The media is
especially light on Lohan and Ronson. What gives? Plus,
Newsweek mirrors TheAdvocate’s cover story on Lawrence King, the
Democrats attack “don’t ask, don’t
tell,” and the isle of Lesbos hasn’t
seen this much action since Sappho
Welcome to the
celebrity-friendly version of The Week in Gay. The most
salacious story hitting the blogs and the big papers was the
Los Angeles Times’ two-page Sunday spread devoted to the
media’s treatment of the relationship between
Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson.
The piece by Kate
Arthur talks about the usually voracious celebrity
media’s rather demure handling of the Lohan-Ronson
pairing. In this case, the relationship seems to be
met with the print version of a shrug -- at least
until Life & Style dared to run a cover
asking “Is Lindsay Gay?”
Perhaps,
as Village Voice columnist Michael
Musto suggests to the Times, “they
don’t consider gay a dirty thing anymore. And
it’s very cool.”
Or maybe they are
just taking the lead from the couple themselves, who
are out about it without stating it for the record. Sheila
McClear of Gawker.com argued in a post last month
(“Why Lindsay Lohan Is a Gay Hero”) that
Lohan’s casual openness is revolutionary
because it treats her same-sex relationship the same as her
straight ones. She writes: “Here’s
what’s cool: Lohan has been entirely
matter-of-fact about the whole affair. She’s
continued to appear in public with her rumored lover.
There has been no moaning from her about private-life
intrusion from the media, and no cries from her cougar mom
to `Leave Lindsay ALONE!’ ”
The other
possibility to consider -- and not a pleasant one -- is that
the mags aren’t using the words gay and
homosexual and lesbian because they
don’t want to upset the more conservative
segments of their readership. They are just putting out
the story and the accompanying photos as if to say
“Nothing unusual here!”
The Life &
Style cover seems to have helped open the gateways
for more explicit coverage -- New York Daily News gossip columnist Jo Piazza ran an item about Dina
Lohan’s approval of the couple. She writes:
“Dina was all smiles, telling partygoers just how
cute she thought the pair looked, making sure reporters were
never out of earshot.” Such a thing would have
been unthinkable even five years ago.
Of course, like
any celebrity couple, they have their ups and downs, as
Gawker.com illustrates in another post. Hopefully, the
relationship will go back up.
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