Speaker 1: The year was nineteen eighty six and Golden Girls, a
Speaker 1: groundbreaking news sitcom, was in its second season. The show
Speaker 1: followed the escapades of four senior women living together in
Speaker 1: Miami as they navigated their friendships and their sex lives.
Speaker 1: That in of itself was radical for the time, but
Speaker 1: the show also pushed boundaries in more subtle ways, like
Speaker 1: in this episode where Jean, a college friend of Dorothy's,
Speaker 1: comes to visit the Girls.
Speaker 2: And they find out she is a lesbian. Come on, now,
Speaker 2: I heard you laughin What's so fun It?
Speaker 3: The Stars?
Speaker 2: She is a lesbian, but there was some confusion.
Speaker 4: What's funny about that?
Speaker 3: You aren't surprised, of course not.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've never known any personally.
Speaker 3: But isn't Danny Thomas want not Lebanese lesbian.
Speaker 1: It's a classic sitcom joke, a silly play on words,
Speaker 1: and one that might have been forgotten over time, and
Speaker 1: yet that joke, that punchline has lived on for nearly
Speaker 1: forty years. I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie bennakaarm and
Speaker 1: this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit.
Speaker 2: A cultural moment from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 3: And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about the Golden Girls first encounter with
Speaker 1: a lesbian and the way it spawned an enduring gay joke,
Speaker 1: but we're also talking about the creative ways that Hollywood
Speaker 1: has written and sometimes hidden queer characters for decades. This
Speaker 1: is part one, So, Susie, we're talking today about an
Speaker 1: episode of The Golden Girls called Isn't It Romantic? But,
Speaker 1: as I like to refer to it, the Lebanese Lesbian Episode.
Speaker 1: This episode aired in November nineteen eighty six on the NBC,
Speaker 1: and it centers around a friend of Dorothy's who comes
Speaker 1: to town to stay with the Girls, who happens to
Speaker 1: be a lesbian.
Speaker 3: How scandalous.
Speaker 1: And to set the scene a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: this was the Reagan era. Shoulder pads are grazing the
Speaker 1: runways and the workplace, and Golden Girls was this wildly
Speaker 1: popular show. Each Saturday night at nine pm, millions of
Speaker 1: Americans gathered on their living room sofas to tune into
Speaker 1: the lives of Dorothy, Rose, Sophia, and Blanche, who are
Speaker 1: four women living together in Miami, and the characters. They
Speaker 1: were all widowed or divorced and what's so funny is
Speaker 1: that they were actually described in all the media as
Speaker 1: elderly back then, even though most of them were in
Speaker 1: their fifties.
Speaker 2: That's worrying for me, right, And the.
Speaker 1: Show documents their lives, you know, while they navigate life
Speaker 1: and love and friendship and sex, and Blanche in particular,
Speaker 1: has a lot of sex.
Speaker 2: Susie, did you watch the Golden Girls?
Speaker 3: I did watch Golden Girls. Yeah, I watched growing up,
Speaker 3: and I feel like we watched as family a lot
Speaker 3: of the time. Our favorite character was Sophia, who was
Speaker 3: Dorothy's mom who lived with the girls, And I think
Speaker 3: I always liked that because my grandmother lived with us,
Speaker 3: so it felt very representative of an immigrant family, and
Speaker 3: Sofia was Sicilian, so she told a lot of anecdotes
Speaker 3: from the old country.
Speaker 2: I think that was really common.
Speaker 1: This was a show that a lot of people watched intergenerationally,
Speaker 1: and the characters included Sophia, the Sicilian mother of Dorothy,
Speaker 1: who was played by Bee Arthur. She's kind of this
Speaker 1: wise cracking substitute teacher who's like always wearing a calf doan,
Speaker 1: I know, my hero. And then there's Blanche played by
Speaker 1: Rue McClanahan.
Speaker 2: She's kind of like the man hungry Southern Bell.
Speaker 1: Who's like always talking about sex, and she owns the
Speaker 1: house that they all live in. And then of course
Speaker 1: there is Betty White's character Rose, who is this innocent
Speaker 1: farm girl from Minnesota who kind of never gets the jokes.
Speaker 3: It is funny that they were in their fifties because
Speaker 3: I remembered them being very old ladies.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was that meme going around comparing Sex
Speaker 1: and the City those women now to the Golden Girls then,
Speaker 1: and like, just the way they look side by side
Speaker 1: is so different.
Speaker 3: I remember that meme because it was making the rounds
Speaker 3: on social media. After that new Sex and the City
Speaker 3: reboot came out and fans realized that the actors are
Speaker 3: actually a little older than the Golden Girls were supposed
Speaker 3: to be back then, which really encapsulates how differently we
Speaker 3: think about women in their fifties now than we did then.
Speaker 3: I mean, they all had gray hair, I feel like,
Speaker 3: or if it wasn't gray, it felt like it.
Speaker 1: Was well and there were certainly you know, like the caftan,
Speaker 1: like they were dressing like older women. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: was part of what made this show great Golden Girls,
Speaker 1: I think was ahead of its time in various ways.
Speaker 1: For one, it was created by a woman, Susan Harris,
Speaker 1: but the characters and the women playing the characters were
Speaker 1: all women who might have been considered past their prime
Speaker 1: in other contexts. And not only were they supposedly pass
Speaker 1: their prime, but they were extremely open about their sex lives.
