Subliminal Skullduggery

[Dirty GOP Tricks] Utah Republicans have started to eat their own young.

I don't know how else to explain a flyer the Utah Republican Party sent out promoting a supposed "fund raiser" to "benefit" legislators Ken Sumsion, Keith Grover, Carl Wimmer, Chris Herrod and Steve Sandstrom.

Oh, sure, the flyer pretends to praise the men for "standing tall with strong conservative principals" but its true message is clear. By dubbing them "The Fabulous Five," what else could the GOP be implying but that they're gay?

The real Fab Five, of course, are the aesthetes on that awful Queer Eye show people were talking about back in ought-three. In the 80s, it applied to the five members of Duran Duran. Also, if you're a 10-year-old girl, you might recognize them as Jana, Christie, Melanie, Katie and Beth, the five most popular girls at Wakeman Junior High in Betsy Hanes' YA book series.

Each of those Fabulous Fives is as gay as a goose (especially the Simon Le Bon reference). And, in a party obsessed with regulating sexual orientation, even the barest whisper of taffeta spells certain death. Who knows what these guys did to anger the party bigwigs so much?

It's all very subtle, so one wonders whom the Republicans hired to design it. For instance, even if your eye is not as queer as mine, it's revealing to study the above silhouettes and visualize the location of each legislator's hands. (Brandon Burt)