Playing it Straight (or Jewish?)

Now I rather like trashy TV, me. It appeals to my inner chav.

To satisfy this need, the other night I was watching “Playing it Straight” on Channel ITV 7 (or something), as it’s mindless enough to watch whilst packing a suitcase. The idea is that a gorgeous girl needs to work out from a group of about 10 all very attractive men which ones are gay and which ones are straight. If she picks the man of her dreams, there’s a risk that he might turn out to be gay, in which case he wins $200,000 or something preposterous and she gets nothing except disappointment and national humiliation for the weakness of her gaydar. In a previous series, this happened but the deluding gayboy chose to split the winnings with her; presumably on strict condition that she didn’t try to celebrate with a shag.

It’s all fairly harmless fun, or so it seems. I happened to channel hop to something where some Jewish guy was being very earnest about persecution of the Jews. Fair enough, the Jews have had a seriously rough time. Then I realised that gays were also victims of the holocaust and are still seriously persecuted around the World.

Let me pitch an idea to you. How about a TV series where a group of blokes tries to get the amorous attention of a girl? If she accidentally picks one of the Jews though, he gets to keep the money and all the viewers get to laugh at how he was obviously Jewish and she must have very poor skills at spotting a Jew when she sees one. The point is that he’d have to hide his Jewishness for a several weeks to get there.

You buying the idea? Well, I hope not because it’s appallingly offensive. Yet we tolerate the idea that gay men hide their sexuality in the name of entertainment, with the show playing to every stereotype in the book along the way. The fact that this is OK (and that I’d not even thought it otherwise), yet the parallel Jewish show would have the square root of zero chance of being made really made me wonder. Either it’s time that Jewish people got over their past (and present) persecution, or that we gay men need to be much more alert to being ridiculed, lest this ridicule turn to something more sinister. Most probably some combination of both.