{"id":543,"date":"2015-01-05T07:41:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T07:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=543"},"modified":"2015-01-15T00:26:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T08:26:35","slug":"tuc-takes-on-modern-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2015\/01\/05\/tuc-takes-on-modern-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuc Takes On Modern Family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just before the holidays, <strong>Tuc Watkins <\/strong>wrote a lengthy missive on <em>Facebook <\/em>that began thusly: &#8220;I think <strong><em>Modern Family<\/em><\/strong> is clever, hilarious, even terrifically subtle at times.\u00a0 But, for the most part, I have a hard time laughing at the gay guys.\u00a0 In fact, I kinda cringe.\u00a0 It feels a little bit like the gay equivalent of &#8216;blackface&#8217;.\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t feel &#8216;modern&#8217; at all.&#8221;\u00a0 Methinks someone is forgetting their work on <strong><em>Desperate Housewives<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Yes, Tuc was the half of the gay couple who could &#8220;pass&#8221; (to use a <em>pass\u00e9 <\/em>term).\u00a0 But his spousal-equivalent, played by <strong>Kevin Rahm<\/strong>, had his share of stereotypical moments.\u00a0 It&#8217;s probably indelicate to point out that, unlike <strong>Jesse Tyler Ferguson<\/strong>, Tuc was not openly gay when he took on this role in 2007.\u00a0 So nobody was looking to him as a role model.\u00a0 He was presumed to be gay-for-play (although we knew better).<\/p>\n<p>Jesse Tyler Ferguson responded by saying (in part): &#8220;Sorry you feel that way, Tuc.\u00a0 I know lots of guys who are just like Cam and lots of guys who are just like Mitch.\u00a0 We can&#8217;t be expected to represent every gay person.\u00a0 We can only represent these two people&#8230;I am thrilled with the work that you did on <em>Desperate Housewives.\u00a0 <\/em>It opened the door for shows like ours and hopefully we can hold that door open for many more shows to follow us.\u00a0 At the end of the day we can&#8217;t please everyone&#8230;and we shouldn&#8217;t try to.\u00a0 Kinda just like life, right?&#8221;\u00a0 Bravo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just before the holidays, Tuc Watkins wrote a lengthy missive on Facebook that began thusly: &#8220;I think Modern Family is clever, hilarious, even terrifically subtle at times.\u00a0 But, for the most part, I have a hard time laughing at the gay guys.\u00a0 In fact, I kinda cringe.\u00a0 It feels a little bit like the gay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}