This was all part of a lead-in to the "The Early Show's" interview with Lambert, in which anchor Maggie Rodriguez implored him to think about "the children" and desperately tried to get him to apologize to his "child fans." Thankfully, Lambert got a chance to talk about the double-standard behind the uproar: "If it had been a female pop performer, I don't think there nearly would have been as much of an outrage." When Rodriguez asked whether it was an issue of being male or being gay, he replied: "Both. I think it's a double-whammy." Then she came back with: "But, but, I don't think people have said specifically that they were upset about the fact that you're gay or that you're kissing a guy." Right, people have generally been savvier with their prejudice -- unlike CBS.

You know what? My sensibilities have been deeply offended by this "Early Show" segment -- when do I get my apology from Rodriguez and and CBS?

 

If you're like me, you're thinking, "What's not to love?" But if you're like some Pop & Hiss readers, apparently, you're thinking, "What about the children?!"

Within minutes of the American Music Awards coming to an end, irate viewers had begun writing in. Reader Kathie Kunish declared that the telecast should have been rated 'PG-14,' and user 'penny' noted that she had to cover the eyes of her 10-year-old daughter.

Reader Richard Bowen agreed, posting on Pop & Hiss, 'I know he wants to break out and show the world his dangerous side, but why alienate an entire population of kids to do it?'

Um, because that's part of showing your dangerous side? Who says, "I want my image to be hotter and edgier, but still completely appropriate for a tween audience"? Not Adam Lambert, bless him. "I'm just trying to have a good time onstage," he told Pop & Hiss. "It's a sexy song. It's 2009, it's time to take more risks. It's about entertainment. People want to be surprised. It's too bad that people are so scared."

And of course, what goes unspoken is what people are scared of: The gay. If it were just about a sexually suggestive performance on a prime time awards show, there would be no news; as Lambert points out, female performers like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Madonna "have been risqué for years." But when it's a man groping both men and women onstage, and throwing in a same-sex smooch, we must protect the children! "Honestly," says Lambert, "there's a huge double standard."

Compare Lambert's performance last night with Britney's rendition of "I'm a Slave 4 U" at the 2001 Video Music Awards and see if you don't agree.

 

When people talk about homos taking over the planet, my heart races a little faster. A planet ruled by gays! Imagine how good the scones will be!

Plus, there'll be prettier yards, less crime, more funding for the arts but less bad poetry, fewer rude, disheveled dogs roaming loose on the streets, and less weak coffee. I'm guessing there aren't many gay Hummer owners. McMansions would surely fall out of fashion, along with miniblinds, vinyl siding and Applebee's.

Everyone would be grumpier and bossier on the outside, but more kindhearted deep down inside. Complaining about your crappy day would become an acceptable form of filibustering in Congress. Neglecting your houseplants would become punishable by law.

What, now I'm just making sweeping generalizations? Now it's obvious that I think gay people are silly and overly fixated on trivial matters and other likable things like that? Now I'm just pandering to the future global elite in the hopes that I might one day fill some token fag hag post in the cabinet?

Pretty, witty, gay, etc.

I can't help it. I've been idealizing gay people ever since I moved to the Castro, in San Francisco, at the tender age of 25, where I was surrounded every day by beautiful, fit, talkative men. Suddenly I knew how Captain Kirk felt when he was beamed down onto a planet of gorgeous lady aliens who were nonetheless impatient with his dull earthling ways. Sure, I've been urged over and over again not to assume that all gay and lesbian peoples of the globe are wickedly witty and charming and fun-loving and smart, but each new gay person I meet only further clouds my vision with his/her general-purpose excellence and flair.

This is the trouble I smell on television this fall, where token gay characters have replaced token black characters as the marginalized peoples du jour. By depicting gay people as they really are -- intelligent, attractive, self-possessed -- modern-day televisual narratives run the risk of misinforming the public about the fact that many gay people are slovenly, slow-witted and boring. I would personally launch a public awareness campaign to inform the populace that Gay People Are Stupid And Uninteresting, Too -- I just can't find any stupid, uninteresting gay people to help me enlighten the masses.

