No on Prop. 8

For California Voters



Way to Go Ugly Betty!

Post-Election Follow-Up:

It’s interesting how hypocrisy discolors everything. When president-elect Barack Obama took the stage in Chicago last night, he spoke about change and overcoming discrimination and reinvention. Unfortunately, this historic moment was juxtaposed with the early returns on Prop 8, and the news was very, very bad. As it became clear that more than 1.5 million members of Obama’s California constituency had voted to write discrimination into the constitution of the most populous (not to mention “bluest”) state in the country, I found myself questioning everything this moment was supposed to represent. When supporters gushed about how proud they were to be able to tell their children that they could be president, I found myself thinking, “Well, not your daughters” and “Better first make sure he’s not gay!”

This morning I’ve backed away from my Scully posturing and am allowing myself to enjoy the fact that you are no longer required to be a white male to hold the nation’s highest office. And it is nice that the NY Times could responsibly refer to the election as “post-race.” But if you think that means we’ve dealt with our social injustice issues, or that we can be “post-gender” or “post-sexuality,” you have seriously not been paying attention. The entire nation, not just California die-hards, needs to realize that not every move yesterday was a move forward.

Not by the Hairs on My Kimmie, Kim, Kim

Call me heartless, but I’m of the opinion that Lindsay Lohan has been given enough chances, which is why I wasn’t thrilled to see that she was being introduced as Kimmie Keegan on Ugly Betty. At least Kimmie is not a likable character. She emphasizes what we’ve all observed but want not to be true: being pretty can be a short-cut up the ladder.

The Donnas have a great song, “Fall Behind Me” that has the lyric: “When you skip steps on the way up, the gaps have a way of catching up.” It’s nice when this happens, particularly to a vile character played by a vile actress. October 30’s episode “Ugly Berry” sees Kimmie, who launched to editorial status the week prior for her awesome clubbing skills, leave the show in the grasp of some scary looking security guards. The rumor is that Lohan’s abrupt departure from the show is because Lindsay and America Ferrera couldn’t get along, which Dina Lohan denies, but let’s face it, history is not on Lindsay’s side here (neither is taking responsibility— in case anyone has forgotten the “I was holding it for a friend!” coke arrest).

The show writers made an unconvincing attempt to portray Betty (America Ferrara) as feeling bad about the hand she had in Kimmie’s dismissal—it’s OK that it’s a failure, because we all wanted to see Betty win anyway. And frankly, Betty’s self-flagellations are getting a bit tiresome. Here, we wanted to see the good girl win, by any means necessary.

Becoming Trans-parent

So what do you do when your brother-turned-sister lets you take the fall for attempted murder and then tells you that s/he’s really the biological father of your child (back when she was a he, of course)?

The absurdity of the plot lines on Ugly Betty points directly to its telenovela origins, but have an interesting effect on the social margins the show’s characters have a habit of pushing. It would be easy to write a show where a character’s sex change was the dramatic focal point. But Ugly Betty buried Alexis (Rebecca Romijn) under melodramatic relationships with the show’s other characters, effectively normalizing her as trans-gendered. The latest twist with revealing her paternity of Daniel Jr. (Julian De La Celle), the heretofore assumed illegitimate son of her brother Daniel (Eric Mabius) was the first thing in a while that reminded the viewers that Alexis Meade used to be Alex. The show did the impossible: it made someone who had a sex change just another player in a show of ridiculously intense relationships. In Alexis’s final moments on the show (at least for a while), she was nothing more than a woman who let emotion get the better of her.