Last night, New Yorkers came together to mourn the death of 32-year-old Mark Carson, a gay man who was shot in the head this weekend in Greenwich Village; the victim of an alleged hate crime. Crowds gathered at the LGBT Center on West 13th and marched to 8th Street and Sixth Avenue, the location of the shooting, where a rally/vigil was held to memorialize Mr. Carson and express the outrage of the city's denizens.

Paris Hilton with Johnny Wujek, a gay man who, by her definition, probably has AIDS. (Getty)

This is one of those cases where no one comes out looking good: a cab driver in New York thought it was his lucky day when Paris Hilton flagged him down, and seeing an opportunity to make a couple extra bucks, secretly recorded her entire conversation with a friend to sell to TMZ. Classy! Of course, if the heiress had just been discussing her latest perfume line, or the singularity, or how much money she plans on donating to the Tesla Science Museum (you know, normal Paris Hilton things), than the guy would have gone home empty-handed, like sleazeball citizen paparazzi deserve to.

Unfortunately, Ms. Hilton was interrupted in her meditation of quantum physics by her friend, who brought up the gay men friend finder, Grindr. "Gay guys are the horniest people in the world ... they're disgusting," Ms. Hilton said, according to TMZ, which obtained the tape, obviously. Unfortunately, the quote continues.

Most of them probably have AIDS ... I would be so scared if I was a gay guy ... you'll like die of AIDS.

Amazingly, Ms. Hilton's rep tried to spin their client's homophobia as a safe-sex message:

Paris Hilton’s comments were to express that it is dangerous for anyone to have unprotected sex that could lead to a life-threatening disease. The conversation became heated, after a close gay friend told her in a cab ride, a story about a gay man who has AIDS and is knowingly having unprotected sex. He also discussed a website that encourages random sex by gay men with strangers.

Grindr is a geosocial app geared toward gay, bisexual and curious men, designed to let you meet attractive/compatible guys nearby. If that concept upsets Paris Hilton so much, wait till she hears the one about AIDS Mary. As a reminder, Paris Hilton once had to leave jail because it made her have a herpes outbreak.

Harry Brant strikes a pose for the cameras at Emporio Armani's flagship store opening.

Despite that Harry Brant has barely cleared puberty, the social-buzzing, babygay spawn of model Stephanie Seymour and billionaire media/art/real estate tycoon Peter Brant, has a busy schedule that rivals those of Paris Hilton and Olivier Zahm. This past Friday at Emporio Armani’s 601 Madison Avenue boutique opening, we approached the 16-year-old high school sophomore to find why is he out socializing with Roberta Armani, Luigi Tadini, Ms. Hilton, Ricky Martin, Ryan Lochte, artist Rashaad Newsome, Anna dello Russo and Kate Lanphear, when he should probably be cracking those Algebra books.

“What have you been up to today?” we asked.

“I went to Rag & Bone. I liked it,” replied Mr. Brant, smiling profoundly.

“What are you doing at Armani?”

“I’m here for the clothes!”

“Are you going to be at any of the parties later? John Varvatos? Jason Wu?” The Observer prodded.

“Um tomorrow is Carine [Roitfeld]’s party,” he replied.

“So have you started school?” we questioned, suggesting he should be at home studying.

“Yes, today I went to Rag & Bone and then I went on a field trip to the aquarium with my school.”

“How do you balance your social schedule with school?” we asked.

“I mean, I’m pretty much like a modern-day Hannah Montana!” Mr. Brant said.

Does that mean Mr. Brant is living a double life? Is he secretly a world famous pop star? And since when did being a spoiled billionaire socialite boy constitute as a “normal teenage girl?”

Before he could clarify, a chaotic pack led by Cory Kennedy and Ms. Hilton stumbled drunkenly into the fiesta.

The Observer quickly grabbed a few glasses of water and offered them to Ms. Kennedy and her coterie, who more than needed it. Then we were off to rowdier pastures.

One down, two to go.

