“Kiss the girls,” a Feb. 6 Variety cover exposition of same-sex smooching on TV replete with testosterone-popping pictures, raised the ire of 50 or more mothers, grandmothers and teachers.
Only two of the complainants said they read as far as the continuation on Page E3 of columnist Neal Justin’s absorbing chronicle of increasingly titillating TV.
Each of the two said her anger rose upon reading a paragraph near a photograph of two men kissing on TV’s “Dawson Creek” in 2001:
“. . .’It was about five seconds. I timed it,’ said [Gay-Lesbian Anti-Defamation Alliance official Scott] Seomin. ‘What’s great is that this is a show that’s watched by young people who are easily influenced by what they see on TV’ . . . .”
The story described the men’s kiss as “prolonged” and “open-mouthed.”
Two of the cover photos showed women nose-to-nose before their lips presumably fastened. A third, from a beer commercial, was of two women in flimsy garb fighting on the floor. The caption said: “A cable-only version ends with one woman saying to the other, ‘Let’s make out.’ ”
Typical reader comments about the pictures:
Donna Davis: “My kids get the paper first. Guess I’ll have to hide it from now on.”
Dorothy Dammer: “Did I read it? Not after looking at the pictures.”
Mae Olson: “Why should we have to screen the newspaper for our children?”
Frances Wlazo: “We’re trying to get young people to read the paper. Isn’t it enough to have it on TV!”
But the coup de grce for the article came from teachers whose schools are enrolled in the Star Tribune’s Newspaper in Education (NIE) programs.
The paper annually sends 4.25 million sets of program materials to 87 percent of the state’s K-12 schools. The Thursday program goes to classes in 600 schools.
Robbinsdale third-grade teacher Rachel Schandt said: “Why did you do it on Thursday when the schools get the paper? I was so embarrassed.”
Mary Grems, third-grade teacher at Kingsland School in Spring Valley, Minn., said, “I didn’t expect anything like this. We push the paper going home so the students can share with their parents what they learn in school. One parent let me know that she was disappointed with the Variety article.”
Sandra Trittin, a Crookston, Minn., teacher, said she was “fortunate to preview the paper before handing it out.”
Susie Eaton Hopper, assistant managing editor-features, responded:
“The Variety staff that worked on the ‘Kissing Women’ column by TV Critic Neal Justin took great care in picking the photos and working on the story, which we knew would be provocative and might upset some readers. We did not use any photos of women actually kissing although we had them, and we used pictures of primetime network shows because that was part of the point of the piece: that this trend is one not buried in cable late at night but something being used by popular mainstream shows to attract viewers.
“In hindsight, given the reaction to the piece, we should perhaps have used fewer photos in the layout. Most readers who called me had not read the piece; they reacted to the pictures saying that this is something they did not want their children to see.
“It’s impossible to write about topics like these, which we will do from time to time, without offending some of our readers who think that we should not cover anything that has adult overtones. Mainly, I heard objections to the photos. If I had it to do over, I’d have downplayed the pictures.”
Comment: The photo selection ignored taste. I can’t imagine any of the four photos surviving the newspaper’s standards for movie advertising.
Yes, the pictures were about reality. But an objecting TV viewer can turn off the set in a blink; to protect adolescents from erotic images in print is more arduous.
There’s also apparently an embarrassing gap in Star Tribune internal communications. Sensitivity comes with knowledge. I would like to believe that none of the photos would have appeared had the editors involved known of the NIE programs.