Speaker 1: Like I think in a lot of ways, the Golden
Speaker 1: Girls were the original sex positives.
Speaker 3: I happen to have an affection for buyes. Matter of fact,
Speaker 3: I became a woman in one. I thought you lost
Speaker 3: it in the hot air balloon.
Speaker 4: I thought you lost it at a pancake breakfast.
Speaker 3: Well, those don't count. And they were always dating, which
Speaker 3: I think is also another thing that you don't really
Speaker 3: see for elderly and quotes women that they have active
Speaker 3: romantic lives, and that was a huge part of the storylines.
Speaker 1: Before we get into the episode itself, Susie, you're a
Speaker 1: resident TV expert, we need to explain for people who
Speaker 1: didn't live during this era what you need to know
Speaker 1: about eighties sitcoms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the difference is is that
Speaker 3: sitcoms were very much appointment television when we were growing up,
Speaker 3: you knew what time they came on. There was always
Speaker 3: between eight and eleven o'clock at night, and if you
Speaker 3: were lucky, your family let you stay up to watch them,
Speaker 3: and they were family friendly. You gathered around to television
Speaker 3: together and you watched and it sort of felt like
Speaker 3: you knew those people right. And they also had this
Speaker 3: kind of famous laugh track, this can the laugh. It
Speaker 3: did just become the soundtrack of these shows, and so
Speaker 3: it helped q you on what was supposed to be
Speaker 3: a joke and how it worked. I actually, I have
Speaker 3: to say I love sitcoms. It feels funny to admit
Speaker 3: this now, but we really love The Cosby Show in
Speaker 3: my family, and I even like, you know, some more
Speaker 3: current sitcoms, like I loved Modern Family. So it's very
Speaker 3: much I think when you're an immigrant family one of
Speaker 3: the ways in which you learn about how America is
Speaker 3: supposed to work.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting point because I think that these
Speaker 1: shows were catering to mainstream America, and so often they
Speaker 1: were really trying to reflect the cultural norms of the time,
Speaker 1: which you know, sometimes were retrograde in some ways, but
Speaker 1: occasionally these shows would push against them. Either subtly or
Speaker 1: not so subtly, like I Love Lucy did this in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties with pregnancy at a time when even
Speaker 1: just the word was forbidden on TV.
Speaker 3: Why was pregnancy a forbidden word? Like, it's not a
Speaker 3: dirty thing to be pregnant? She was married.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into all of the weird, oh
Speaker 1: my god, around what you can and can't say on television.
Speaker 1: But the thing is when this episode, when Golden Girls
Speaker 1: was airing, there were really very few gay characters on television,
Speaker 1: and especially in the eighties and mid eighties, if a
Speaker 1: writer did dare to create one, the plotline around that
Speaker 1: character often related to aids. And then within those gay representations,
Speaker 1: it was so rare to be almost nonexistent to actually
Speaker 1: feature and out lesbian on a sitcom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't remember one until actually much later. The
Speaker 3: one that comes to mind immediately for me is Grade's Anatomy,
Speaker 3: But I mean that was in the two thousands, so
Speaker 3: I mean we're talking about much later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there were definitely ones before that. But
Speaker 1: the thing about this episode is that it's coming out
Speaker 1: at a time when Golden Girls is really at the
Speaker 1: top of its game. It has a devoted regular audience
Speaker 1: of fifteen to twenty million viewers, and out of the
Speaker 1: top ten most viewed shows, it ranks number five.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: I mean, I knew it was hugely popular, but I
Speaker 3: don't know that I realized it was so popular. But
Speaker 3: also the interesting thing is it's become kind of this
Speaker 3: cult show since I remember watching it when I was
Speaker 3: growing up, But then I have friends who are still
Speaker 3: obsessed with it, so it really has taken on like
Speaker 3: a cultural meaning beyond just that time.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's get into the episode. This episode, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, is called Isn't It Romantic? And it airs
Speaker 1: in season two, and the real plot of the episode
Speaker 1: involves Dorothy's college friend Jean, who was coming to visit
Speaker 1: the girls after the death of her longtime partner Pat
Speaker 1: Pat note the gender or neutral name.
Speaker 2: It's easy for the girls to assume that.
Speaker 1: Pat may be a man, and Jane is and has
Speaker 1: always been, a lesbian, and Dorothy knows this, but she's
Speaker 1: worried about telling the other girls. And then what ends
Speaker 1: up happening, which gets us to our Lebanese moment, is
Speaker 1: that we learn that Gene actually develops a crush on
Speaker 1: Rose and so Dorothy then tells her mom, who gets
Speaker 1: like a kick out of this, and they're in the
Speaker 1: bedroom giggling and in walks Blant, come on.
Speaker 2: Now, I heard you laughin what's so fully?
Speaker 1: Sophia then tells Blanche that Jean is a lesbian, but
Speaker 1: Blanche thinks she means Lebanese, and so she asks if
Speaker 1: Danny Thomas, who's a popular Lebanese American entertainer at that time, is.
Speaker 3: One not Lebanese lesbian clesbian lesbian lesbia?
Speaker 1: Isn't that?
Speaker 4: Well one moment in the numb you already know what.