In an email to journalist Andrew Sullivan, CNN host Anderson Cooper put an end to longstanding rumors by writing: "The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud." Mr. Cooper's orientation had of late been the topic of discussion--the TV host had been featured in an Observer cover story on "the glass closet" due to his openness regarding all aspects of his life but his orientation. Writing today of the need to be a visible part of the gay community, Mr. Cooper wrote: "I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter’s shield of privacy."

Illustration by Dale Stephanos

At a crowded movie premiere in Midtown recently, The Observer witnessed a young movie and TV star—a dashing young man who’s been involved with several starlets despite whispers about his close relationships with other men—sitting for the entire party in close conversation with a well-groomed gent, even as his co-stars circulated. As we passed, the plus-one stared us down, as if to say, "Step off," or perhaps, "Don’t you dare write about this."

Nor did we, since the question of whether it is news that a virile young actor was enjoying the company of one man—if not the company of men—is very much still open.

For decades, the practice of aggressively outing well-knowns was largely forsworn. Jim McGreevey, former governor of New Jersey, didn’t get the gay rumors swirling around him put into print until he declared himself a "gay American." Jodie Foster’s long relationship with a female movie producer only went public when Ms. Foster acknowledged it in a 2007 awards acceptance speech. By that time, the pair had already raised two children together.

But with the increasing acceptability and mainstreaming of gay culture, the texture of how and why people come out or stay in the closet has become a more complicated issue, as has the media coverage surrounding it.

With the number of prying media outlets—TMZ, Perez Hilton, Gawker, TV newsmagazines like Extra, a vivified set of glossy tabloids—growing seemingly by the week, celebrities have come up with a new strategy to decline discussing their personal lives until they’re good and ready. Living in the so-called "glass closet," they can forestall the legitimate press inquiring after their home life while also ensuring that their orientation is hardly breaking news. It’s being basically out, without having to answer any questions.

For instance, Queen Latifah’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment on this article, even after her performance at a gay pride event in Long Beach, Calif., raised eyebrows ("Queen Latifah didn’t make any big announcements at the Long Beach Lesbian
& Gay Pride Festival this weekend, but it seems she invited the world to read between the lines," began one article on BET’s website). She was able to monetize the gay market with a wink and a nod, but actually coming out—if she is indeed gay—was out of the question. "I’ve never dealt with the question of my personal life in public," Ms. Latifah told Entertainment Weekly this month. "It’s just not gonna happen."

Or take Anderson Cooper. He’s built his brand by dishing on-air with gay icons Andy Cohen and Kathy Griffin, all while leaving his personal life very, very personal. Never mind all the photos of his trawling lower Manhattan with gay-bar owner Benjamin Maisani—or the fact that his revealing memoir omits any mention of a love life.

The "nobody’s business but my own" argument—which Mr. Cooper rarely if ever has even had to verbalize, despite being the author of a soul-baring memoir on many other subjects—may be familiar. It’s a cannier, more media-trained dodge of the question than Clay Aiken’s elision, in Rolling Stone in 2003. "One thing I’ve found of people in the public eye," he told that magazine, "either you’re a womanizer or you’ve got to be gay. Since I’m neither one of those, people are completely concerned about me." Or when Latin singer Ricky Martin told Barbara Walters in 2000, without gendered pronouns, in response to questions about his sexuality, "I live la vida loca!"

Both of those singers are, by now, completely out of the closet, though they were allowed to emerge, by the large media outlets, on their own terms—testament to the fact that outing is still the third rail of old-school print media. For instance, New York’s story about the city’s "trophy boys," which listed attendees at an all-gay party on Fire Island, prompted a number of angry letters and to this day is not on the magazine’s capacious website. Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg’s marriage is treated as legitimate—and, hey, maybe it is! *NSYNC singer Lance Bass’s coming-out in People in 2006 was treated as breaking news, though gossip blogs cited photos of him in Provincetown, Mass., with a gay reality-TV star as meeting the burden of proof quite some time before.

