A number of "big" shows have been announced for Las Vegas showrooms and never happened. Here's a rundown of some of them.

This piece, which was supposedly printed in a newspaper a few years ago, has been floating around the Internet for some time. I dunno if it was really written by the mother of a gay son and/or if it was really published but it makes a pretty powerful statement. One of the reasons I believe the drive to stamp out "gay rights" will never succeed is that the anti-gay folks seem unable to cope with the situation in pragmatic, workable terms. It is one thing to say there shouldn't be homosexuality; quite another to explain to those who feel that way what they should do about it. It's like they think if they can condemn homosexuality loudly enough, every gay will suddenly come to his or her senses, stop buying Bette Midler CDs, marry someone of the opposite sex and procreate aplenty. Anyway, here's the letter — and if it isn't legit, it oughta be…

Letter to the Editor
by Sharon Underwood, Sunday, April 30, 2000
from the Valley News (White River Junction, VT/Hanover, NH)

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda "could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving…to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

A number of folks have written to ask me questions about Carmine Infantino's announced lawsuit against DC Comics. I don't have a lot of details and I don't have a lot of time this week…so I'll refer you to my pal Steven Grant and his current column. He has what seems to me like a good take on the situation, given what little we know at the moment.

Wanna be in a movie? If you live in Southern California and you're over 16, you could be part of a crowd scene in the new live-action Fat Albert movie that's currently in production. Our friends over at BeInAMovie.com need bodies for this coming weekend. For info, hurry over to their website…

Oh, yeah. I should have mentioned also that they were opposite the season finale of The Sopranos and game one of the NBA finals. As many of you wrote to remind me.

Several folks have written to ask when I'll be posting the list of panels I'm hosting at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Answer: Soon, very soon. We're still firming up what looks like twelve panels (my usual number). They will include the traditional Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, marking ten years since Jack passed away, as well as the Golden/Silver Age Panel, the Cartoon Voices Panel, another rousing game of Quick Draw!, a tribute to Julius Schwartz and the usual Sergio-and-ME panel, plus half a dozen others. A couple of the others I intend to recommend unreservedly to you all, and I'll post the list as soon as we're certain it's firm…or at least unlikely to change. In the meantime, here's a banner for the convention. And now I gotta get to bed…

I finally got around to watching all of last Sunday night's Tony Award ceremony. It was a perfectly fine program with only a couple of awkward moments…mostly the musical numbers not from this year's shows. Hugh Jackman was a perfectly fine host and none of the winners got too enthused in acting like their victory was a high point in the history of mankind. This was never a very satisfying broadcast back when CBS used to insist they get on and off the air in two hours. At three hours, it has become a much more pleasant experience.

My favorite moment was Carol Channing rapping "Hello, Dolly" with L.L. Cool J. Then later, Jackman came out and announced Carol Channing had just been involved in a drive-by shooting. My least favorite moment was seeing the fiddler from Fiddler on the Roof squatting on a marquee at Radio City Musical Hall and then Tevye (Alfred Molina) walking up the aisles of the theater. I thought they were going to start singing, "Let's Do the Time Warp Again."

The ratings were terrible. Well, they're always terrible for the Tonys but they may have hit a new low this time, a fact that one might attribute to the fact that there were no "hot" races or shows to generate special interest. Interestingly, no shows have announced closing dates so far this week. Usually, a few marginal productions struggle to hold on to see if a flukish Tony win (or just exposure on the telecast) will boost the box office…and when that doesn't happen, they fold. Wonderful Town has been reporting low grosses so it may fade away soon. I didn't think its number of the Tony show did it any favors, whereas the song from The Boy From Oz probably sold every empty seat they'd otherwise have until Jackman leaves the show in September.

Jackman almost certainly won't be on Broadway next year so he probably won't be back to host. But rumors have it that Billy Crystal's one-man show will bow on the Great White Way late this year or early next. If he's there next June and willing to host the Tonys, he could probably raise the ratings a point or two. Martin Short is also supposed to have a one-guy show on the way with a possible arrival date in Spring. He wouldn't stink up the place, either.

Quite a few websites have sprouted up that attempt to track the electoral vote and to say that certain states are solid for Bush, certain ones lean to Kerry, certain ones are toss-ups, etc. If you cruise them, you'll find a certain consensus. Bush is not going to lose Texas…Kerry is not going to lose New York…and so on. The polls all tell us that a small number of states will be "battleground states" but those polls are not completely in accord as to which states we're talking about.

If you want to track electoral votes, you might want to consult more than one source. This website interprets the polls with a generally conservative slant and this one does so with a generally liberal eye. If they agree, it doesn't necessarily mean that settles matters since they're just compiling a lot of the same polls which may or may not be accurate. But if you're going to believe in polls at this stage of the game, you might as well get a wide sampling.

On June 18, Turner Classic Movies is running ten great movies of the past, each preceded by what they call "cartoons that parody the specific movie." For instance, before they run Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney, they're running Yankee Doodle Daffy with Daffy Duck. It's a bit of a stretch to say these cartoons actually parody the movies — in most cases, it's just a matter of making a pun on the title — but they're good cartoons and good movies. So you might want to check the schedule.

