Twitter
Facebook
Read my Frontiers story on Gaytime TV!
I did a little moonlighting this week and wrote a story for Frontiers IN LA which I have written for occasionally over the years.
Here are the first four paragraphs of the story on Gays and Daytime TV. You can go to the Frontiers site to read the rest. Enjoy!
By Greg Hernandez
Rosie O’Donnell spent nearly the entire six years of her syndicated daytime show as “The Queen of Nice,” emerging from the closet only in the final two months of its run in 2002. But by the time Rosie returned to daily daytime TV as moderator of The View in 2006, she was well-known as a lesbian activist and regularly talked about then-partner Kelli Carpenter and their four kids.
By the time The Ellen DeGeneres Show debuted in 2003, its host was already one of the most famous lesbians in America having come out six years earlier on her ABC sitcom and on the cover of Time magazine. Her 2008 wedding to Portia DeRossi was the focus of an entire episode of the syndicated talk show and made the cover of People magazine.
So it seems natural that in the fall of 2010, the road having been paved, that two new out talk show hosts, Nate Berkus and Sara Gilbert, would no longer have to dance around the gay thing for fear of turning off sponsors and viewers.
But neither seem very eager to wrap themselves up in a rainbow flag just yet.
If you watch the promos trumpeting the Sept. 13 launch of The Nate Berkus Show, they feature various women fawning the handsome design expert who made a name for himself during eight years of appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. There is no mention of the fact that history is being made here as The Nate Berkus Show will be the first nationally syndicated daytime talk show to be hosted by an openly gay man.
Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
Ulmer says:
Good article! But I think there’s a word missing in the last sentence of the first paragraph.
Terrence says:
Why would promos for “The Nate Berkus Show” need to trumpet the fact that he is the first openly gay man to host a daytime talk show? Does it matter? The more important fact is that he is a man who has found success doing what I assume is his life’s passion.
The fact that he is a gay is an added thrill and a source of inspiration for the rest of us. Heralding his sexuality is unnecessary because that is not what the show is about.
Both Berkus and Sara Gilbert have succeeded because they are respectively a great interior designer and a terrific actress. Secondary or even tertiary to that is the fact that he is a gay and she is a lesbian.
There is a time and a place for heralding our sexualities. Clearly neither are all that shy about talking about it when necessary but there is more to them than being gay and lesbian.
They have a show to put on and business to tend to. They aren’t shying away from who they are merely because they opt against it being a huge deal in their lives and in their work.
What they are doing is working hard and living their lives as PEOPLE — people who take up with the same sex. If we stop making it a big a deal and turning everything into a movement, then it becomes less of a big deal and we can all move onto more pressing matters besides who is gay and who is not.