Posted by AnimalJ at r95aag006460.nyr.cable.rcn.com on June 14, 2000 at 23:04:19:
From Tim Goodman's San Francisco Examiner TV column on SFGate.com, 6/13/00:
"TV constantly refuses to surprise us. Like when The WB puts all its black shows on the same night or when ABC lets the now-canceled "Clerks" use 'fag' repeatedly."
This is the second time I have seen reference to the use of the derogatory term "fag" on the "Clerks" animated show. Luckily, I was spared the dubious pleasure of hearing it for myself since ABC had the good sense to pull the plug on this misbegotten effort before most people even knew the show existed.
ABC is to blame for letting homophobic tripe on its network in the first place, and Kevin Smith and his collaborators might want to take a good hard look at the sludge and offal that drips off their drawing boards. And the context does not matter: if the word was used, it's a slur, plain and simple, and for that reason alone the show deserved to die an inglorious death.
But then, if Smith is indeed the devout Catholic he claims to be, small wonder he has no problem in using homophobic slurs in his "art" -- after all, it's his own Pope who calls lesbian and gay people "intrinsically morally evil". Maybe "fag" is just Kevin's clever way of distilling the words of his Holy Father into language he and his friends can understand.