Meanwhile, the networks continue their campaign of misinformation by featuring highly charismatic token gays on their shows. There's Eric (Connor Paolo), Serena's little brother on "Gossip Girl," and Mo-Mo (Haaz Sleiman), Jackie's trusted confidant on "Nurse Jackie." And on the new shows this fall, token gays are moving front and center, from Kurt (Chris Colfer), a confident, talented member of the show choir on Fox's "Glee" who nonetheless gets tossed into a dumpster every morning by the football team (although that's about to change) to Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) on ABC's "Modern Family," a gay couple who adopt a baby girl from Vietnam and immediately feel self-conscious about it.

Poor Mitchell, alone with the baby as he boards his plane home, elicits coos from fellow passengers until his partner, Cameron, returns with snacks for their adopted daughter. Suddenly the same cooing passengers are averting their eyes. But a rude comment from a woman passing by is what finally sends Mitchell over the edge.

Lady: (to husband) Honey, honey! Look at that baby with those cream puffs!

Mitchell: All right. Excuse me. This baby would've grown up in a crowded orphanage if it wasn't for us cream puffs! And to all of you who judge, hear this: Love knows no race, creed or gender! And shame on you, you small-minded ignorant few ...

Cameron: Mitchell, Mitchell! (Showing their baby, holding a cream puff.) She's got the cream puffs.

Now, granted, this and many of the other jokes surrounding gay couple Mitchell and Cameron are focused on their gayness. They are the token gay characters, after all, so their stories are, predictably enough, rife with stereotypical gay behaviors, like when Cameron has a mural painted on the wall of baby Lily's nursery of himself and Mitchell as angels .

Cameron: I had Andre do it while we were gone!

Mitchell: Is that us, with wings?

Cameron: We're floating above her, always there to protect her.

Mitchell: Well, that's reassuring, right, Lily? Yes, we tore you away from everything you know, but don't worry, things are normal here, your fathers are floating fairies. Can you call Andre? Have him paint something a little less gay? And by the way, we have to stop having friends with names like Andre.

Cameron: (to baby) Redheaded Daddy is angry Daddy.

See, if you saw a scene like that, you might imagine that gay men sometimes make outrageous or vaguely self-aggrandizing design decisions, or that despite such flights of fancy, they maintain a sense of humor about themselves and almost seem to enjoy it when other people make fun of them. And that wouldn't be accurate at all, since many, many gay people in the world are incredibly stodgy and not very creative and also quite easily offended. Maybe you don't know any gay people like that, but that doesn't mean they don't exist!

Similarly, when Kurt opens the third episode of "Glee" with a mesmerizingly coy rendition of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies," then tries out for kicker of the football team in an effort to win his dad's approval, but insists on listening to Beyoncé's song right before he kicks the ball, we might end up assuming that gay kids are more unique or even a little more appealing than their straight peers in high school. What could be further from the truth?

What's even more deceptive is that these gay characters -- Kurt and Mitchell and Cameron -- are some of the funniest and most captivating characters on their shows. And what's worse, "Glee" and "Modern Family" are some of the funniest and most captivating comedies on television this fall, so, of course, being small-minded, ignorant assholes, we immediately assume that these shows must be written and staffed by gay people. But that wouldn't be fair, because I'm sure there are plenty of dumb, uninteresting straight people on staff, too.

The whole thing is just a big mess, one perpetuated by those who want to fool the public into thinking that gay people are better than us, just like gay people fool the public into thinking that gay people are better than us by… actually being better than us.

Flying under the gaydar

Take Ellen DeGeneres. First she proves that she's better than all of the straight people in the world by coming out as gay on her sitcom 12 years ago, something that no straight person in his or her right mind would ever do because we're too ashamed by our mediocrity and our poor hygiene, let alone our sexuality, to reveal anything of note about ourselves in any sort of public setting.

But that's not enough. Next, Ellen tries her hand at the talk show thing (like everyone else on the planet) and not only doesn't fail (like everyone else on the planet) but succeeds with flying colors. She dumps crazy Anne Heche for hot Australian babe Portia de Rossi, hosts the Academy Awards, and just generally succeeds at everything while treating her status as a gay woman as old news (which it is, thanks to the fact that she came out a long, long time ago, before anyone else had the courage to).

