WATCH: Hate Group's Hometown Loves Fifty Shades of Grey

Rachel Maddow notes the irony that the film is the hottest ticket in Tupelo, Miss., home base of the virulently antigay American Family Association.

Dawn Ennis

The Advocate's news editor Dawn Ennis successfully transitioned from broadcast journalism to online media following another transition that made headlines; in 2013, she became the first trans staffer in any major TV network newsroom. As the first out transgender editor at The Advocate, the native New Yorker continues her 30-year media career, in which she has earned more than a dozen awards, including two Emmys. With the blessing of her three children, Dawn retains the most important job title she's ever held: Dad.

Read Full Bio

Dawn Ennis

February 13 2015 7:20 PM EST

May 26 2023 2:52 PM EST

Lifeafterdawn

We need your help
Your support makes The Advocate's original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Become a member today to help us continue this work.

Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's self-described "liberal TV lady," could barely contain her glee in sharing the news with her cable TV viewers that Tupelo, Miss., home to the virulently antigay American Family Association, is also the epicenter of Fifty Shades of Grey movie fandom.

"Mississippi: the most eager state in the country to see Fifty Shades of Grey!" Maddow declared on her Thursday show, reading headlines from two of the state's newspapers, Jackson's Clarion-Ledger and Tupelo's Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

"Nowhere in the country are people so hot to see this movie as the people of Mississippi!" Maddow said, displaying a bar graph from Fandango and The Washington Post, which showed Mississippi theaters with at least double the rate of advance ticket sales compared with Alabama, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Iowa, and Tennessee.

Theaters in Arkansas, West Virginia, and Kentucky had greater sales than other Bible Belt states, but they couldn't beat Mississippi, which sold nearly four times its average for advance tickets.

And, Maddow noted, Tupelo is the first city in the nation to sell out screenings of Fifty Shades of Grey.

For that reason, the Clarion-Ledger jokingly suggested that perhaps the movie should be renamed "Fifty Shades of Irony." The AFA issued a press release Monday denouncing the erotic romance movie, calling it "essentially pornography." The group called on theaters not to show the film.