"Fag"

I'm a huge fan of Grey's Anatomy. I have been since day one. I'm kinda obsessed, in fact. Like, most of the TV I watch—and I watch a lot of freakin’ television—but most of the TV I watch gets Tivo’d and then stored up until I have a moment to catch up on, say, my Ugly Bettys, or my Top Chefs, or my Standoffs, or whatever.

But not Grey's. Oh freaking no. Grey's Anatomy is appointment viewing, Grey's Anatomy cannot wait until tomorrow, Grey's Anatomy has gotta be watched when it's on.

It's, like, my drug: I gotta have it.

This whole Isaiah Washington fiasco makes me sad. It’s not gonna make me stop watching Grey’s because I love me some Grey’s (I told you, it’s my drug) and besides, Washington is not the face of Grey’s, he’s just a small piece of the Grey’s puzzle (and he keeps getting smaller, because the longer this off-stage debacle goes on, the less I care about his character--a character I used to love), but still: the whole situation is so fucked up. (I'm not going to get into all of the details of what went down because the story has been covered all over the blogosphere in the past few days and if you don't know what I'm talking about you can follow some of the links below.)

Washington just released a statement apologizing for his words, and that’s a good first step, I suppose, but still I feel like there have got to be repercussions for Washington’s multiple remarks. If you just slap him on the hand and say “don’t do that”—if there are no consequences—then what are you saying to the world? You’re saying that calling someone a “faggot” is not really that bad a thing.

I’m sorry, but it is.

It should be simple: calling someone a “faggot” is as bad as calling someone a “nigger,” (I'm almost embarrassed to write that sentence because it seems so, like, "duh") but I don’t think "faggot" is viewed by the world at large as such a hellacious word. That’s why the “legit” press chose to focus on the physical confrontation between Washington and Patrick Dempsey back in October, while they barely acknowledged the “faggot” part of the story—sure, that part of the story came out, but it trickled out slowly, and it didn’t get nearly as much coverage as it should have, or as it finally is getting, now that the word has been bandied about for a second time, at the Golden Globe Awards the other night.

I work as a substitute teacher and I have heard teenagers call other teens “fag” many, many times. It’s the insult de rigueur. Just today, in fact, I noticed a sidetable in the classroom with several magazines, including a recent Vanity Fair which had been vandalized with the lovely word. (I took a picture, below.) (The blue eyeshadow effect was made by my camera rather than the homophobic student who originally vandalized the magazine, but I think it’s a nice final touch, don’t you?)

It’s just a word. But it’s ugly. And we need to treat it as such. Because we’re raising a generation of kids who use it and they use it well. Let’s stop letting them.

(p.s. I love how T.R. Knight handled the situation on the Ellen Degeneres Show yesterday, and I didn't think I could love Katharine Heigl more [she wuz robbed at the GG's! she shoulda won], until she made these comments and won me over even more.)