And now what does Ellen do? She lands a plum job as a judge on the most popular show on the planet. Is this fair? Hasn't she gone too far, at long last?

Sure, it'll be tough to fill Paula Abdul's shoes. After all, Abdul added a lot to the discussion on "American Idol" when she giggled and rambled on incoherently about how much she loved every single contestant onstage. And also, didn't she have this great rapport with Simon Cowell, where Simon would tease her and she would act all mad and punch him in the arm without saying anything but "Simon!"? Wasn't that fun?

Ellen will really struggle to live up to Paula's legacy. And Lord knows we don't want someone to put Simon Cowell in his place. We'd prefer that Simon (who's as sharp-tongued and as self-deprecating as a gay man, but whose terrible hair gives him away as straight) continue to sleep his way through "American Idol," lulled into a semi-hypnotic state by the inane ramblings of Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacrest. God forbid that Simon be taken out at the knees by someone a little more clever and witty and Johnny-on-the-Spot than he is.

It's a sign of how far Ellen has come in the world, and how much she's changed it, that no one is referring to her as the token gay judge on "American Idol," any more than Randy Jackson is referred to as the token black judge. To America, Ellen is funny first and smart second and lovable third and maybe gay fourth or fifth or sixth (just as Randy is annoying first and repetitive second and boring third or fourth).

And this is how the gays eventually take over the world, you know. They distract us into thinking that they're just like us, when in fact they're far superior. We're subdued into complicity and before we know it, the national anthem is replaced by Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick out of You," the military is marching in classic Bob Fosse formation, and Wal-Mart stops stocking guns and ammo and starts stocking whimsical Dalmatian statuettes and Jonathan Adler throw pillows.

But at least the scones will taste better.

Ellen?

Wait a minute.

Ellen DeGeneres is funny. She’s likable. She loves music. She’s personable and passionate. She’s a show business veteran with her own beloved daytime talk show. To quote Max Bialystock -- where did we go right?

Not everyone is thrilled with the choice, however. Let’s ask the blogosphere!

Responding to yesterday's news, "Idol" fan site mjsbigblog promptly fumed “So, is she going to be a real judge or some kind of joke? She’s a comedian, not a singer or a musician,” adding “She was terrible as guest judge on ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ Her shtick wasn’t even funny.” And on EW.com, Michael Slezak admitted he “greeted the news … with the sudden urge to drive a fork into my thigh and wake up from a strange and horrible nightmare,” noting that he too found her SYTYCD stint ominously shticky.

It’s possible that all the things that make DeGeneres an adept comic and host are the same ones that would thwart her as a critic. Simon Cowell, after all, thrives as a judge on every  competition program in existence precisely because he’s such a brutal prick. And sure, given the relative uselessness of the other two judges, it might have been interesting to have a flashy loose cannon around to throw barbs in the direction of the show business delusional. 

Instead, DeGeneres seeks to fill the role of American Everywoman. Taping her show yesterday, she said, “I'm looking at it as a person who is going to buy the music and is going to relate to that person. So I'm hopefully going to be that voice of what we're all doing at home.”

She’s more than that though – she’s the woman who outed herself on the cover of Time magazine when it was still potential career suicide to do so. The one who hosted the Emmy awards with humor and humanity mere weeks after the tragedies of September 11 and Katrina. Who both charmed and inspired when she gave the Tulane commencement speech this year. 

She may not have Paula’s penchant for slurred non-sequiturs or Simon’s acid tongue, but what she lacks in loopy unpredictability and mental cruelty she compensates for with a steely competence that only appears breezy. Anyone who can hold her own against John McCain will probably figure out how to share the spotlight with the other judges and – more crucially – keep it shining most brightly on the contestants. She’s already got her own show. She knows that “Idol” is ours. She’ll be great. And that’s reason enough to dance.

Orly Taitz

At its heart, "American Idol" is nothing more than a classic tale of reinvention. Each season, contestants walk into an audition room as students, wannabes or the best singer in their tiny little town -- and a few months (and several million text messages later), they're sitting at the top of the Billboard charts.

