Mark Starr-gazing

Mark Starr, at Newsweek Online, has an excellent essay this week that happens to cover some of the same topics (Massachusetts drivers, homophobia on tour, and the Red Sox) that I've been writing about for the last several days.

Starr does an excellent job of summing up why the Queer Eye episode, though seemingly a lark, actually carries real cultural significance:

Baseball, while tolerating great diversity of drug choice, has remained a miserably homophobic universe. Which accounts for why there is not a single openly gay player in the Major Leagues (nor are there any, to be fair, in the NFL or NBA either). And why a superstar would feel the need to hold a press conference just to deny rumors that he was gay. So it was a milestone, be it a meager one, to see Red Sox players evidence no discomfort while cavorting with television’s most prominent gay brigade. And to see the Boston Red Sox, with its shameful racial history as the last team to integrate, lead the way by letting the pink flag unfurl along with all the other colors that populate today’s Fenway.

Starr missed the appearance of the Fab Five at Fenway this weekend (a promotional tie-in with the episode's premiere) because he was at his daughter's graduation at Brookline High School. Where--wouldn't you know it--those same creepy protesters from Kansas showed up to try and disrupt the event.

There were, of course, counterdemonstrators with their own signs, a lot of shouting back and forth and plenty of ugliness in the air. I just walked on by. I didn’t feel a need to make any pronouncements on the subject. After all, on this Sunday the Red Sox, who in our town are the closest things we have to deities, had already spoken—loud and clear.