Losing Isaiah

ABC announced that Isaiah Washington was not having his option picked up for the next season of Grey's Anatomy, five months after getting in hot water for calling gay cast mate T.R. Knight a "faggot".

Since tangling on with co-star Patrick Dempsey for the initial remark, and later drawing the ire of co-star Katherine Heigl for using the epithet at the Golden Globe Awards, Washington had been on a tour of absolution, meeting with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and even filmed a public service announcement about the power of words. Additionally, he said he was trying to make amends and was seeking therapy, but neither his words nor actions managed to hold his job.

If he was a coal miner, calling his co-worker a faggot would have probably elicited a high five or two, and then an equally juvenile comeback. But in the sensitive and self important world of Hollywood, everybody was up in arms. Granted, Knight is gay (and later surfed the wave of publicity to come forward - because coming out would not accurately represent his embrace of the spotlight), and we all know that you can't call a homosexual faggot unless you're at the next gloryhole over, much like only blacks can call each other nigger, so the outrage is apparently, appropriately in context. But is that hyper-vigilance against any kind of derogatory statement the standard, and if so should it be? If you've ever seen two guys mouthing off and rolling up their sleeves, apparently there's a lot of gaydar getting set off, because there's a whole lotta gay insinuations and manhood assessments being made. Clearly the emasculation is meant to be provocative and insulting, but isn't that because it's meant to diminish their masculinity and heterosexuality? Is it luck that of all the insults and curses, sometimes one of them is actually close to accurate? And is the trouble then that the remark was put in an derogatory format, or that the person saying it does or doesn't have the proper basis to say it?

When the shitstorm died down, the diagnosis was that Washington was an insensitive homophobe and he needed to go though a public battery of apology and reconciliation to preserve his image, which he did. And therein lies the bigger problem. As a society, and certainly in any of the media / entertainment fields, public image and damage control is important as a body of work. Get caught fisting a transsexual prostitute while high on PCP? Leave your baby alone at home for days with nothing but frozen peas and beer? Drive your Sherman tank down the freeway on the wrong direction? All of these things can, will, and have happened, and the stars are quick to put the right spin on things so that they can keep from being surrounded by angry villagers and stoned. But what happens when the public penance doesn't work? How much prostrating must be done before the issue is dropped? Consequence, or more so attrition is to be expected, but at some point the issue there has to be a resolution. Have we seen that last of this story?

When you look at all the incendiary things that are said and done by performers, some name calling on set is hardly a big deal, especially when you have rappers talking about capping bitches and guys like Akon grinding minors and throwing kids from the stage. Grovelling for mercy in the public eye has become as well worn a tradition as the words and actions that spur it, but if we're going to have a three ring circus of hoops and expectations, then we have to decide clearly where that line is going to be to determine what is unforgivable.

(Yeah, that movie poster was a nice tying touch)