Speaker 1: Dorothy then tells Blanche the Gene, the lesbian has developed
Speaker 1: feelings for Rose, and Blanche in like typical Blanche passion,
Speaker 1: you know, she sort of famously loves attention, is totally
Speaker 1: unconcerned that Gane is a lesbian, but she's very concerned
Speaker 1: that Jane is into Rose and not her.
Speaker 3: It's a classic Bland But actually I have to say
Speaker 3: it feels pretty progressive how well they're all taking the news.
Speaker 3: How does this all end up playing out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it plays out in kind of classic
Speaker 1: Golden Girls fashion. Basically, Rose still doesn't know that Gene
Speaker 1: is a lesbian and she definitely doesn't know that Jane
Speaker 1: likes her, but they're developing this friendship, and then there's
Speaker 1: this really funny misunderstanding where they're staying up late and
Speaker 1: the other girls are asleep, and so Rose is like, well, Gene,
Speaker 1: you can sleep in my bed with me.
Speaker 2: And so then there's this scene.
Speaker 1: Where they're in bed and Jane kind of rolls over
Speaker 1: and tells Rose that she's quite fond of her. And
Speaker 1: I love this line because it's like so sweet and innocent.
Speaker 1: But then you watch as this kind of clicks in
Speaker 1: Rose's mine what's actually going on here? And she in
Speaker 1: response pretends to be asleep.
Speaker 3: Do they talk about it eventually?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So eventually this little bit of drama is all resolved,
Speaker 1: and you know, they have this nice conversation and the
Speaker 1: girls remain friends but not lovers. And so the Lebanese
Speaker 1: joke is not actually the focus of the episode itself,
Speaker 1: Like it comes midway through after we find out that
Speaker 1: Gen has the hots for Rose, and it's funny, it's
Speaker 1: well timed, it's not too heavy handed, it's like maybe
Speaker 1: not even that funny, but it seems to be playing
Speaker 1: on this idea that the words Lebanese and lesbian sound similar.
Speaker 3: It's a perfect sitcom joke, though, right sitcom jokes are
Speaker 3: a little like absurd and not righteously funny. For the
Speaker 3: most part, they're almost like a little punny or juvenile.
Speaker 3: You know that it's meant to be kind of silly.
Speaker 1: But okay, So like for many reasons, this was an
Speaker 1: episode that really stuck in people's minds, and it was
Speaker 1: groundbreaking in a lot of ways, but it was not
Speaker 1: groundbreaking for the Lebanese joke, and so you might have
Speaker 1: thought that that joke would have you know, whatever, it
Speaker 1: gets lost to history.
Speaker 2: It's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: We move on, and yet then a full decade later,
Speaker 1: it appears again in a very public fashion on an
Speaker 1: episode of The Rosy O'donnald Show, where Ellen Degenerous appears.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: You probably remember this time because they were rumors circulating
Speaker 1: that Ellen, her character on her sitcom, and also Ellen
Speaker 1: the real person, was gay, and that she was going
Speaker 1: to come out as gay, which she soon would in
Speaker 1: April I believe, of nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 4: So I'm gay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I completely remember this. It was such
Speaker 3: a big deal because there had never been a gay
Speaker 3: lead on a sitcom or primetime television show before.
Speaker 1: Right, and so this appearance on Rosy's show is before
Speaker 1: any of that happens.
Speaker 2: I'll just walk you through it. So Ellen comes on stage,
Speaker 2: they banter.
Speaker 1: Rosie is asking her about rumors about Ellen's character on
Speaker 1: the show, and she gives her the opportunity to set
Speaker 1: the record straight, and so then Ellen reveals, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we do find out that the character is Lebanese. And
Speaker 1: so Rosie says, watch us out of the Blue, and
Speaker 1: Ellen then jokes about, how you know there have been
Speaker 1: clues that she might be Lebanese, Like she eats a
Speaker 1: lot of Baba good noosh, she's pretty good the hummus,
Speaker 1: and she's a big fan of Kasey kase and the DJ.
Speaker 3: This is Casey case American Top forty.
Speaker 2: Has moved to a new who I actually didn't realize
Speaker 2: was Lebanese.
Speaker 3: I did not know that either, And so.
Speaker 1: Then Rosie says, you know, I also like Casey case
Speaker 1: of like maybe I'm Lebanese. And Ellen says, you know, Rosie,
Speaker 1: sometimes I pick up that you might be Lebanese. And
Speaker 1: you know, basically the whole thing is this kind of
Speaker 1: wink wink, but like an obvious one. And Rosie ends
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, actually good for the network, like
Speaker 1: many networks wouldn't be so comfortable with different ethnicities, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: And then Ellen closes it off by saying, well, you know, Rosie,
Speaker 1: like half of Hollywood is lebonies.
Speaker 3: I got I love this. But Rosie wasn't out yet, right.
Speaker 2: No, Rosie was not formally out.
Speaker 1: She didn't come out until two thousand and two, after
Speaker 1: this talk show had ended. But I think people knew. Like,
Speaker 1: that's why it's funny. That's why the joke worked, and
Speaker 1: it becomes this whole kind of like wink wink. We
Speaker 1: can have this whole conversation about our sexuality without actually
Speaker 1: using the word lesbian, and the audience is going to
Speaker 1: get it. And of course is at a time when
Speaker 1: it's much less common to be out in Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: that's what makes the joke.
