Washington Post upset that bigoted images of gays aren't portrayed more often on TV

The Washington Post continues its record of swerving head on into the right-wing propaganda machine.

Today we learn from the Washington Post that a depiction of gay families - we're talking gay parents and their kids - is not a TRUE depiction unless those gay parents are cheating on their spouses, in front of their children, while dressing in drag with pierced nipples.

Think I'm kidding? Check out today's Washington Post article about Rosie O'Donnell's new-ish boat cruise for gay families - the emphasis here is on FAMILIES, it's not meant to be a single's cruise. But that doesn't stop the Washington Post from saying that being gay is all about the promiscuous sex - oh yeah, and don't forget the men in dresses and the body piercings.

O'Donnell, who captained the project, was presenting to the mainstream TV audience a scrubbed-up, politely tidy image of gay men and women -- a portrait meticulously devoid of the drag queens, pierced nipples and campy vamping one often sees when a local TV station rushes off to cover a gay-themed event. O'Donnell earns herself a citizenship award or a political correctness award, but the unfortunate byproduct of the consciousness-raising is that it isn't engaging, it isn't much fun, and sometimes it's punishingly platitudinous.

O'Donnell almost robs her subjects of their sexual identity in the pursuit of making them wholesome. In short, there is no gay cruising on this gay cruise.

And before anyone at the post DARE suggest that perhaps Tom Shales is gay and therefore it just isn't possible that he could write a bigoted article about gay people, that's a bit like saying someone black doesn't need an editor when writing about the black community. I'm not saying definitively that Tom Shales is an openly gay man, but I just want to pre-empt that often-heard defense before it comes out of the gate.

There are lots of screwed up gay people who do a pretty poor job of representing the truth about the gay community. Mary Cheney and Roy Cohn come to mind.

As for local TV coverage, the Post is correct. In the past, local news often did show men walking around naked in leather when doing any story, ANY story, about gay people. Local news also probably portrayed Jews as evil money-grubbers and blacks as genetically inferior.

And the Post's point would be? Longing for the good ole days are we?

In tomorrow's Washington Post: Why the Cosby show never depicted real black families since the parents were married, the kids didn't have ten different fathers, and Theo wasn't doing time.