{"id":670,"date":"2009-04-25T12:47:37","date_gmt":"2009-04-25T17:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/the-gathering-storm-%e2%80%93-them-gays-is-scary\/"},"modified":"2009-04-25T13:02:53","modified_gmt":"2009-04-25T18:02:53","slug":"the-gathering-storm-%e2%80%93-them-gays-is-scary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/the-gathering-storm-%e2%80%93-them-gays-is-scary\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gathering Storm \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Them Gays is Scary"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never liked the term whatever-phobe, which makes the usually spurious assumption that fear is the only reason to dislike something.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not afraid of Islam; I hate it because it is a vile religion that sucks in every way possible.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not an Islamophobe, I’m an Islamocontempter.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m\u00c2\u00a0 Islamodisgusted.<\/p>\n

Likewise, those who hate gays are not usually afraid of them, they just don’t like them for a variety of (stupid ignorant) reasons.\u00c2\u00a0 The term homophobe isn’t accurate.<\/p>\n

Except when it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Evidently queers scare the bejesus out of the Mormons.\u00c2\u00a0 And a Mormon without his beJesus is a pitiful creature.<\/p>\n

You’ve probably already seen this:
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Just to clarify, here’s my positions on the issues involved.\u00c2\u00a0 I despise the Mormon church (and I challenge anyone to use the term Mormonophobe without sounding more ridiculous than a toy poodle doing a pit bull impersonation).\u00c2\u00a0 But the few Mormon people I’ve known have all been nice, friendly, decent folks.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps it’s their magic underwear.\u00c2\u00a0 My reaction to homosexuality is the same as most heterosexual men; the idea of gay sex between males is gross and disgusting, and between females is really hot and can I watch?\u00c2\u00a0 But I honestly don’t give a damn how adults amuse themselves with their genitalia as long as they don’t scare the cattle.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like my heterosexual friends, none of my gay friends have ever had sex in front of me.\u00c2\u00a0 Guys, thank you.\u00c2\u00a0 Ladies, come on, just once.\u00c2\u00a0 Please?<\/p>\n

So, hesitantly, I’m going to give you Mormons some advice on how to conduct your next “Them Fags is Scary” campaign.<\/p>\n

First off, don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Gays aren’t scary.\u00c2\u00a0 They just . . .\u00c2\u00a0 aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 If you’d get to know a few of them you’d find they’re about as scary as, well, Mormons.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So you have to give us a different reason to hate them.\u00c2\u00a0 I have yet to hear a good one, but I’ll be happy to consider any you have to offer.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, I’ve been married for nearly three decades.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can explain to me how my marriage will be threatened if two strangers with the same plumbing take vows, I’ll be happy to listen.<\/p>\n

Secondly, don’t hide behind some front group.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re going to be asshats and douche bags, celebrate<\/em> your asshattery and douche baggyness.\u00c2\u00a0 Revel in it.\u00c2\u00a0 You think Fred Pehlps is embarrassed about being an asshat?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell no, he loves it, and he’s delighted to be known as the world’s biggest douche.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, realize that in today’s world of instant communication and cheap production tools, anything you do is going to be parodied, so don’t make it so easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Use some focus groups, and when they laugh out loud at your commercial, consider a different approach.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Try some production values that require more than a green screen and some stock weather footage.\u00c2\u00a0 This ad was self-parodying \u00e2\u20ac\u201c additional parodies were redundant, but that didn’t stop anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 There were so many parodies on YouTube I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find your original there \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I had to look at the source code on your site to find the link.<\/p>\n

Ok, back to the non-Mormon readers.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the parodies of this commercial sucked, bigtime.\u00c2\u00a0 Here are a few that didn’t.<\/p>\n

Gathering Storm Chasers:<\/p>\n

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Stephen Cobert did a great parody preceded by a great commentary, but the code Comedy Central provies to embed a link is crammed with useless and ugly crap that would take too long to clean up, so I’m just giving you the link<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And one more: <\/p>\n

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A Gaythering Storm<\/a> from Jane Lynch<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never liked the term whatever-phobe, which makes the usually spurious assumption that fear is the only reason to dislike something.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not afraid of Islam; I hate it because it is a vile religion that sucks in every way possible.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not an Islamophobe, I’m an Islamocontempter.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m\u00c2\u00a0 Islamodisgusted. Likewise, those who hate gays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}