Tag Archives: Outrage. LZ Granderson

GLAAD Responds To LZ Granderson GLAAD Media Award Nomination Controversy

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Yesterday I wrote about GLAAD’s Digital Media Award nomination that LZ Granderson received for an article he had written for ESPN entitled “McMackin’s Slur Reveals Larger Problem” in the same year that he wrote an Op-Ed piece for CNN called “Gay Is Not The New Black” for CNN.com which he pits African American Rights against LGBT Rights using such skewed rhetoric that we were not persecuted, killed, institutionalized, murdered, beaten, and burnt at the stake BEFORE Stonewall, that military discrimination started with DADT totally forgetting that Lesbians and gays were BANNED from joining the Military before that even if they kept it a secret. LZ in his article also goes on to make the following reverse racist statement:

So while the white mouthpiece of the gay community shakes an angry finger at intolerance and bigotry in their blogs and on television, blacks and other minorities see the dirty laundry. They see the hypocrisy of publicly rallying in the name of unity but then privately living in segregated pockets

Nice huh?

The same man who wrote the above then gets nominated in the same year for a GLAAD Outstanding Digital Media Award for a story of some straight football players calling each other “fag” and GLAAD totally ignores the other article which in which he trashes part of the LGBT community and my opinion was bad enough for GLAAD to issue a condemnation on to start out with.

So I emailed Jarret Barrios, President of GLADD and also to Richard Ferraro, Director of Public Relations and received answers from each.

Richard Ferraro’s email stated:

So basically what he is saying is that LZ Granderson gets a pass because he wrote an article for ESPN that reaches a straight audience about grown men calling each other “fags” but yet he writes another article for CNN which reaches a much larger and diverse audience that pits the African American community against the Caucasian LGBT Community and that matters for nothing in their nomination process. (And in full disclosure LZ Granderson is a past GLAAD Media Award Winner)

Hello Will,

 LZ is not nominated for his body of work but a piece he wrote for ESPN.com entitled “McMackin’s Slur Reveals Larger Problem”. In the piece he calls out football coach Greg McMackin for repeatedly using anti-gay slurs.

Think of the readers of ESPN.com for a moment if you will. Kind of a good audience to be hearing that anti-gay slurs should not be used on the sports field, no? http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=granderson/090731&sportCat=ncf

But it was Jarret Barrios’ email that really got me:

Will,

I am disappointed that, in disagreeing with our decision to nominate mr granderson, you’ve chosen to make ad hominem comments about glaad. We may disagree on this–people always do–but how would you propose addressing this issue you raise? It seems that an exhaustive search of work that is outside the “body” of lgbt-related content just isn’t practical for the hundreds of writers under consideration for nomination. Am I misunderstanding or isn’t that your ultimate judgment on the matter?

Please consider the practicality of what you’ve said. I am very excited about running a fully transparent process, and appreciate your thoughts–and those of many others. I also owe you my frankness as well.

All the best,
Jarrett

Other than the fact that he accuses me of “ad hominem comments” mostly because my comments were true and if they have been said before then perhaps GLAAD should really start taking them to heart and realizing that many people fell the same way.  But what really got me is:  “It seems that an exhaustive search of work that is outside the “body” of lgbt-related content just isn’t practical for the hundreds of writers under consideration for nomination.”

I do admit that before the field is narrowed yes, it wouldn’t be practical. But after it ‘s narrowed a simple Google search would render you the info that you need. But I think what really got me about this statement is that the article “Gay Is not The New Black” wasn’t exactly a “hidden” article. Just HOW CLUELESS is GLAAD?  Granderson’s article ran as an Op-Ed at CNN and a majority of the most well known and widely read LGBT BLOGS picked it up and commented about it. Sites like Pam’s House Blend, Joe My God, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters and even AfterElton.com wrote about it and it’s controversy but no one at GLAAD was aware of it? There is nothing wrong with research and there is especially nothing wrong with an organization like GLAAD following the BLOGS of it’s own community to see whats being said and also reaching out to the Blogs and working with them.. Because GLAAD needs to start thinking about the about the way things look from our point of view of the outside looking in, especially after the Lambert clusterfuck.

To be an organization that deals with anti-defamation and then not know what is truly sensitive to the community you serve is a travesty and something that GLAAD will have to work on especially now if it wants to regain any of it’s former integrity and trust back within the LGBT Community.

GLAAD Media Awards Nominations Snubs Mike Rogers and Kirby Dick’s "Outrage" – But Gives Nomination Nod To Reverse Racist LZ Granderson

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Glee, Modern Family, A Single Man, Taking Woodstock, Pedro and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List are all among GLAAD’s nominees for things like Outstanding Film and Outstanding Drama Series.  But conspicupusly missing from the nominations is Mike Rigers and  Kirby Dick’s “Outrage”, last years stellar film about  closeted politicians who lobby for anti-gay legislation which was a riveting gay-oriented film, and based on my knowledge, meets the criteria of GLAAD’s Oustanding Film/Limited Release category or at the very least qualifies for an Outstanding Documentary nod.

Arguably GLAAD is about positive representations of gays in the media, and Outrage was about outing nasty, closted, anti-gay politicians but Outrage sparked more conversations and interest within both the LGBT and Hetrosexual Communities and brought to light a very dangerous subject matter tahn lets say LGBTs today than, say, Little Ashes, which was probably nominated, in a cheap ploy to get Robert Pattinson to walk the red carpet at one of GLAAD’s New York, LA, or San Francisco awards show galas.

Perhaps GLAAD also would like to explain how LZ Granderson got a GLAAD nomination for Outstanding Digital Journalism the same year he wrote this:

EXCERPTS
In recent weeks, one would have thought the nation’s first black president was also the nation’s biggest homophobe. Everyone from Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black and radio personality Rachel Maddow to Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay advocacy group, seem to be blasting Obama for everything from “don’t ask don’t tell” to Adam Lambert not winning American Idol.

In their minds, Obama is not moving fast enough on behalf of the GLBT community. The outcry is not completely without merit — the Justice Department’s unnerving brief on the Defense of Marriage Act immediately comes to mind. I was upset by some of the statements, but not surprised. (After the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, President Ronald Reagan’s initial handling of AIDS and, more recently, Katrina, there is little that surprises me when it comes to the government and the treatment of its people.)
 
Still, rarely has criticism regarding Obama and the GLBT community come from the kind of person you would find standing in line at a spot like The Prop House, and there’s a reason for that……..

——-
Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black. Black is still black.
——-

So while the white mouthpiece of the gay community shakes an angry finger at intolerance and bigotry in their blogs and on television, blacks and other minorities see the dirty laundry. They see the hypocrisy of publicly rallying in the name of unity but then privately living in segregated pockets. And then there is the history.

The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told.

While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated. The 13th Amendment was signed in 1865, and it wasn’t until 1948 that President Harry S Truman desegregated the military. That’s more than an 80-year gap.

Not to be flip, but Miley Cyrus is older than Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That doesn’t mean that the safety of gay people should be trivialized or that Obama should not be held accountable for the promises he made on the campaign trail. But to call this month’s first-ever White House reception for GLBT leaders “too little too late” is akin to a petulant child throwing a tantrum because he wants to eat his dessert before dinner. This is one of the main reasons why so many blacks bristle at the comparison of the two movements — everybody wants to sing the blues, nobody wants to live them.

GLAAD is a joke, a laughingstock and totally out of touch. By nominating LZ Granderson and snubbing Kirby Dick it is just another example of how corrupted and how ineffective GLAAD has become.

*And yes I did call Granderson a reverse racist.  But when words like “white moutpiece” are used.  i think it justifys the term.