Lance Bass.

The politics and ethics of outing, and indeed what constitutes outing, are, as ever, a subject of significant debate in the journalistic community.

Michelangelo Signorile, whose outing of celebrities became a flashpoint in 1990, when he reported for the now-defunct OutWeek upon the sex life of the late Malcolm Forbes, has seen the debate shift. "The Daily News got the exclusive from us and they wanted to put it on the front page. They killed it and instead went with Marla Maples—an acceptably heterosexual scandal," said Mr. Signorile, who is now a news commentator on the Huffington Post and SiriusXM Radio.

When is outing in the media acceptable? "There were two criteria journalistically that had to be met," said Mr. Signorile. "Is the sexual orientation relevant? And is it a public figure? If you’re a public figure where you open up your life for dissection by the media, and it’s relevant to the story, journalistically, that’s something that is perfectly acceptable. At the same time, I have also talked about how culturally, as a journalist working for a journalistic outfit, it’s not a tabloid, I see it as you report on it when it’s relevant to a larger story."

In other words, "Anderson Cooper is gay," were it verified, is not a story; "John Travolta sued for same-sex sexual misconduct" is.

But this sort of thinking leaves wide-open any number of loopholes. A.J. Daulerio, the current editor of Gawker, told The Observer, "Everything’s on a case-by-case basis. If you saw a story about a public figure and it’s someone newsworthy and someone interesting, there are so many different variables that I can’t say across the board." We were discussing Gawker’s recent article about ABC anchor Robin Roberts’s purported lesbianism, a story with valences both in her recent gay-rights exclusive interview with President Obama and good old-fashioned prurience.

"I don’t take exception to Gawker," said Howard Bragman, the publicist who is known for ushering closeted stars out of the closet (notably, 1980s TV star Meredith Baxter, who made a big announcement on Today after blogs noted her presence on a lesbian cruise). Referring to the practice of calling out stars who seem to be out to everyone but the public, he said, "They’re the ones who say the emperor has no clothes."

Blogs like Gawker and Perez Hilton (the latter having sworn off outing celebrities in 2010) have lately played the role that OutWeek occupied in its brief existence—after all, Mr. Signorile’s story was as much about testing the limits of what could be reported and written about an individual as it was the specifics of Mr. Forbes’s sex life. In comparison to the OutWeek 1990s, though, today "there’s nothing disparaging about saying someone’s gay," said Mr. Bragman. Indeed, an Albany appellate court recently ruled that claiming someone is gay, even falsely, is not libelous.

Just as for some media outlets, the sexuality of an individual who chooses not to comment can never be a news story, for others it will always be a news story. Kevin Naff, editor of the gay newspaper the Washington Blade, refuses to call writing about closeted individuals "outing": "I call it truth telling."

"If a celebrity is gay, it’s a fact," he explained. "We should report it. What you do behind closed doors is private. The fact of being gay is not a private fact. Being straight is not a private fact."

(If he were gay, would Mr. Cooper ever come out? "Probably when he needs a ratings boost on his talk show," Mr. Naff replied.)

One need only look at Gawker’s persistent if not incessant coverage of Mr. Cooper’s Downtown antics to see the end of the old decorum.

Brian Moylan, now a Hollywood.com writer once responsible for Gawker’s coverage of Mr. Cooper, views the longstanding media prohibition on outing to be a rights issue. "You don’t write a profile about Chris Evans being in The Avengers without asking who he’s dating. You ask Daniel Craig about his recent marriage—and he gets pissed off, but you report the answer. Not asking people about who they’re dating is discrimination. Plain and simple ... Reporters are under the obligation to ask that question and report the answer. [Mr. Cooper] needs to answer it, and they need to ask it like they would Katie Couric."

Neil Patrick Harris.

At a recent panel discussion on gossip, Gawker proprietor Nick Denton went even further. "Does everybody here know that Anderson Cooper is gay?" he asked the audience.

"Noooo!" yelled out a woman in mock horror as the rest of the room laughed knowingly.

