As The World Squirms
New York Times TV columnist Ginia Bellefante wrote on Thursday about how the CBS soap-opera "As The World Turns" has grown its ratings among the 18-to-34 set with a gay love affair between college-age characters Luke and Noah. Bellefante actually ends up yawning a bit about how progressive this is, but is jarred by how the CBS show could be protested for its prejudice against the military:
On the show gay life doesn't flourish without intense animosity directed at it. The relationship of Luke and Noah has played out against what appears to be rampant homophobia in Oakdale. Luke and Noah were once attacked by some drunken fraternity jerks. But those random assailants weren't half as bad as Noah's father, Winston Mayer (Daniel Hugh Kelly), a colonel who served in Iraq during the gulf war and tried to have Luke killed when he discovered his son was gay. It is amazing that the armed forces haven't leveled their own protest against "As the World Turns" for prejudice against the military.
Colonel Mayer refused to pay for Noah's education unless he served in the Iraq war. The colonel also, it turned out, killed Noah's mother. Now he is manipulating a pretty young Iraqi refugee - the character Ameera Ali Aziz is, to the best of my knowledge, the first woman to appear in a chador on an American soap opera, amid all the Botox and cleavage - presumably as part of a malicious plan further to obstruct his son's love life.