Speaker 3: Didn't remain right about this moment between Rosie and Ellen
Speaker 3: in his book about the View.
Speaker 2: Yes, he did so for listeners.
Speaker 1: This is romin Instituta, our friend who is now the
Speaker 1: editor of Variety, and he wrote a book called Ladies
Speaker 1: Who Punch, which is all about the juicy inside details
Speaker 1: of the view. And in the book, he talks to
Speaker 1: Rosie about Ellen's coming out, and there's this really interesting
Speaker 1: quote where she says to remain I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 1: she's going to ruin her whole career. And then when
Speaker 1: Ellen came on Rosie's show, Rosie said she had to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to here's the quote, stand next
Speaker 1: to her so that everybody in the know is going
Speaker 1: to know I'm not leaving her out there alone.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, right, because she doesn't want to seem
Speaker 3: like she's not in solidarity with her, but she's also
Speaker 3: worried about her own career, like it must have been
Speaker 3: very complicated actually exactly.
Speaker 1: And so they're doing it in this way where it's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you know, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, but it's actually kind of sweet, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: it makes that mom even more meaningful because it's a
Speaker 3: way of her showing support and finding a way to
Speaker 3: do it in a way that's going to get through
Speaker 3: the censors. I'm sure had they seen the joke on
Speaker 3: Golden Girls, is that where it came from.
Speaker 2: Well, so that's the thing we don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to presume, so I've gone up
Speaker 1: and down like into nexus, like deep dive all the
Speaker 1: way trying to find the origins of this joke. And
Speaker 1: the first known use of it is on Golden Girls.
Speaker 2: So had Rosie seen Golden Girls? I'm not sure?
Speaker 1: Or was this something that was kind of one of
Speaker 1: those things that was out in the ether where you
Speaker 1: don't really know the origin, Like it kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of the lesbian U haul joke, like what do
Speaker 1: you bring to the second date?
Speaker 2: A U haul?
Speaker 3: Wait?
Speaker 2: Is that joke from something I don't know? We've all
Speaker 2: always heard that joke.
Speaker 1: It's certainly appeared in various sitcoms and on television and
Speaker 1: pop culture, but I don't know that anyone really knows
Speaker 1: the origin. Though probably if our listeners are anything like
Speaker 1: New York Times readers, they will now fact check us
Speaker 1: on that, which I welcome.
Speaker 2: Please tell us tell you that joke.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of these wink wink nod jokes
Speaker 1: when it comes to people's sexuality. And actually, this makes
Speaker 1: me think of something that Searon, one of our producers,
Speaker 1: point out, which is Gene in the Golden Girls episode
Speaker 1: is a quote friend of Dorothy. Friend of Dorothy is
Speaker 1: a reference often used for a gay person that comes
Speaker 1: from Dorothy.
Speaker 2: And the Wizard of uz.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's where Friend of Dorothy comes from.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so this too is one of those jokes
Speaker 1: with like unclear origins. Best I could find for why
Speaker 1: that is the case is because Dorothy was played by
Speaker 1: Judy Garland, who, though she herself was not gay or
Speaker 1: at least not that we know of, was a huge
Speaker 1: icon to the gay community.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Yeah, of course I've heard Friend of Dorothy,
Speaker 3: but I didn't connect it to this episode. But that's
Speaker 3: I wonder if the writers were sort of doing like
Speaker 3: a wink to that.
Speaker 1: I feel like they must have been right, Like there's
Speaker 1: all these kind of wink wink nod nods. And so
Speaker 1: then the next time the joke appears, this is I
Speaker 1: know a favorite movie of both of ours comes in.
Speaker 2: Mean Girl on Wednesdays. We were pink best movie, the
Speaker 2: best movie.
Speaker 1: And so this time so this is again the Lebanies
Speaker 1: lesbian joke, and this time the plot point involves Janice.
Speaker 1: Janis is like the Gothy indie side character.
Speaker 3: Well, she's the one who takes in the Lindsay Lohan
Speaker 3: character when she doesn't have friends in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, and she's kind of this outsider and her
Speaker 1: best friend is gay, and she presents as a lesbian
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, which is something that Regina
Speaker 1: George then uses to make fun of her throughout. I
Speaker 1: was like, Dans, I can't bite you because I think
Speaker 1: you're a lesbian.
Speaker 2: I mean, I couldn't have a lesbian at my party.
Speaker 2: There could be girls.
Speaker 3: There in their bathing suits.
Speaker 1: My god, Regina George is such a bitch. So that's
Speaker 1: Regina George making fun of janis Ian. By the way,
Speaker 1: janis Ian named after a famous nineteen seventies lesbian singer songwriter,
Speaker 1: So like, that's another kind of underhanded thing there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then you get to the very end of the
Speaker 1: movie and jan and Katie and everyone are at the
Speaker 1: school dance and Janis you'll remember, is wearing this very
Speaker 1: androgynous suit. But she's dancing with Kevin G, who is
Speaker 1: one of the guys from Katie's math to you, like
Speaker 1: the Kevin G math to her math let, a fellow
Speaker 1: math lete athlete. Yes, so she's dancing with Katie's fellow mathlete,
Speaker 1: Kevin G. And Kevin G says to her Puerto Rican Lebanese.
