Fox not so cunning

Imagine an American TV show in which a healthy, ruddy-cheeked, straight-down-the-line young man tries to fool his friends and everyone else that he's actually gay, by coming out to them, going to a gay club and trying to pull, going on a date with a real gay guy while keeping his real sexuality secret from said homosexual...

Imagining that? (Oh yeah, and if he's good enough he wins $50,000.)

Fox News will air such a show! It'll be hilarious! According to Fox the idea of having to pass for gay is 'a heterosexual male's worst nightmare'! *rolls in aisles* What a laugh it'll be! All those guys pissing themselves over it as they sit in the studio and watch their exploits! Oh what an.... erm.... insult. Quoting from the Washington Post:

For one week, the two straight guys will "immerse themselves in 'the gay lifestyle,' " the network said. Is that something like "the Hispanic lifestyle" or "the black lifestyle" or the "single mom lifestyle"? See, already we can't wait for this show.

If Fox wanted to do a really interesting reality series in which two heterosexual men experience what it is like to be a gay man in America, they ought to also send them someplace like Laramie, Wyo. Of course, that would not be the "outrageously satirical" and "hilarious reality special" that Fox has promised this one will be.

After the two guys are done trying to "pass for gay," they will be put to a "jury of their queers," Fox said. Really, they said that.

I know Fox is owned by Murdoch. I know straight people, by and large, often don't notice tiny homophobic stuff the way gay people do. I know the bulk of America is not particularly urbanised and is particularly traditionalist in its thinking. But the people who wrote that release were sitting in a monolithic building in New York City.

I know many gay people fit this description, but today it is particularly of Fox that I wish to say: bungling, insensitive, foot-in-mouth assholes.