Mr. Denton went on. "People will tell you, ‘Why would you want to report that? Everyone knows it already.’ No, they don’t! Most people in America do not know that Anderson Cooper is gay. So if you judge the differential, the gradient, between insider knowledge and public knowledge, there is still a gigantic gap. It will be erased. Probably in the next five years. And what’s going to happen in the next five years will be much more significant than what’s happened so far."

What does that look like? Sunny Bates, the panel’s moderator, asked.

"Everything open," said Mr. Denton. "All secrets out there."

The question arises: Is there no sphere of privacy for the celebrity anymore? After all, straight celebrity couples from Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem to Beyoncé and Jay-Z don’t acknowledge any element of their love in public, though they’re also not asked if they’re heterosexual. Why should Anderson Cooper or Queen Latifah have to dish about their love lives—or even acknowledge their sexuality?

But such a question seems academic, given the inclinations of Mr. Denton and others of like mind: regardless of the answer, the scrutiny will only mount in the future.

In response to such pressures, recent celebrity comings-out have been well-managed, low-key affairs—not nearly splashy enough to damage a career in the manner of Ellen DeGeneres’s years in the wilderness: Jim Parsons, star of the hyperpopular sitcom The Big Bang Theory got a mention of his sexuality squeezed in at the very end of a long New York Times profile recently. It clearly wasn’t the story—that would be his current starring role in Harvey on Broadway—but it got him enough cred to present at the Tonys. Star Trek’s Spock, Zachary Quinto, mentioned his sexuality in a New York interview about a new indie film he was promoting. Matt Bomer, star of the upcoming male-stripper movie Magic Mike, thanked his partner at an awards ceremony in February; he’s by now able to reference his and his partner’s children in interviews and still remain the object of the female gaze. All three stars had never hidden their sexuality—they’d lived in a glass closet whereby they never needed to say anything until they were comfortable doing so. But then why waste years of your career dodging questions when the truth will be unveiled nevertheless?

It is perhaps a question John Travolta has entertained, in the wake of his recent public relations disaster.

Mr. Travolta, who has long dodged rumors, recently uploaded a video slideshow of family photos to the site Vimeo just as the tabloid story of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by a male masseuse reached critical mass.

As his longtime acquaintance Carrie Fisher said in The Advocate, "We know and we don’t care. Look, I’m sorry that he’s uncomfortable with it, and that’s all I can say."

As with all matters of sexuality, it’s not that simple, though.

"It does bother me when I see some of these closeted actors deny that they’re gay or lesbian and I see them out at the bars and the clubs," said Dustin Lance Black, the openly gay screenwriter of Milk and J. Edgar. "And they’re taking advantage of the bravery of men and women so we can have bars. When I see these people who vocally deny their sexuality, who they are, and then take full advantage of the hard work of others ..." But he acknowledged that outing is not always a net good. "For those who are leading a private life because that’s their preference ... well, we have a right to privacy."

But he added, "When I have these conversations with actors who are closeted, they’re yearning to be a part of this movement that’s experiencing such progress."

Lance Bass, whose coming out in 2006 was occasioned by a number of tabloids threatening to run a story on his relationship with openly gay reality-TV star Reichen Lehmkuhl, told The Observer that it never occurred to him to come out in public before his hand was forced. "I had a boyfriend. My friends knew, my family knew, I didn’t think it was a big deal.

"I thought I would just casually reveal it—get married or something."

That performers like Mr. Quinto and Mr. Bomer have been able to "casually reveal it" in recent years indicates just how far public acceptance of homosexuality has come, even since 2006. However, major stars like Mr. Cooper, Mr. Travolta and Ms. Latifah—all of whom are at the forefront of their fields—have much more to lose than Mr. Bomer, an actor on a cable TV series, or Mr. Quinto, a still-emerging talent. The ridicule they and others face—"It comes to a point of silliness," said Mr. Bragman of various glass-closeted celebrities—is nothing compared to the definite loss of a fan base partially kept in the dark. (For every Neil Patrick Harris, who’s only gained credibility since coming out, there’s a Clay Aiken, whose female fan base was shocked and disappointed.)