Speaker 3: Wait, she wasn't Lebanese.
Speaker 4: No, she is blowing my mind.
Speaker 3: I'm such an innocent I was like, oh, she's Lebanies
Speaker 3: like me midd least third.
Speaker 1: Well, No, she is Lebanese, and and she talks about
Speaker 1: it at various points in the time. But she's also
Speaker 1: subscribed to the queer fan theory, like, yes, this is
Speaker 1: her confirming to those who know that she is also
Speaker 1: a lesbian. Okay, that's there's all these funny fan theory
Speaker 1: I mean, like you can go deep into mean girls
Speaker 1: fan theories. But like one of the theories is that
Speaker 1: at some point Jana says she's Lebanese, Regina may have
Speaker 1: misheard her, and so that's why she thinks she's.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Yeah, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: You know, you could see the ending of that movie
Speaker 1: as her telling Kevin g she's Lebanese flat like that's
Speaker 1: that's it. Or you could read it as her coming
Speaker 1: out and so there are various interpretations of what that means.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is blowing my mind.
Speaker 1: So, Susie, if you can't tell already, I got a
Speaker 1: little bit obsessed with this lesbian Lebanese joke and I
Speaker 1: really started going down a rabbit hole that took way
Speaker 1: too much time.
Speaker 2: But I went on a journey because I.
Speaker 1: Needed to know where the origin of this joke was
Speaker 1: and like, was it really as simplistic as it sounded?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I love this about you. One
Speaker 3: of my favorite things about you is that you can
Speaker 3: come up again something that just seems simple and then
Speaker 3: spend hours and hours trying to come up with the
Speaker 3: origin too. And I do think it's going to pay off.
Speaker 3: And I am sort of curious. What did you hope
Speaker 3: you were gonna find? Like, what was the thing you
Speaker 3: were searching for?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I wanted to credit the original author
Speaker 1: of the joke, but I wanted to know if there
Speaker 1: was something we weren't getting, Like it just seems too simple,
Speaker 1: Like is it really just.
Speaker 2: A play on words?
Speaker 1: You seriously mix up the words lebanies and lesbian, Like
Speaker 1: I just didn't get it, and I thought there must
Speaker 1: be more to it.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is very writerly of you to want
Speaker 3: a minute is sure that whoever came up with this
Speaker 3: had really gotten the credit they deserved. I love that.
Speaker 1: So, Okay, here's where I began. I had a great
Speaker 1: place to start, which is with my friend Maya Salaam.
Speaker 1: She is a culture editor at the New York Times.
Speaker 1: She is a Golden Girls super fan. Her dog is
Speaker 1: named after be Arthur.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, she is an actual Lebanese lesbian.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So I figure she would be a good
Speaker 1: place to begin.
Speaker 4: I've been thinking about it and obsessing about it.
Speaker 5: This like very strange play on words for so many
Speaker 5: decades that in twenty ten I actually bought the domain
Speaker 5: Lebanese lesbian dot com with high hopes of creating a blog,
Speaker 5: and the only thing I did on it was actually
Speaker 5: embed the clip from that Golden Girls.
Speaker 4: Episode at the top.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 4: So this is this has been a long running theme
Speaker 4: in my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I was screaming on the phone with Maya
Speaker 1: because I had no idea when I called her that
Speaker 1: that website was a thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, when perfect thing.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that Maya actually remembers watching that
Speaker 1: episode in real time, so I'll let her explain what
Speaker 1: it was like to see that.
Speaker 4: We had only been in the US for a couple
Speaker 4: of years.
Speaker 5: My family came to America from Baryt Lebanon and I
Speaker 5: took to watching a lot of TV as soon as
Speaker 5: we got here. It was kind of like my little
Speaker 5: outlet in a way that I learned a lot about
Speaker 5: pretty much everything I learned about American culture, and I
Speaker 5: was obsessed with the Golden Girls from the start.
Speaker 4: I still am.
Speaker 5: I was sitting on the living room floor, I know
Speaker 5: my mom and at least one of my sisters was
Speaker 5: in the room, not Lebanese, and of course they heard
Speaker 5: the word Lebanese and you know, kind of like caught
Speaker 5: everyone's attention. But then they kind of paused because they
Speaker 5: understood what the word lesbian meant, even though I didn't.
Speaker 5: So it was sort of like I was this little
Speaker 5: girl like cracking up at this joke, and they were frozen,
Speaker 5: probably in fear that I was going to ask them
Speaker 5: what lesbian meant.
Speaker 4: At that young age, I didn't know what a lesbian was.
Speaker 5: But to hear Lebanese, which you know, obviously I am,
Speaker 5: and was such It's such a you know, interesting word
Speaker 5: and not one that I was hearing in my life.
Speaker 4: We were in Missouri at the time.
Speaker 3: To hear it on like the most popular show on television,
Speaker 3: it just made me feel so.
Speaker 1: Heard and seen it would be a number of years
Speaker 1: before my would actually come out as a lesbian.
