Today in embarassing journalism: The Star, The Globe

Last week, I told you I was venturing up north to catch Angelwalk Theatre’s production of Altar Boyz, the Christian boyband parody concert. Let me just say, it is worth the ride to North York. Here’s one of my favourite clips. My favourite line: “God put it in me, and that’s where it’s gonna stay.”

Even on a Thursday night in deepest Willowdale, the show was nearly sold out, and the girls in the audience were going crazy like it was 1998 and Nick Carter was on stage. The good press and sales have made Angelwalk extend the run to Oct 18, so you have no excuse to miss it.

Over in the Star, Xtra columnist Brent Ledger ponders whether downtown Toronto, and the gay village specifically, has body image issues, because of the lack of attractive green spaces. This is clearly a man who’s never been to North York.

Meanwhile, Star colleague Rosie DiManno continues to be a complete waste of oxygen and magenta hair dye, as evidenced by her disgusting post-mortem on the David Dewees suicide. Really, there’s nothing I can say about her that Torontoist hasn’t already covered (over and over), so I’ll just point you to their review. And note that DiManno somehow believes that media is entirely blameless when she also notes that her own paper got the charges wrong in its initial coverage and accused him of sexual assault on two minors — he was accused of luring and invitation to sexual touching.

Canadian sandwich chain Mr. Sub has fired its ad agency after it created a spot that was accused of promoting homophobia. The spot apparently got the interest of the LGBT wing of the Canadian Autoworkers Union, who were enough to pressure the chain to eliminate it before it moved from the internet to TV.

Speaking of gay panic, the Globe and Mail has a feature today on the dangerous spectre of same-sex sexual harassment in the office. Lacking any credible statistics or anecdotes to back up the story, the article seems to basically conclude with “and wouldn’t it be awful if this happened?” Apparently not, if you read the comments attached to the story, many of which are asking for pictures of the American female lawyers that are suing each other.

 

Rob Salerno is a playwright and journalist whose writing has appeared in such publications as Vice, Advocate, NOW and OutTraveler.

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