Coming out is a potentially traumatic experience for anyone. Mr. Bass, for instance, recalled the two-day period between agreeing to People’s interview request and seeing the "I’M GAY" cover on newsstands: "It was 48 hours to tell the world your deepest, darkest secret."

Seemingly out of some remaining respect for the difficulty of making such an announcement, outing is still a delicate subject among the media community.

Cyd Zeigler, Jr., co-founder of the gay sports news site Outsports, said that he is sitting on knowledge of several famous athletes who are gay, but he did not expect them to come out anytime soon. "There’s a difference between breaking the news and getting the story. There are people I could write about but I don’t—because I want to know what their life is like, how they live. I want the story behind the news. People who just look at the news miss the story. There’s a lot of bad reporters out there who give us all a bad name."

Even Outsports’s policy is subject to subtle shading, though: Mr. Zeigler noted that the site has written frequently about rumors that Troy Aikman is gay. "Outing is knowing that they are gay and talking about the fact that they are gay against their wishes and explaining how you know they’re gay."

There’s also the simple matter of defusing the knowing laughter of a public that maybe just doesn’t care that much anymore. "If you’re in the closet," said Mr. Bass, "you get made fun of more than if you just come out!"

If he’s in fact gay, that’s a lesson Chace Crawford—the dashing, engrossed young man at the premiere—may do well to heed.

Additional reporting by Sarah Douglas

Dustin Lance Black (Getty Images)

Milk’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black told The Observer that he was opposed to President Obama’s recent declaration of support for same-sex marriage. “Well, because I think marriage is between a man and a woman, I was incredibly upset,” Mr. Black said, biting a nail. He was joking, though in a quiet, grave tone--the premiere for his directorial debut, Virginia (starring Jennifer Connelly and out this Friday) had been the night before, and he was the worse for wear.

Mr. Black, whose career has included biopics of two of the most prominent queer politicians in history (the openly gay Harvey Milk, the closeted psychosexual morass of J. Edgar Hoover), said that he’d long believed Mr. Obama would come out in favor of gay marriage. In fact, the screenwriter had tried to force the issue. “I had two weeks earlier put a piece in the Hollywood Reporter saying that gay people might consider not supporting the president in the re-election campaign if he didn’t come out in favor. And I hit Romney hard in a way he deserved to be hit hard for his horrific stances on LGBT issues. And I said ‘we can’t be taken for granted anymore, we can’t vote for a less bad candidate.’

“And I took a lot of heat and I got beaten up for that, and I said, ‘It’s a hypothetical! I’m saying ‘If, then! If he doesn’t, then we might consider...’ You gotta ask for what you want in this world. And they were like, ‘He’ll never do it, it’s not a hypothetical.’ But he might do it!”

Mr. Black is now at work on a film adaptation of 8, about the legal struggle over Proposition 8 in California. The film’s to be directed by Rob Reiner. “It’s that Mormon thing,” said Mr. Black, who was raised in the Church of Latter-Day Saints and whose new film deals with life among Southern Mormons. “I’m industrious. Ambitious. I’m like the gay Mitt Romney... That’s a terrible thing to say.”

We mentioned that Virginia was less overtly political than Milk or J. Edgar, and asked if Mr. Black agreed with Godard’s belief that all film is political. “I agree with Godard and I agree with Oprah Winfrey. People are always asking ‘would you run for public office?’ And she says ‘I have so much more influence here.’ We get to tell human stories that have to do with human issues. At our best, we’re telling stories that have to do with problems in our country right now.”

