Dollars for Gays

Note: Matt and Crank were on vacation this week so we found a clip in our files that we never got around to reviewing.  It follows below.  We did listen to WZBH sporadically this week with nothing new to review.  The overall programming on WZBH seems to have changed.  Matt and Crank promos are still nuetral in tone and none of the other DJs make offhand comments that reinforces the negative stereotypes often used on the Matt and Crank program and, in the past, promoted throughout the day.  Our future reviews will be less frequent, if at all.

We're split in opinion on the review of this segment that aired on Feb 17th.  A caller phoned in asking for tickets to the Three Days Grace concert.  Matt tried to sound flirtatious, but he sounded more like a drug dealer trying to get his addict to do something for him.  He asked what the caller would do to get the tickets.

The conversation naturally flowed into the question of would there be anything the caller wouldn't do for 10 million dollars.  The caller responded that he'd do almost anything, to which Matt automatically jumped to the conclusion that "almost anything" meant the caller wouldn't have sex with another man.  (The caller was a man.)  It would've been funny if the caller were gay and had responded that heck, he'd do that for free.  But the statistical odds were in Matt's favor and the caller claimed to be - or at least played the role of - heterosexual. 

Two of us view the clip as a form of gay bashing.  Matt's message was clear: being gay is disgusting and ranks right up there with murder, the second part of the question scenario.  Pimping oneself out wasn't the moral issue at hand.  The moral issue was engaging in a same sex fling.

The other three of us disagree with the harsh label of "gay bashing", although we do see it has problematic.  The three of us who formed this opinion listened to the clip from the standpoint of having never listened to Matt and Crank before.  If one doesn't know the abhoration Matt holds for gays and lesbians, then the clip held a valuable moral lesson.  The problem is that a gay listener struggling with his sexuality or a listener who holds the same level of dislike for gays as Matt does could easily interpret the message as "gay is wrong" and miss the moral lesson.

The moral lesson, which all five of us applaud, is that while everyone may have their price, if that price allows you to go against your nature, then no amount of money is worth doing the act because one would have to live with himself knowing what he did to get that money.  Do you have a price to kill someone?  Pimp yourself out?  If you're straight, have sex with a same sex partner?  If you're gay, have sex with an opposite sex partner? 

All five of us agree the clip is problematic and sends the wrong message about same sex relationships.  Two of us stand firm that the clip is blatant gay bashing.  Listen to the clip below and you be the judge.