GoodLife TV, My *ss

Well, first SpongeDob Stickypants bravely alerted us to the secret agenda of a certain cartoon character. Now James Wolcott has discovered that there are even worse temptations being disseminated via your TV wavelengths, in the seemingly harmless guise of '50s and '60s westerns:



. . . Goodlife has also saw fit [sic] to resurrect a batch of Warner Brothers Westerns that exude a musky aroma of a bunkhouse where the wrong kind of bunking has been going on after sundown.



Bronco, starring Ty Hardin. Bronco. Ty. You tell me those aren't gay-sounding names. Then there's Sugarfoot, starring Will Hutchins. Sugarfoot--another name that sounds awfully fey to me. In the title song, he's described as "easy lopin'" (the sagebrush version of crusing), and joggin' along "with a heart full of song." Show tunes, no doubt. Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker, whose title tune asks the haunting musical question, "Cheyenne, Cheyenne where will you be camping tonight?" Camping, indeed! The song has him dreaming "of a girl you may never love," and I think I know why he may never love her, and why he needs to go "camping."



But no Warner Brothers Western promotes the gay lifestyle more than Lawman, starring John Russell and Peter Brown. "John Russell, a 6'4" ramrod straight, ex-Marine with the most compelling steely gaze on television, embodied the courageous, no-nonsense Marshal Dan Troop," says a Lawman fan site. Peter Brown played his young deputy, and theirs was a stern daddy/ relationship seething with subtext. "The series generally avoided sentimentality, but for those who looked for it, the bond between the two characters was even stronger than the words exchanged would suggest." The nature of that bond is indicated in the opening credits, where sheriff would toss his rifle to his handsome deputy, who "hefted it with approval." Oh I just bet he hefted it with approval.



Wolcott goes on to explain exactly how unsuspecting heteros everywhere are about to be seduced. Oh, the horror.