Besides, he joked, we might have missed the point of the film altogether. ““Virginia is a real politician, she’s a gay man dressed as a woman. I thought of this as a sequel to Milk!”

daddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Michael Bastian (Patrick McMullan)

“Hello!  I love your paper!” Michael Bastian’s warm greeting was more than we’d expect to hear from the fashion star at his own presentation for GANT by Michael Bastian.  Though he was encircled by handlers and a pack of press wolves, the smiling, silver-haired designer projected the charm and ease of a dinner party host sending off his guests. His blue sweater and collared shirt fit right in with his models in preppy, primary-colored sweaters, trench coats, striped shirts, and checkered sunglasses, who chatted and bounced on pedestals to the Scissor Sisters.

The centerpiece, complete with old street lamps and steady drifts of fake snow, was staged before black-and-white geometric patterns and footage of New York street scenes on the gallery’s back wall.  Long after the last ice cube had melted in our Vodka-grape juice-ginger ale, The Observer finally got a word in…

“What’s wrong with the way men dress in New York?” we wanted to know.
“There’s nothin’ wrong with the way men dress in New York!” exclaimed Mr. Bastian.

“Absolutely nothing, you wouldn’t change a thing?”
“Well… New York’s a big city [laughs].  If we have to go case-by-case...”

“You had a most-wanted list of society bachelors in the back of your run-of-show...”
“It was just kind of a funny idea.  There was this secret list of guys who any dinner hostess in New York could just slide into a party, once you needed to kind of balance it out...and I just loved that idea, that these guys are so well-dressed, and so charming, and keep the ball in the air, tell a dirty joke, and everybody wants to sit next to them...so kind of like this self-selected, amazing group of guys.  And it was from 1974.”

“Where did you get it from?”
“We were doing research on this idea of extra men, and it was a New York Times article from 1974.  And these hostesses kind of just laid it out, like these are the guys we like.”

“So it was official!”
“It was official!”

“So, who’s on your most desirable list?
“Of guuuys? [Laughs] Well, that could be taken a lot of ways...wow.  That’s...who?  You know what, right now we’re in this crazy moment of celebrity and celebrity stylists, and I never quite bought into that paid-for style, like they’re kind of told to ‘wear this.’ I’m always much more inspired by random people on the street.  I live down by NYU and The New School, and I’d almost say close your eyes and pull a student out, and they’re gonna be a little bit cooler than the average celebrity. You know, here I am, him for the common man.”

Michael’s loud and sincere chuckle was delightfully goofy…  “But I believe that,” he added.

“I’ve got to say, you have a very worldly charm about you.”
“Well, the whole phenomenon of paying a celebrity to come to your show and wear your clothes-- what’s the fun in that?”

“Any fashion week headaches?”
“No, it actually went really smoothly this time. Nothing to complain about! I can’t wait for it to be over, but honestly...”  Mr. Bastian thought hard, and added, “We had a dog in our show, and my big nightmare that that dog was gonna freak out or turn and run, but he did his job.  When you’re a designer, you don’t sleep for a week before, and you think, ‘okay, that pant’s gonna rip up the ass, and he’s not gonna have the right color underwear on...’ But it went really well.”

“And if you had to wear one other New York designer, who would you choose?”
“Well, this is the weird thing about menswear; it’s such a small world, that they’re all my buddies.  So I’m friends with Thom Browne, and Simon Spurr, and Scott from Band of Outsiders, and Adam Kimmel-- actually, we’re all in the same building, or we are in the same building, for the most part...”

New York-based actor Matt Bomer, who plays the lead on USA's popular heist show White Collar, has come out of the closet. Over the weekend, Mr. Bomer accepted an award for his work against AIDS, at which point he thanked his partner Simon Halls, whom the Huffington Post calls "a power publicist." Surely Mr. Halls advised Mr. Bomer that the most charming way to come out of the closet bypasses the cover of People!

Though Mr. Bomer appeared in the recent Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama The Normal Heart, he had never before commented on what had heretofore been rumors. "I have a network and a show riding on my shoulders," said Mr. Bomer in 2010.

Temple and Dozier.

