July 26, 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

HIV+ 'Sesame Street' character won't be on U.S. TV

by John Graves

The producers at Childrens Television Workshop have added an HIV-positive female Muppet character to the South African version of the much-loved and long-running children's program Sesame Street. Don't look for the HIV-positive character on the U. S. version any time soon, however. PBS is insisting there are no plans to introduce the character domestically after a group of five Republican representatives, led by the notoriously homophobic Louisiana Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, wrote a letter to PBS president Pat Mitchell reminding him that Congress signs PBS' checks. Martina bashes Bush

Lesbian tennis legend Martina Navratilova told a German newspaper the policies of the Bush administration and the Republicancontrolled Congress are, in some ways, as oppressive as the Communist regime in her native Czechoslovakia from which she fled nearly 30 years ago, according to USA Today.

Navratilova told the. German newspaper, "The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another. The Republicans in the U.S. manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table. It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of how much money will come out of it and not the questions of how much health, morals or environment suffer as a result."

"Well, that's pretty accurate," Navratilova told host Connie Chung when Chung asked her the German newspaper quote on CNN's Connie Chung Tonight. "I was talking about the Bush administration making a lot of environmental decisions... based on money, pandering to the people that perhaps help put Bush in office."

When Chung asked her about her statement that she had traded one oppressive system for another, Navratilova explained, "Obviously, I'm not saying this is a communist system, but . . . after (Sept. 11), there's a big centralization of power. Bush is having more and more power... Americans are losing their personal rights left and right. When it comes to personal freedom as a lesbian, I am getting more squished here than I would be in Europe. As a woman, as a lesbian, as a woman athlete, there is a whole. bunch of barriers that I've had to jump over, and we shouldn't have to be jumping over them anymore."

"I may run for office one of these days, and really make a difference," she added.

Finnigan's navel

Actress Jennifer Finnigan, who plays Bridget on the soap The Bold and the Beautiful, told Soap Opera Weekly about the great

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time she had at this year's Los Angeles Gay Pride parade.

"I wanted to celebrate and support my friends," Finnigan told Soap Opera Weekly, "it's a party. We made the rounds of all the restaurants and bars. I liked it because I'm from Montreal, which is festival-happythere's one every week."

Finningan also got her belly button pierced at the festivities. "Many a night I've told myself I was going to do it, but I could never find a place open that late," she said. "This [the Pride festival] was in the middle of the day. I'm not afraid to say I had a couple of margaritas. It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time..."

Rosie's

the Rivers

Joan Rivers has struck back after Rosie O'Donnell said the E! channel's award-ceremony fashion cop had a "mean disposition" and took a few verbal swipes at Rivers' surgically-enhanced features at the lesbian comic's stand-up gig at the grand opening of the Mohegan Sun Hotel and Casino in Connecticut June 22.

"She has perpetuated such a sham on the American public," Rivers told Entertainment Weekly. "Rosie has done a great disservice to the gay community by not admitting she was gay until after she'd made all that money. Who cares about anyone who pretends they're straight, pretends they love Tom Cruise. She kept saying, 'I have a big announcement.' The big announcement I thought was going to be, 'Surprise, surprise: I'm straight!""

And, Rivers said, taking a jab at O'Donnell's weight in typical fashion police style, "You try to keep away from her because you're scared she'll sit on you," to which O'Donnell responded, "Joan scares me."

True life drama

The ABC real-life courtroom mini-series

State v. ended its summer run with the case of a young Arizona lesbian charged with firstdegree murder for stabbing a 37-year-old male acquaintance to death.

The woman claimed she stabbed the man in self-defense when he tried to rape her, but the state claimed it was a case of premeditated murder because the man was stabbed over 60 times. The prosecutors tried to paint the accused as a violent woman who hated all men and who, at one time, told a friend that she was looking to pretend to seduce a man and then kill him for thrills.

When asked to testify, however, the friend denied the alleged threat and said the woman had never threatened anyone. The prosecution tried to portray the woman, who had survived abuse as a child, as having loose morals who tempted the man with promises of sex and then killed him in order to rob him. The defense, on the other hand, painted

the murdered man as a middle-aged lecher and brought out witnesses who testified the man knew she was gay and wanted to fulfill a long-time dream of forcing a lesbian to have sex with him to prove his male prowess.

In the end, the jury refused to convict the woman of first-degree murder but, because the man had been stabbed so many times, they did convict her of the lesser charge of second-degree murder.

Falwell and Robertson, beware

A liberal assistant district attorney (Lea Thompson) and her conservative boss (Debbie Morgan) argued over whether or not a homophobic radio televangelist should be prosecuted for encouraging listeners to harm gays and lesbians on the first episode of For the People, a new legal drama series airing on the Lifetime basic cable network.

The case involved the murder of a gay student activist, identified and targeted on the televangelist's show, by one of her fans.

The ADA wanted to charge the televangelist with criminal incitement because the gay-bashing murderer rationalized his crime with the very words the woman used on her show. The district attorney was, at first, reluctant to proceed with the case, fearing her office would be "stepping into a constitutional minefield." But she later got involved whole-heartedly after the woman showed no remorse for the killing at her grand jury hearing. The grand jury found insufficient evidence to charge the televangelist, however. The televangelist and her lawyer, were shot by the distraught mother of the slain gay youth just as she was proclaiming her victory over militant homosexuals on the steps of the courthouse.

On a side note, both a male and a female assistant were shown ogling Lea Thompson's derrière as she walked down the hall at one point in the show. For the People can be seen on Sundays at 10 and 11 pm.

Piazza's not, but he is ...

The HBO sports sitcom Arli$$ featured an episode in which a major league client of sports agent Arliss Michaels comes out and says he intends to live his life openly as a gay

man.

Arliss (Robert Wuhl), dreaming of the possibility of a gold record, decides to produce a "We Are the World"-type recording using professional athletes to raise money for high school athletic programs. He is so caught up in his dream he fails to notice that his pitcher (Grant Show) meets and falls for the openly gay rock star (Robin Atkin Downes) whom Arliss wants to hire for the recording.

Arliss then turns to real-life openly gay former Dodgers and Padres player Billy Bean for advice.

"His comments," according to the Los

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Big Gay Brother

Marcellas Reynolds, an openly gay, and unattached, African-American stylist from Chicago who was once engaged to a straight woman, is a contestant on Big Brother 3 now airing on CBS Saturdays and Thursdays at 8 pm and Wednesdays at 9 pm.

What's on TV next week?

There's a host of programs of interest to our community on the air now. With much thanks to Tim Marshall and the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Center, the weekly Couch Potato Report of upcoming LGBT, AIDS and women's TV programming from my Gaywaves radio show will be available on the center's web site at www.lgcsc.org/ entertainment.htm.

Now, instead of having to frantically write down the program information as I read it on the air or hear about shows after they have aired-you can check it out online at your leisure and find out about the many wonderful services and programs the center has to offer.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7:30 pm, and at www.wruw.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contributed to this column.

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