08 Jul 2008
TV3's threat to gays
Tuned into my favourite
Irish breakfast TV show this morning, Ireland AM. (Granted it is the only Irish
breakfast TV show). Anyway, that showbiz bloke was on, the one who talks like
he personally knows Madge, Guy and the rest of them. Apart from looking a bit
like a leprechaun who's escaped from the reserve up in the Mourne Mountains, he
was dressed head-to-toe in violent cerise pink. His topics were the usual guff
about celebrity romance, drug addiction, turning up at things. Then, after a
soberly dressed bloke did an item on something serious (well, as serious as
anything is on breakfast TV), it was on to Alan Hughes who was talking with an
expert about all the nasty chemicals hiding out in cosmetics. He was wearing a
cerise-pink sweater, presumably because it’s sometimes a bit chilly doing the
weather from a Buddhist-cabana-stylee traffic island on the N4. How irritating
it is that telly gays are so concentrated at the fluffy end of the showbiz
spectrum. I’ve always thought that it’s fine if that’s what these entertainers
want to do, so long as they are paid the same as everyone else (or at least
relatively the same in the notoriously unregulated entertainment industry).
But, what if you tuned into your morning breakfast show and the only black
presenter was given just ‘black’ stuff to deal with? Or the female presenter
gets to do mostly accessories? Come to think of it, that actually happens. The telly gays are no doubt glad of the
work and we shouldn’t begrudge them, but what does it say about the mindset of the
soberly dressed marketing types upstairs, who seem to have the narrowest of
ideas about what ‘gay’ is and in the course of their jobs, sell that hackneyed
idea to the public?