Jumping The Gay Marriage Shark Print E-mail
Living - Relationships
Written by TS-Si News Service   
Saturday, 10 June 2006 06:05
Whittier, California, USA. Kathleen Parker, of the Orlando Sentinel, says: The poor shark can get no rest these days. Everyone is jumping him.
 
For those whose shark metaphors stalled on "Jaws," "jumping the shark" refers to the moment when something, usually a dramatic production, runs - or strays from - its course. Coined by Jon Hein (jumptheshark.com), the phrase evolved from the episode of "Happy Days" where the show's writers, apparently out of ideas, had Fonzie literally jump a shark while water skiing.
 
It was so over-the-top that the show was deemed dead by those who monitor such things. People are said to jump the shark when, desperate for ratings or attention, they make over-the-top statements.
 
Of late, we seem to have armies of shark-jumpers, from Dr. James Dobson to Sen. Ted Kennedy to Ann Coulter to my hands-down fave, Sen. James Inhofe - all of whom have taken their own mantras a trope too far. Through them, hyperbole and hysteria have formed an uncivil union, casting national debate into a miasma of self-mockery.
 
Let me put it this way: Dobson and Inhofe, who seem to think that the devil made gay people, make me want to marry a lesbian transsexual; Coulter, who has attacked a group of 9/11 widows to make a political point, makes me want to wash Cindy Sheehan's feet and hug a war protester; while Kennedy, who has been baying "bigot" about anyone objecting to same-sex marriage on even rational grounds, makes one yearn for the comforting sound of a car alarm.
 
Commenting on the proposed constitutional amendment to declare marriage a union only between a man and a woman, Dobson said during a recent chapel service (later broadcast on radio) that "marriage is under vicious attack ... from the forces of hell itself."
 
 
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Last Updated on Monday, 27 August 2007 18:17