Burnt Orange Report

No Show Tunes...

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

It's now official. George W. Bush is not a theater queen.

The word came on May 22, after the president had taken his mountain biking fall on his ranch in Crawford. "You know this president," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, taking pains to explain that his boss had been on a 17-mile marathon, not some limp-kneed girly jaunt. "He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

The interesting bit in this article is found near the end. Apparently, the GOP National Convention goers will not be attending any musicals with any gay characters in them. (If you were randomly picking on Broadway, I can't imagine not hitting at least one.)

The Republicans then had no choice but to book the landlocked delegates into Broadway musicals. The eight shows selected (with tickets to be underwritten by The Times, as it happens) have one thing in common: none of them has an openly gay character. The host committee has said that the list was dictated by factors unrelated to the musicals' content. If you buy that, you'll believe that David Gest will be the next secretary of defense.

Even with Ms. O'Donnell's Boy George musical, "Taboo," out of commission, it remains as hard to shun gay culture on Broadway as Mormons in Salt Lake City. To do so means skipping two recent Tony winners, "The Producers" and "Hairspray," and most of this year's Tony nominees. (The only harder feat would be to avoid Jews; the Republicans have booked "Fiddler on the Roof," to which they are sending the Florida delegation, yet). The Republicans were so desperate to escape Roger DeBris, the cross-dressing buffoon concocted by Mel Brooks, that they have gone and picked two shows ("Beauty and the Beast" and "Phantom of the Opera") set in France!

Another musical they're skipping, "Avenue Q," has a gay character named Rod, a Republican investment banker who tries to pass as straight by singing of a fictive girlfriend who lives in Canada. Apparently even entertainment this light — the show stars "Sesame Street"-style puppets — hits too close to home.

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The good news for those on the right appalled by such apostates is that a spokesman for Scores, the straight Manhattan lap-dance club, has taken to bragging to The New York Post of the advance bookings lined up by convention delegates. But it's inevitable that some tabloid will uncover some swing-state delegates at a gay sex club as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The only people in New York likely to be dissing the many gay Republicans who turn up here are their own party leaders.