Sorry to hear of the death this past weekend of Kate Worley, who wrote many things but is probably best known for a wonderful comic called Omaha the Cat Dancer. Lately, the good news that she was writing new episodes (to be drawn by Omaha's superb artist, Reed Waller) was ruined by the word that Kate had cancer, that it had gotten progressively worse, and that she and husband James Vance had severe financial problems on top of that little concern. I did not know Kate well except through her work, which was amazingly filled with humanity, humor and intra-personal understanding. Omaha was a cat who worked as a stripper, displaying a fine homo sapien form, and I always suspected that some who bought the early issues for the nekkid-type pictures were surprised by (and snagged into returning by) a very beguiling, insightful storyline. How much of that was autobiographical, I am in no position to say. But it all sure read like it had happened, if not to Kate, then to someone. If those books ever come back into print or if you stumble across old ones in bookshop, do not hesitate to purchase.

The L.A. Times has a lengthy online section today on Ronald Reagan, and it may be of interest to those who want to brush up on the history.

Having not been in New York for quite some time, I have no favorites in tonight's Tony Awards. Actually, I never have real favorites but in years when I've seen some of the shows, I feel more a part of the ceremony, less an outsider watching strangers speaking a foreign language. Since most of America never sees any Broadway show, that sense of alienation helps explain why the ratings for the Tonys are invariably low.

So I'll just enjoy the festivities from afar, watching to see how they rush the winners on and off…since the broadcast is rigidly timed and not allowed to go even ten seconds over. The producers of Assassins are probably happy that they didn't select their John Hinckley number to spotlight as their musical presentation. They're instead scheduled to offer the show's finale. I believe the character of Hinckley is in it but is not identified…and if so, he's likely to remain that way.

At this very moment, someone around the awards ceremony is probably concerned that Harvey Fierstein is one of the presenters. On a number of talk shows in the past, Fierstein was quite vocal in attacking Ronald Reagan for how little his administration did about AIDS. (In an extremely-uncomfy moment on Politically Incorrect, he yelled at Michael Reagan about it.) I presume he will have the good taste and timing not to bring up that topic this evening but he has to be considering the notion. His complaint, as I recall it, was that Reagan was dragging his feet on addressing the then-mounting AIDS crisis because he was afraid of objections from his more conservative reporters. I believe Nancy Reagan has all but charged that George W. Bush has done the same thing regarding stem-cell research, so it may occur to Fierstein — or someone — to make that comparison.

If we are to believe Frank Rich, when Republicans visit New York for their convention, they will be avoiding shows like The Producers and Hairspray that contain gay characters.

Here's Lou Cannon, Reagan's most visible biographer, writing about the man's life for The Washington Post.

Incidentally, I've already received one e-mail from someone who described the previous post as "a tasteless attack on a man whose body is not yet cold." Read it again, fella: The only thing I said about Reagan was that I believe many of his followers have erected an image of him that does not reflect the real man. I was criticizing them, not him, and also criticizing people who will try to exploit his death for their own causes. Like you just did.

I never thought Ronald Reagan was really the man his admirers made him out to be, but this is not the time to discuss that. What unsettles me today is not his passing — he'd been gone for all practical purposes for many years — but that we're in for a few months of seeing his memory exploited by ostensible followers. Nothing happens in the world today without the partisans saying, "Hmm…how do we use this to push our agenda?" So we're going to have to put up with folks arguing that it would be disrespectful of Reagan's legacy not to enact certain tax cuts or to repeal the ban on assault weapons or whatever.

I wish people would fight more honestly and not load their arguments with emotional issues, but I guess that's asking too much. Lately on Crossfire, Robert Novak has been insinuating that anyone who finds fault with anything currently being done in Iraq is someone who wishes Saddam Hussein were back in power. (The hypocrisy in that ploy is even more glaring if you read Novak's columns away from Crossfire, where he publishes negative assessments of U.S. efforts overseas. But in a one-on-one debate with liberals, he feels compelled to brand them as pro-Saddam.) I'm really tired of people wrapping their arguments in the flag or the Bible or the memory of our dead soldiers or the people who perished on 9/11. And yes, Democrats do it too, arguing to carry on the legacy of Paul Wellstone and such, sometimes even reaching back to Kennedy, dragging in all sorts of irrelevancies, hoping the current proposals can coast on the emotional appeal. Whatever happened to campaigning for a cause on its own merits?

If one wishes to honor Ronald Reagan, a dandy (and totally appropriate) way would be to open up stem-cell research and fully fund it. Nancy Reagan has been crusading for this for years, saying that it might prevent others from contracting Alzheimer's as did her husband. Somehow, I suspect his fans won't want to waste the opportunity on something like that. We'll probably hear that we need to respect Reagan's legacy by re-electing George W. Bush. And someone will even be shameless enough to say, of the November election, we need to "Win this one for the Gipper."