Gasp! Who'd Have Guessed It?

[Celebrity Gossip] According to the moderately grammatical blog of famed investigative celebrity journalist Ian Halperin comes the following shocker: Will Smith may be "light in the loafers." (For those not fluent in 60-year-old American slang, it's an expression that means Smith likes dudes.)

The real baffler is why the always entertaining Halperin considers this to be news. For decades, Smith has been pinging the gaydar hard for anybody who's ever, say, watched his movies, seen him interviewed, heard his albums or examined his sweater collection. Will Smith might be gay? Sure--in the same sense that water might be wet, gasoline might be flammable and John McCain might be cranky.

For me, the most gratifying aspect of Madam Renata's reported revelation is not the gender of Smith's alleged short-term personal assistants. Frankly, I'm just relieved to hear that Smith is capable of getting off with a discrete individual--he's so attractive and successful, I figured his sexual repertoire consisted of nothing more interpersonal than an empty room, a full-length mirror and a loop track from Rock the House. After all these years, any ability he has to connect on a sexual level with another human being should be encouraged--it shows there's a shred of humanity left.

To Halperin's credit, despite the "light in the loafers" crack--which seems worthy of a titillating exposé from a reporter of his grandparents' generation--he seems less concerned with Smith's sexual orientation than the possibility that Scientology has become Hollywood's version of Evergreen International--a program for self-loathing homosexuals to "pray the gay away."

What puzzles me is this: How could a perfect specimen like Will Smith--brainy, buffed, beautiful, blessed, a man with everything going for him--harbor so much self-hatred as to fall for some crackpot reparative-therapy program? What is Hollywood doing to these poor, unfortunate waifs?

Come out, Will, come out--we'll still love you. Probably more than ever.

(Brandon Burt)