Speaker 2: But I just love that image of her in the
Speaker 2: TV room watching this show so much to me too.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know from watching TV with my Middle
Speaker 3: Eastern family that anything that was even vaguely scandalous was
Speaker 3: so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And so Maya has actually gone on to cover this
Speaker 1: subject as a journalist, and not just Golden Girls, but
Speaker 1: the idea of queer representation on television. So I thought
Speaker 1: for sure she could help me understand where this joke
Speaker 1: came from, like this was a joke that had followed
Speaker 1: her her entire life.
Speaker 2: But she didn't know.
Speaker 3: God, You're never going to get to the bottom of this,
Speaker 3: but you will.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I am, So where did I go from there?
Speaker 1: Okay, so every lesbian I know received a phone call
Speaker 1: or a text about this.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they really appreciated.
Speaker 2: My resident owl got.
Speaker 1: A phone calls an old wise lesbian.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know that was a thing.
Speaker 2: She had never heard of it.
Speaker 1: I then was with my friends Danielle and Sarah, and
Speaker 1: Sarah has a friend who is Lebanie, not a lesbian,
Speaker 1: but Lebanese, and so we texted her asking if she'd
Speaker 1: ever heard of it, and she actually said yes, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I've been so confused by this for years,
Speaker 1: like this is a bad joke that people would say
Speaker 1: to me when I would say I'm Lebanese. And so
Speaker 1: so I was like, wait, what, like how does that look?
Speaker 1: And so she wrote this out on text so her,
Speaker 1: I'm Lebanese guy, you're a lesbian.
Speaker 3: Of course, I mean you can sort of picture that
Speaker 3: at every frat party, like.
Speaker 2: If you're like, oh, that's what she said, Joe, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then I was in the middle of a deep
Speaker 1: research dig and realized I was late to therapy, and
Speaker 1: so I paused for therapy and then I asked my therapist,
Speaker 1: she's not Lebanese, but she is a lesbian.
Speaker 2: I like, we have to.
Speaker 1: Clarify for each person, now Lean lesbian or ros And
Speaker 1: she very much knew the joke. She knew immediately, but
Speaker 1: she too thought that it had originated with Rosie and Ellen,
Speaker 1: not with the Golden Girls. And actually she also made
Speaker 1: the good point that there are a lot of these
Speaker 1: types of jokes that persist. Another one that she uses
Speaker 1: with her friends is the toaster oven joke from.
Speaker 3: Ellen Wait I don't know the toaster oven, Jake.
Speaker 1: I had to look this up, but basically, it's a
Speaker 1: joke about how if you recruit a straight woman to
Speaker 1: the lesbian cause, they get a toaster oven as their reward.
Speaker 1: It was like a gift of recruitment, and so in
Speaker 1: common usage, it's like, oh, yeah, did you give her
Speaker 1: a toast raven?
Speaker 3: So I thought it was like a reward for the
Speaker 3: person who had recruited the straight woman into the lesbian.
Speaker 2: Cause, well, maybe she deserves a toaster oven.
Speaker 4: Too, Yeah, susan.
Speaker 3: Stuff of that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that clearly got me nowhere. But finally I
Speaker 2: reached out to Drew Mackie.
Speaker 1: He is a journalist and the co host of an
Speaker 1: amazing podcast that I now can't stop listening to called
Speaker 1: Gayest Episode Ever.
Speaker 2: And so here's what Drew told me.
Speaker 6: I was really thinking about this is the hardest question
Speaker 6: in the list of questions you sent me. I'm like,
Speaker 6: why is this a thing? And it made me think
Speaker 6: of lake Titycocca, where lake Titycoca is like an easy
Speaker 6: joke in the culture of anyone who's not someone who
Speaker 6: lives around lake Titycca, because it sounds like something funny,
Speaker 6: even though it's not that thing, And I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, is that it?
Speaker 2: I really do think that's it?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 6: That simplistic Lebanese sounds like this word that is sexual
Speaker 6: in nature? And no matter how much studying and maturing
Speaker 6: we do, we are still little kids giggling at the
Speaker 6: thing that sounds like another thing. And I can't think
Speaker 6: of another explanation for it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's sort of like how kids laugh whatever
Speaker 3: you say uranus, even though uranus is not objectively a
Speaker 3: funny word.
Speaker 1: Yes, on that note, before I get into how Drew
Speaker 1: helped me unlock the mystery of this joke, there's a
Speaker 1: small but very important piece of his personal history that
Speaker 1: cuse I think you need to hear.
Speaker 6: I remember learning the word slut from Sophia and then
Speaker 6: using it at school. Did not understand what it meant.
Speaker 6: I just thought it was like a generic insult for
Speaker 6: someone that you don't like. And then I had to
Speaker 6: have explained to me that just because Sophia says something
Speaker 6: does not mean that I should be allowed to say it,
Speaker 6: which was surprising to me. It was like, Oh, she's
Speaker 6: allowed to say that on TV and I can't in school.
Speaker 3: That's weird.
Speaker 2: Who did you call a slut?
Speaker 6: By the way, this girl named not Aida and we
Speaker 6: were fighting over like some sort of toy on the playground.
Speaker 6: I was like in second grade and then she was like,
Speaker 6: missus Brown, Drew called me a slut.
Speaker 3: And she was like, what you're like?
Speaker 2: Sophia said it literally, I.
Speaker 6: Can remember being like, but like, I learned it from
Speaker 6: Golden Girls.
