GAC TV Network Wants to Make Christmas Great Again but Is This a Dangerous Message?

The new GAC TV Network is run by a man named Bill Abbott and he’s the guy who pulled the lesbian wedding ad on the Hallmark channel a few years ago. He has spent a good deal of his life doing “family” content for TV. After a good deal of backlash about the Lesbian ad, Hallmark and Bill Abbott parted ways. GAC now stands for Great American Channels. It used to stand for Great American Country. 

 I really don’t like to speculate on things like this, even though everything about GAC screams MAGA, and I’d rather wait to see how it all unfolds. In other words, will GAC and its family content include LGBTQIA people? Who knows? Maybe it will. 

So far there have been no signs of LGBTQIA characters, stories, or even the most basic content. There could be a reason why. A large investor group with ties to former President Trump is also backing GAC. Once again, it smells of MAGA. And if you are marketing toward MAGA the only LGBTQIA people you’ll be reaching is the closet crowd. But this excerpt from the article to which I’m linking makes me wonder. It’s actually a little scary. 

Americana. American traditions. Safe storytelling. It’s the coded language the network uses about its content, as much as the content itself, that reveals its underlying message, one echoed across conservative media and politics: The “real” America is suburban or rural, predominantly white, heterosexual and Christian. Especially when tied up with a holiday bow, it’s a message far more dangerous, and demonstrably false, than any Christmas movie (or wedding-planning ad) with a gay couple at its center.

Here’s more at this link. And here is another link to Vulture where they discuss it in even more detail. 

So I guess the bottom line is that we’ll have to watch and see what GAC does in the future. As I said, I don’t want to speculate.

Do Anti-Bully Campaigns Ever Work?

A good deal of the anti-bullying campaigns I’ve seen over the years appear to be contrived as if some ambitious unknown celebrity decided to choose a cause and run with it. And I see it time and again. The only reason I focus on this is that so many LGBTQIA kids and adults face bullying all the time, and I want to see real programs with real professionals. Not celebrities holding workshops that do nothing but promote their agenda, or the agenda of the TV channel they work for.

For one thing, when I see an anti-bullying campaign it’s usually filled with well-adjusted kids screaming rah-rah-rah. It’s a big fun-fest. There’s no round table; no serious discussion. And adults patting themselves on the back. I never see the real kids being bullied because that’s always discreetly done. Kids who are being bullied will rarely speak up about it. The bullied kids face too much shame to talk about it openly. No one wants to be a victim, especially in front of their peers.  

The problem is where do we find these professionals. And in the meantime, do these quasi anti-bullying programs work? 

“None of this stuff has made one bit of difference for the quality of life for kids in schools,” says Stuart Twemlow, a former professor of psychiatry at Baylor College and the author of Why School Anti-Bullying Programs Don’t Work. Twemlow — who is, by his own admission, somewhat controversial in his field — says you would notice no difference in terms of bullying between schools with anti-bullying campaigns and those without.

Here’s the rest. So according to this professional, anti-bullying programs are not helping much. 

But what’s the answer? No one seems to have come up with that yet. 

Why Gay Film Stars Remain Locked in the Disingenuous Closet

I think there’s a huge difference between the average closeted gay man who is not rich and famous and the high profile Hollywood film star who remains in the closet. The average guy isn’t out there promoting himself and lying daily to the public. He’s living a quiet life, under the radar, because he can’t come out for various reasons. The Hollywood film actor is on social media daily, overtly flirting with women and pretending that he’s straight, in public. And while I have always maintained that coming out of the closet is a personal and private matter, some of these fake, disingenuous Hollywood actors in the closet make me roll my eyes. It’s so obvious, too, not to mention homophobic. There are even a few who have played gay characters while maintaining the grand lie that they are still straight in real life. I don’t know how these people sleep at night. 

I also think that things are changing and if these actors below can come out it might be time for others to stop lying to the public. 

Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Caitlyn Jenner and Neil Patrick Harris have kicked open the closet door with little to no damage to their careers. In some cases, they’ve found themselves more in demand after revealing their sexual preferences or gender identification.

Here’s the rest. But the closet mentality runs very deeply. Plus, there’s denial, too.

 Ring My Bells

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