pop culture killed my dog

Way back in the year 2000, I watched a political program put on Public Access tv in support of the anti-gay ballot initiative, Measure 9.  The fundamentalist Christians were seen bantering about on the falling Western Civilization and all that, and they used as their example in the march toward our destruction from the gays…

The Fox sitcom Normal, Ohio.  And they literally stated “We’re losing to John Goodman.”

I don’t believe they ever re-calibrated their doomsday calculations when the sitcom was cancelled after a mere handful of episodes.  But I guess a slew of new gay things have filtered into the media.

I thought about this when I saw that the Playboy Club was cancelled after three episodes.  Because here was a show that had been batted around to some commentary — what did this show mean to feminism?  Gloria Steinem was asked for comment — she reserved judgement and then delivered a negative verdict.   And was this show a haliography of Hugh Hefner, who was claiming all sorts of things about breaking down racial barriers — the show including one black woman talking about her breasts breaking the color barrier — really bad dialouge?

And was this commentary recalibrated after the public passed a judgement of “meh”?  I guess not.  Mad Men continues with new episodes, with apt commentary on the changing sixties, and its pale imitations just fall by the wayside, don’t they?

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