The title character in Dirty Girl must have been written for Madonna. The movie is a randy romp about a road trip between a bottle blonde bimbo and a gay, overweight blob that heads for a brick wall early and stays there. Trashy, teenaged Danielle (Juno Temple) is a mess. Dressed in striped, low-cut, middy tops, killer hot pants and boots, with too much mascara and a permanent scowl only half-hidden behind huge pink-tint sunglasses, her schoolmates scoff at her behind her back, labeling her the campus slut. Easily distracted from everything but boys, slovenly about homework and indifferent to the town’s conventional ideas of morality, she’s a misfit in Norman, Okla., “back in the day.”

Forced into a remedial education program for disciplinary purposes, Danielle is mortified to be forcibly paired with an outcast blob named Clarke (Jeremy Dozier), a not-so-latent homosexual who is always being threatened with military school by his strict, bewildered parents (Mary Steenburgen and Dwight Yoakam). Danielle’s stepmother (Milla Jovovich) is an equally louche underachiever and reformed tramp who has become a born-again religious nut. Worse yet, she’s engaged to a loopy Mormon preacher (William H. Macy) who is determined to rehabilitate them both. Clearly, it is time to run away from home. “If you’re not careful you’re gonna end up an overweight homo with nobody to love you but a gerbil named Bruce,” says Danielle. Desperate to escape, the class dirty girl and the class closet case (every school has at least one of each) hit the highway in search of Danielle’s real father, hoping to find, love, family and acceptance.

After a meandering start, the movie gets even duller once this odd couple forges a reluctant friendship and heads cross-country, learning more about the ultimate value of sharing. On their way to California, they pick up a male stripper hitchhiking his way to Vegas and Clarke loses his virginity before their stolen car breaks down. I forgot to mention their traveling companion is a flour sack with a face painted on, which they pretend is their baby Joan (named after Joan Jett and Joan Crawford). I guess it’s supposed to be a touching look at marginalized characters looking for a reason to keep going in a society that hates them, but the lame direction by Abe Sylvia seems less interested in exploring these pathetic Dogpatch stereotypes than in making fun of them. Is the regrettable sight of Dwight Yoakam masturbating on his Cadillac in an unnecessary car wash sequence supposed to be even funnier than the fat boy doing a strip tease drenched in water in front of a Confederate flag? To ensure a happy ending, a ludicrously sentimental ending has been tacked on that is not remotely convincing. Dirty Girl is a bad movie with no insights that is broadly drawn and genuinely plagued by filthy dialogue. You don’t laugh. You just wince, and wonder how the whole thing ever got financed.

rreed@observer.com

DIRTY GIRL

Running Time 90 minutes

Written and Directed by Abe Sylvia

Starring Juno Temple, Jeremy Dozier and Milla Jovovich

2/4

Looking like a transvestite doesn't make you friends with the gays

For those of you not keeping score at home, Millionaire Matchmaker star Patti "Don't Call Me a Yenta" Stanger has managed to offend nearly half of Bravo's fan base in a cluelessly homophobic media blitzkrieg over the past two weeks. The most recent of these classic Patti moments occurred last night on The Joy Behar show, where Ms. Stanger tried to clarify what some perceived as anti-gay comments from last week. This is how she "clarified" them: "I'm an advocate for gay marriage. I have more gay friends than Carter has pills," the Bravo train wreck told Ms. Behar.

Yikes. Stop it? Not a chance.

"But the gay man," she went on, "they whip it out at eye lock! They get involved, and then find out later whether or not they want a serious relationship."

Remember: this is Patti Stanger's version of damage control, after she's already apologized to GLAAD for her comments on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live. When a caller named Dustin asked Patti for advice on a long-distance open, she replied, "In the Gay world, it will always be open." She then had Dustin confirm that he is indeed a homosexual before hitting a grand slam analysis with her line, "There is no curbing the gay man." Well, with an apology like that, who can refuse to love her?

Ms. Stanger has yet to comment on her advice that all "Jewish men lie," but maybe she believes herself exempt from hate-speech against members of her own religion.