March 14, 2003 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

GLAAD battles MSNBC over radio host's new TV show

by John Graves

MSNBC is airing The Savage Nation, a new TV talk show hosted by homophobic radio talk show host Michael Savage, despite protests from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the National Organization for Women, and others.

GLAAD says Savage spews "hateful, defamatory rhetoric" against virtually everyone except straight white men and has referred to gays and lesbians as perverts.

On his radio show the week before the TV show was to air, Savage denounced GLAAD and NOW: "You rats! You stinking rats who hide in sewers! You think you can go after my income? You think you can kill my advertisers? You think I'm Dr. Laura? You think I'm gonna roll over like a pussy? You're wrong."

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On other broadcasts, he has railed against immigrants from "turd world nations" and called the Million Mom March for gun control "the million dyke march."

Savage, whose radio show airs on 305 stations, is also the author of a rant against "left-wing wackos" titled Savage Nation, which is number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

In it, he warns that, "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children. If it can win their souls and their minds, it knows their bodies will follow."

On his Feb. 27 radio program, Savage threatened to get the Bush administration to shut GLAAD down. "We are also going to the U.S. Justice Department under John Ashcroft!... I'll cut your funding off, and if you break the law any further, I'll put you in jail."

"Read what he's written and listen to some of the things he's said, and you can't sit idly by," said GLAAD executive director Joan Garry. "You have to raise concerns. You have to question why a news channel would give this guy a platform."

The network hired Savage as part of a repositioning in which it also dismissed liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and hired former U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, who once referred to openly gay fellow Rep. Barney Frank as "Barney Fag” in a radio interview. MSNBC spokesperson Alan Winikoff defended Savage, whose real name is Michael Weiner, before his show first aired on March 8.

"What Savage says he wants to do on this show is focus on serious issues," Winikoff said. "Stuff that his critics are complaining about won't be a focus of the show. Just give the guy a chance before jumping to conclusions."

As predicted, Savage's first 5 pm Saturday show had no fire-breathing, nor anti-gay or misogynistic diatribes. It was almost, as noted by 365Gay.com, boring.

Marie G. Bielefeld, Ph.D.

Things that go BAM

Fans of Bianca and Maggie, led by the dedicated fan group BAM, are still inundating All My Children as well as the magazine Soap Opera Weekly with T-shirts, videos and testimonials urging the producers to re-establish a romantic link between the two young women. The magazine reports 96% of fans logging onto the magazine's web site, soaps.about.com/soapoperaweekly, want to see Bianca and Maggie together.

Eden Riegel, who plays Bianca, has also received some of BAM's memorabilia. She said, "They sent me and Liz (Hendrickson, who plays Maggie) this big package with presents, hats and posters that say, 'Absolute BAM.' All of them wrote us these wonderful notes about what the characters and storyline mean to them."

"I don't know how this happened," Riegel went on, "but I'm incredibly inspired and energized by it.”

Riegel said she too was upset when the All My Children writers apparently ended the romantic relationship between Bianca and Maggie, saying, "It was sad. I knew everyone would be disappointed. I don't know what the reasoning was, but I hope they have something good in store."

Meanwhile, the show's writers have been trying to hook Maggie up with fellow med student Henry while Lena, a foreign woman at Erica's firm Enchantment, seems to have caught Bianca's eye.

Tatu hits a taboo

NBC producers cut away from an onstage same-sex kiss between 17-year-old Julie Volkova and 18-year-old Lena Katina of Tatu, the new Russian girl-pop group marketed as a lesbian duo, when they made their American TV debut on Jay Leno's Tonight Show two weeks ago.

"That was just stupid. I don't know why they were afraid. America should be open, especially about love," Katina told USA Today's Elysa Gardner.

The group's first American single, "All the Things She Said," has risen to number 8 on Top 40 radio despite lukewarm reviews. It is number one in Europe, where two British TV networks have banned the video because Volkova and Katina kiss and make out in it. They have sold 11⁄2 million albums worldwide.

Still a bit coy about the actual nature of their relationship, Katina, who has a better command of English than her partner, went on to explain to Gardner, "Maybe we are having sex every night, but maybe not. We're

still trying to figure things out, and we're not telling anyone about it."

The two chanteuses met for the first time in their producer's Moscow office, and both have boyfriends. The group's name, written t.A.T.u., is an abbreviation of the Russian phrase Ta lyubit tu, or “This girl loves that girl."

Katina said she was less surprised by the shocked reaction the duo got for the Russian messages on their T-shirts that denounce the threatened war against Iraq in very colorful

terms.

"People are afraid of the truth,” Katina noted. "People were like, 'You're not afraid that people will cancel your visas, and you'll never go to America again?''

"But we are provocative," Katina explained. "That's our nature. There are other teenagers, some who are not straight, and they have lots of problems with parents and other people. We're helping them to be not afraid. That's what people like about us, I think. We're not afraid of anything. We just do what we want to do."

Fox's Mad TV handled Tatu's kiss differently during their performance on the March 8 show. They didn't cut away, but they didn't quite show it, either. From the camera angle used, neither of their faces could be seen.

Williamson returns for Creek finale

Four years after he left the show, openly gay Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson is returning at the request of the show's stars to write the final chapter in the adolescent drama that featured openly gay teenager Jack McFee.

Williamson is expected to create a vision of what the Dawson's denizens will be like several years into the future for the two-hour series finale, set to air on WB May 14. Williamson will donate his earnings from the finale to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Meanwhile, he is busy producing his take on the werewolf genre for

the feature film Cursed, which will be directed by Wes Craven from Williamson's script.

In the pipeline

Out theater producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan (Chicago and The Music Man) are going into the sitcom business and are producing a pilot that could end up on ABC's fall 2003 schedule, according to PlanetOut.com.

Lesbigay-friendly writers Anne FlettGiordano and Chuck Ranberg, whose credits include Nathan Lane's short-lived series Encore, Encore and the long-running, gayfriendly sitcom Frasier, have written the yetto-be-named pilot.

The show will follow the lives of a young straight couple trying to deal with their very different sets of parents, one of whom is gay and affluent, while the other is blue-collar and conservative.

PlanetOut also reports that openly gay movie producer Scott Rudin is following up on his success with The Hours by hiring Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) to direct Delmore Can't Dance, a screenplay written by out Bastard Out of Carolina screenwriter Anne Meredith.

Although a production date has not been set, the plot of Delmore Can't Dance centers on a self-centered guy named Delmore who, having been jailed for brawling, returns to society to find his former girlfriend has come out as lesbian and is living with another

woman.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7:30 pm, and at www.wruw.org. See what's coming on TV in the Couch Potato Report, under "Entertainment" at www.lgcsc.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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