Allow me to vent

by Shelly Leachman

So I’m recently watching 20/20, ABC’s stab at your garden variety, all-crime, all-the-time newsmagazine show — except on this particular evening, the misdeed they’re exposing is not one of actual punishable-by-law illegality (though it should be).

No, this episode was to highlight, in all its at-once- entertaining-but-also-highly-alarming glory, that widespread American epidemic known as stupidity—duh (see our current presidential administration [hurry November, hurry] and VH-1’s I Know My Kid’s A Star [frightening] for current examples)—is running rampant and unchecked.

It’s that last thing, the unchecking, that 20/20 was aiming to correct with this, its latest in a periodic segment of human experiments, wherein the producers send actors onto the streets of everyday U.S. of A. to create strange situations and see how people will respond to, say, an embarrassingly plastered woman—like falling down, slurring and spaced-out kinda hammered—getting into a car. Or to a tiny boy standing alone on a corner, crying.

I guess the point is to gauge our country’s do-gooder-ship, or fear or, in the case about which I’m writing, of complete idiocy and small-mindedness.

You see, this episode I saw tested passersby feelings about gay folks, by way of some staged gay PDA. The show posed two homo couples—first two guys, later dos ladies—on a park bench, one’s arm over another’s shoulder, now and then exchanging light kisses. Harmless fun, right?

So you’d think.

But get this: Not only did the dimwits passing by the hot gay guys gawk and dish out stink eye like it was in neverending supply (the way mayonnaise is at WalMart) but get THIS: One lady even called the cops —yes, the police, the fuzz, Johnny Law himself—to complain and ask if there was any citation that at could be made. I kid you not.

The dispatcher (indeed the woman had actually called 911, so offended was she—get a grip lady, they weren’t even using tongue!) apologized and said something like, “Unfortunately, there’s no law against that.” Then she sent a uniform to the park to give those fellas a talkin’ to.

Ding dang, ya’ll!

As for the women, no surprises here: While they, too, received a heaping share of dirty looks, they were more so the subject of dirty thoughts, as their very vanilla embrace resulted not in the calling of police, but in the predictable approach of an unfortunately portly young guy—sent over “just to say hello” by his three obviously horny, but fraidy-cat friends, who all later concurred on camera that two women together is “pretty hot.”

I can’t disagree but really, straight guys hitting on lesbians? What a cliché!

Anyway, all this got me to thinking: Is this still going on? Are folks really still offended by the gays? Is our existence still a problem for some people? I have yet to receive the memo.

But then I remembered where I live, in lovely, almost-anything-goes Los Angeles (San Francisco still has us beat, but we’re gaining on them), in our gloriously (mostly) blue Golden State—some pesky unfortunate and uneducated pockets (Modesto, anyone?) aside—and realized that my place of residence probably keeps me insulated from what, it’s now dawned on me, remains an issue in many other places.

Is this what’s called being sheltered? Naïve? Living as if in a bubble?

So be it then. I like it here. Anyone want to join me? Come on in, the water’s fine. Let me know: TheBroadcastLA@gmail.com.