The Gays (And Others) Can Be Snarky

This pic spoils a moment from the recent Muppets movie.
If you still haven't seen it, as Scott Rolen once said,
"Sorry about your luck."

I can't help but be both amused and a little disappointed at the reactions to the news media's running of the story that actor Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" is gay. Now, he didn't make some big announcement about it. He didn't hold a press conference or do an interview with some gay publication. The information was made public in a New York Times profile of the actor, who's about to hit Broadway in "Harvey." Parsons previously did a stint on the stage in "The Normal Heart," a play about the rise of AIDS in the 1980s. Here's what the Times revealed, almost at the end of the story:

“The Normal Heart” resonated with him on a few levels: Mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship, and working with an ensemble again onstage was like nourishment, he said.

That's all. But because he's never actually revealed this in an interview or talk show appearance or whatever, the rest of the news media is running "Jim Parsons comes out" stories. And that's understandable, even if it's sort of a misleading headline.

The reaction I've seen on my Facebook and Twitter feeds has mostly run along the lines of "Who didn't know that?" or "When was he in the closet?" -- again, I understand it, to an extent. It's been talked about and rumored and even assumed. But there's also, to me, an undercurrent of "This isn't news -- why is the media bothering to report this?"

Well, it IS still news and, more importantly, it still needs to be said by people such as Jim Parsons.