

It's a comedy show, not a rally

Last week HBQ began airing Ellen DeGeneres' new stand up comedy special The Beginning, which was taped at New York's Beacon Theater this past spring. It airs again tonight, July 28, at 10:30 pm.

"I needed to express myself again, because my sexuality had overshadowed so much of my life," DeGeneres told People magazine's Tom Cunneff about why she returned to stand-up. "I'm not trying to forget [about being lesbian], but I want my audience to come see me because I'm going to do a comedy show. It's not a rally.” "Maybe I'll become the 'Artist Formerly Known as a Lesbian'," she quipped.

Everything he wants

Actor Jason Priestly wants openly gay rocker George Michael to spoof his own group Wham's hit, "Everything She Wants" in Choose Life, a new film the former Beverly Hills 90210 star is directing.

"I'd probably have to have him do it in a bathroom," Priestly jokingly told Us Weekly. referring to Michael's 1998 arrest for lewd behavior in a park rest room.

The gay best friend in drag

The E! cable channel is re-airing it's Assignment E! special report on the status of lesbians and gays in Hollywood.

In the show, Ru Paul jokes about the roles he gets.

"I get to play two different roles in my career in movies: the gay best friend and the drag queen down the hall," he says. "In this one, it's the drag queen down the hall."

Stephen King's daughter marries

Author Stephen King, his wife Tabitha and their two sons recently celebrated the samesex wedding (I'll let straight people use the term "commitment ceremony") between his daughter Naomi and Thandeka, her longtime girlfriend and former teacher.

Thandeka, whose name means "One who is loved by God," is an African-American Unitarian Universalist minister and instructor at Chicago's MeadvilleLombard Theological School, where the couple met.

Although the mainstream press paid little attention to the event, the Globe supermarket tabloid ran a surprisingly positive, twopage article with photos of the gala affair, held in the governor's Ballroom at Nashville's famed Opryland Hotel last month.

According to the Globe, King was grinning from ear to ear as the two women walked down the aisle wearing long, dark gowns and carrying bouquets of yellow and white roses and carnations to the tune of Sly and the Family Stone's hit "It's a Family Affair." Two hundred guests watched as they took their vows before the Rev. David Bumbaugh.

You go, spice girl

Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell got the conservative and anti-gay Catholic League in a snit because she danced with a demonstrator dressed as the pope when she attended the World Pride

Geri Halliwell

2000 festivities

in Rome last month.

"It's pathetic they should stoop to this," the Catholic League's Patrick Scully told the New York Daily

News." "This absolutely proves what we've been saying all along that the organizers of this gay pride event chose Rome to stick

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themselves in the face of the pope."

Scully said he wasn't surprised by Halliwell's actions, saying, "Last year, she went into the Philippines, a fervently Catholic country, to preach about safe sex and condom use."

Mr. Scully, you are not the voice of all devout Catholics. As we come out of the closet, more and more of our straight family and friends come to realize the truth of our unique creation and welcome us, as did the pastor of the Catholic church in Garden City, South Carolina.

He wrote a letter welcoming people who were "celebrating their lives" at the South Carolina Pride celebration in nearby Myrtle Beach a few years ago.

Speaking as a Catholic, I can think of no better place than Rome to hold a millennial celebration of the truth of God's gift of our unique and wonderful creation. MTV reconsiders Eminem

MTV is rethinking its early support of rapper Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP after a public outcry over the album's homophobic and misogynistic lyrics.

MTV president Judy McGrath told Rolling Stone reporter Anthony DeCurtis that the cable music channel is reconsidering """what we do next with Eminem or anybody who puts something that is clearly hateful out there."

"Now that the whole record is out there," McGrath, added, "how much are you going

to endorse it going forward? That's the question. I don't have the final answer."

The album, which DeCurtis describes as "the best-selling hip-hop record of the year," has lyrics including, “My words are like a

dagger with jagged edge/ That'll stab you in the head/Whether you're a fag or lez/ Or the homosex, hermaph or a transa-ves"; "You faggots keep egging me on/Till I have you at knifepoint/ Then you beg me to stop," and "Slim Anus?/ You're damn right, slim anus/I don't get fucked in mine/Like you two little flaming faggots."

Eminem

MTV had earlier ballyhooed the Mathers LP, even having an entire weekend of Eminem music called "EmTV."

Eminem's label Interscope and its parent company Universal have been silent on the issue, and none of the company's three top executives would speak with DeCurtis for his story.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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