Speaker 3: It's really funny that he actually learned the word slut
Speaker 3: from an actual grandmother.
Speaker 2: It's perfect.
Speaker 1: I mean, the show was not just groundbreaking, but it
Speaker 1: was educational in a really important way. And speaking of educational,
Speaker 1: Drew has actually written a very well researched oral history
Speaker 1: of episode oh wow. He did it a few years
Speaker 1: back for a now defunct gay magazine out of la
Speaker 1: called Frontiers. But as part of that oral history, he
Speaker 1: spoke to this guy, Jeffrey Dutiel, who was apparently the
Speaker 1: man who was actually responsible for writing that episode of
Speaker 1: The Golden Girls.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm genuinely impressed by how far down this rabbit
Speaker 3: hole you went.
Speaker 2: Thank you. But also we're not done.
Speaker 3: Oh I know.
Speaker 1: So I obviously had to get in touch with Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: but Drew couldn't find his email. So then we began
Speaker 1: this game of telephone, which essentially was first I spoke
Speaker 1: to this woman. This is like the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: reporting that you normally don't put into the article, but
Speaker 1: since we're on a podcast, yeah, I love it. So
Speaker 1: first I spoke to Winnifred Hervey, who herself is a
Speaker 1: trailblazer in many ways. She wrote and executive produced shows
Speaker 1: like The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of bel Air,
Speaker 1: and she was a co producer on Golden Girls.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: But she didn't know the origin, of course. So she
Speaker 1: put me in touch with a guy called Barry fin Narrow.
Speaker 1: He was a staff writer on the show during the
Speaker 1: time that this episode aired, and I spoke with him
Speaker 1: and he actually claimed that he had written a joke.
Speaker 2: But then here's the twist. I finally heard from Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: He's retired now, he's seventy two, he's a grandparent, and
Speaker 1: he explained in more detail that, yeah, he had been
Speaker 1: a freelancer at the time and he loved Golden Girls.
Speaker 1: He was an out gay man. He knew Winifred from
Speaker 1: working with her on a past sitcom, and so he
Speaker 1: got this specscript to her and the joke came to
Speaker 1: him in a quote burst of creative luck.
Speaker 3: So I tend to believe Jeffrey here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to get into the middle
Speaker 1: of this. I'm sure that everyone had a hand in it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to immediate being very many years have passed.
Speaker 1: But I did learn two important things from the series
Speaker 1: of conversations. First, as Barry reminded me, all of the
Speaker 1: characters on this show were a little night so it's
Speaker 1: not that crazy to think that Blanche might have actually
Speaker 1: mixed up Lesbian for Lebanese.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 1: And Second, what Jeffrey's blamed was that there was actually
Speaker 1: an inside joke here too, and that was that Danny Thomas,
Speaker 1: who we spoke about before, this famous comedian and actor
Speaker 1: who was Lebanese, is the father not only of Marlow Thomas,
Speaker 1: but of Tony Thomas, whose production company ran Golden Girls.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So on top of the wordplay, there was this kind
Speaker 1: of poking fun at Tony Thomas because.
Speaker 2: It's his dad, and now we're going to call his
Speaker 2: dad a lesbian.
Speaker 3: Oh god, there are so many layers here we could
Speaker 3: never have predicted when we started on this journey.
Speaker 2: I love this exactly.
Speaker 1: There's another thing, Susie that became very clear in talking
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey, which is basically that Golden Girls was always
Speaker 1: for the gas.
Speaker 3: Because it has kind of like a gay icon status.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that very much is true.
Speaker 1: Now there are Golden Girls cruises and drag shows on
Speaker 1: like every kind of Golden Girls themed event under the sun, now,
Speaker 1: which all sound amazing.
Speaker 2: I would love to go on a Golden Girls cruise.
Speaker 1: But I guess what I didn't realize was that Golden
Speaker 1: Girls has ties to gay culture that are much deeper
Speaker 1: and really go all the way back to its inception.
Speaker 1: Oh really, So from the very first episode in the pilot,
Speaker 1: there is an out and proud gay character, Coco.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember this. He was kind
Speaker 2: of a houseboy.
Speaker 1: He was then written off, so like arguable how progressive
Speaker 1: that character actually was. But from the very first episode,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. And then there was this episode
Speaker 1: where Blanche's brother Clayton comes out and he pretends that
Speaker 1: he has slept with Rose in order to disguise from
Speaker 1: the fact that he's gay. But the point of the
Speaker 1: episode is really that Blanche has to confront her own homophobia.
Speaker 1: So then a little bit later the show took on
Speaker 1: AIDS in nineteen ninety, but not in the way you
Speaker 1: might have thought. Like in the episode, it's Rose who's
Speaker 1: told she may have contracted HIV during a blood transfusion,
Speaker 1: and this is an exchange between she and Blanche.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that I am a good person.
Speaker 4: Hell, I'm a goody two shoes. Age is not a
Speaker 4: bad person's disease.
Speaker 1: Rose.
Speaker 2: It is not God punishing people for their sins.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really progressive. I think at that time there
Speaker 3: really was this right wing talking point that AIDS was
Speaker 3: like punishment. So it's impressive they took that on. It's
Speaker 3: a really poignant line. And then there's this other fact
Speaker 3: that Drew alerted me to, which is another episode. It's
Speaker 3: in Valentine's Day episode, and you know, many of these
Speaker 3: women are widowed, and so Blanche goes to this bar
Speaker 3: where she orders two glasses of champagne.