Who better, then, to judge how quickly the contestants can make this difficult transition than Birther in Chief Orly Taitz? Before she muscled her way to the head of the motley crew of loonies who believe President Obama was born in Kenya, Taitz worked as a dentist in Orange County, Calif. And a realtor. And a lawyer.  Now she's moved on to more fame, albeit probably not fortune, shopping phony Kenyan birth certificates in official court filings and appearing on TV.

And oh, how she appears on TV. Taitz -- who once yelled at a roomful of reporters because they had failed to investigate whether Obama's mother was really dead  -- would be the most entertaining "Idol" judge yet. You don't know what she'll say; you just know she'll say it crazily. Picture her yelling at Simon Cowell the way she tears into MSNBC's David Shuster here. Imagine her demanding that contestants bring their high school transcripts into the room, in order to prove they're who they say they are. Instantly, "Idol" would go from glorified karaoke to a Fox News musical comedy. Who wouldn't watch that?

 Joan Rivers

She may not make the next Maxim 100, but the smack-down queen has built a career puncturing overinflated celebrity ego and, frankly, that's the kind of can-do spirit we need for the 500th tone-deaf rendition of "I Believe I Can Fly."

But Rivers is more than cutting. She shares Paula's total absence of filter and willingness to flaunt her own frailty -- from failed marriages to plastic surgery -- and she could swallow Simon's abuse like her 10th vodka gimlet and still order another round. In a way, she's like a linear, Catskills version of Paula: She's hilarious, she's off the rails, she makes us feel kind of sad inside, and her agent, believe me, is waiting for the phone call right now.

 Courtney Love

If we’re looking for someone who can actually out-Paula Paula, Courtney is our girl. She brings a large bag of loopy everywhere she goes; she pretty much patented unpredictable TV appearances and interviews. Her compelling twitterfeed proves that she is capable of dispensing shards of poetry (of Jack White: “he is like athunderstorm and made me LAUGH!”) and offering encouragement to fledgling artists (of the band Dead Sara: " OH MY GOD! fucking second coming of a chick with pipes who can screamsing and melodic!”) Courtney also has many years of genuinely hard-earned music biz experience and philosophy to bring to the panel. As she sagely tweeted recently, “MAking great rock music is about lot of factors 1 never take yourself too seriously 2 take it very seriously. It Matters” -- words for “AI” contestants to live by.

Sarah Palin

The former governor of Alaska is the dream candidate to replace the woman whose rambling, heartfelt, incomprehensible comments make James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” look like “Baby Beluga.” Palin is tanned, rested and looking for work. She would bring the highest name recognition ever to a prime-time TV show: With Palin on board, “AI’s” ratings would exceed the numbers for Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. And her misadventures with the English language are even more startlingly advanced than Abdul’s. Imagine the look on Sir Simon’s face when Palin starts raving about Adam Lambert “rearing his head and coming into the airspace of the United States of America.” Moreover, it would be a win for Palin. The “Idol” gig – a gigantic cultural train wreck witnessed by every American citizen -- would position Palin perfectly for that presidential run in 2012. 

Kate Gosselin

The ratings for "Jon & Kate Plus 8" are tanking, and we clearly can't stop mocking her hair. She's used to doling out praise and constructive criticism to her eight tiny terrors. And Gosselin has made it abundantly obvious she's happy to critique her husband. Why not let the starry-eyed fame kids be the next victims?

Peggy Noonan

She's an intellectual Paula Abdul: Think of her breathy, loopy, possibly sedated, weirdly flirty star turns on television, whether with Charlie Rose or Chris Matthews. They have a lot of Paula in them. I can easily imagine her holding forth on “AI” performers. For example, just take what she said about George W. Bush and adapt it for Kris Allen:

"I was asked this week why Kris Allen seems so attractive to the heartland, to what used to be called Middle America. A big question. I found my mind going to this word: normal.

Mr. Allen is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. (He's not Adam Lambert!) But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" (Adam Lambert would be saying, Hey there, fireman!)

He's responsible. He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. Or they sing "Ring of Fire" in a way that would make Johnny Cash squirm in his manly grave.

Kris Allen ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy. (The guy they don't love? Adam Lambert)."

Have we missed anybody? Blog your thoughts on who should replace Paula on Open Salonor check out the submissions here