Speaker 2: To commemorate her late husband.
Speaker 1: And while she's there, she meets a young man who's
Speaker 1: going to propose to his boyfriend. And all of this
Speaker 1: is to say that the episode basically ends with Blanche
Speaker 1: saying love is love.
Speaker 2: The line love is love.
Speaker 3: Wait was that a political slogan at that time? No?
Speaker 1: Oh, because this was nineteen eighty nine, and that, of
Speaker 1: course is the phrase that became known as the slogan
Speaker 1: or part of the rallying cry for marriage equality.
Speaker 3: So that's an amazing sort of little negative political history
Speaker 3: that ties to this.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, these were like really big and overt moments of
Speaker 1: gay representation in the show, but there were also more
Speaker 1: subtle ones too. Here's Drew Mackie, co host of Gayest
Speaker 1: Episode Ever again.
Speaker 6: You have these four women living together in a chosen family,
Speaker 6: and the reasons that they've been separated from their nuclear
Speaker 6: families are different from what would separate a queer person
Speaker 6: from their nuclear family, especially back in the eighties, But
Speaker 6: the result is the same. They're living together and they're
Speaker 6: getting the kind of stuff that you would normally expect
Speaker 6: to get from parent, siblings, extended family. They're getting it
Speaker 6: from each other, even though except for Dorothy and Sophia,
Speaker 6: they're not related. And it doesn't mean any less to
Speaker 6: these four women. This is a really powerful relationship they
Speaker 6: have with each other. And I think that's subconsciously really
Speaker 6: good model for anyone really, and I think that is
Speaker 6: the genius of sitcoms, is that you don't watch to relate,
Speaker 6: or you don't certainly don't watch to learn.
Speaker 3: You just watched to laugh.
Speaker 6: And if this show is written intelligently enough, they will
Speaker 6: educate you regardless. And you may not ever realize that
Speaker 6: that show changed your opinions about anything, particularly gay people.
Speaker 6: But I think this show definitely did, and this episode
Speaker 6: definitely did.
Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting what Drew is saying here,
Speaker 1: which is that whether purposeful or not, these messages like
Speaker 1: chosen family, friendship, community, they really stuck with people, and
Speaker 1: especially gay viewers. And actually, when I was emailing back
Speaker 1: and forth with Jeffrey, the writer of the episode, he
Speaker 1: described how the Golden Girls characters for him and for
Speaker 1: so many of the men he still hears from, became
Speaker 1: like these surrogate mothers. They were like aunties and grandmothers,
Speaker 1: right because they were accepting, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, these examples you've gone through are all examples
Speaker 3: of these women kind of coming to terms with whatever
Speaker 3: or personal feelings they might have had and then embracing
Speaker 3: their loved ones, no matter what their sexual orientation. That
Speaker 3: had to feel relatively unique back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I think all of this plays into
Speaker 1: the way that the show was so embraced by the
Speaker 1: gay community. And so another thing that I didn't know
Speaker 1: that I learned from Jeffrey the writer, was that he
Speaker 1: before he wrote this episode, when he was simply a fan,
Speaker 1: he would gather with his friends and his community in
Speaker 1: this kind of communal celebratory watching of the Golden Girls.
Speaker 1: So for him, that meant going to gay bars in
Speaker 1: LA on Saturday nights and at nine o'clock with a
Speaker 1: new Golden Girls episode would air, they would like turn
Speaker 1: off the dance music. Everyone would gather around the television.
Speaker 1: They would watch the show in the bar, and then
Speaker 1: it would end and they would turn the music back on.
Speaker 2: Everyone would go back to partying.
Speaker 3: That sounds so fun, honestly.
Speaker 1: And he wrote to me that he has now attended
Speaker 1: many drag performances of different episodes of the show, some
Speaker 1: of which include this episode, and he's always pleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: when Scott, his husband of thirty nine years, can't wait
Speaker 1: to tell a new gay acquaintance that he Jeffrey wrote
Speaker 1: the first gay Golden Girls episode, and they immediately know
Speaker 1: which one, and they.
Speaker 2: Respond with not Lebanese blanche lesbian.
Speaker 3: Oh that is such a nice story. I love this story. Okay,
Speaker 3: that feels like a good place to end it for today.
Speaker 3: But jess what do we have coming up in part two?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Part two is going to look at how queerness has
Speaker 1: been sneakily written into TV for decades, but also where
Speaker 1: that Lebanese lesbian joke is today?
Speaker 3: I can't wait. This is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 3: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 3: Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com or
Speaker 3: find us on Instagram at retropod.
Speaker 1: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 1: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 1: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 3: You can also find this on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 3: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 3: Feminist Fi Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 2: In Retrospect is.
Speaker 3: A production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 2: Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer Emily Meronoff
Speaker 1: is our producer. Sharan Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 3: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 3: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 3: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing heills from Mary
Speaker 3: do Our mixing engineer is Amanda Rose Smith. We are
Speaker 3: your hosts Susie Bannacarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: We are also executive producers for even more check out
Speaker 1: inretropod dot com.
Speaker 2: See you next week.