The Soapgeist ( The Nelson Ratings ) 7/13/09

[SteveFrame]

If you would read everything that was said there was no BABBLING.

There were 2 different instances. As I said Nelson - the man you belief so much you can label a man a homophobe based on it - said himself there was never a kiss - and there was never any sex intended to be shown. He made up the kiss to keep from spoiling what Y&R had planned, but then spoiled it anyway.

Even Kenny called him on it and couldn't figure out why he did it the way he did it.

The kiss that was filmed came much later and it was a stage kiss that even in Errol's pictures didn't show anything between Muheny & Gelman. It was supposed to be around the time that Nikki caught them - but it was evidently cut at the last minute. I think Errol still has those pictures posted here.

[Ann_SS]

Now calling out Nelson is babbling? Ha. Nothing like being made a fool of by a soap gossip, eh. Oh, again where is the outrage over Y&R's homophobia? The silence is deafening. I'm calling out all you hypocrites who got nothing to say now there is real evidence of homophobia. So much for the self-righteous angry and lectures.

[bellcurve]

Yep.

[marceline]

Double yep with a "you know that's right!" snap of the fingers. The army of Nelson looks a little more like Hogan's Heroes today. Complete with Bob Crane sex scandal.

[ian]

I'm hoping CKLily's cancer is a way for Davetta Sherwood and Adrianne Leon to return to the show... after having sent these poor imposters (TS and CK).. because the two of them were actually lesbians and wanted to run off together. also Dru faked her death because she's gay. Also everyone who died in the past 2 or 3 years faked their death because they were gay.

[Vee]

I'm not defending Nelson Branco or his style of reporting. The bottom line, however, appears to be that Chris Engen had gay-themed scenes, and quit over them. And I've seen no one dispute the Patricia Mauceri news which has been expounded upon by multiple people. Only one of them has denied Mauceri had issues with the gay-friendly material. At best, some reports have parsed their language to say she didn't want to play the character of Carlotta as supportive; those versions of the story have made no comment either way about her motives, but simply stripped out the IRL portion from other versions of the same report. For all the screaming you guys claiming I'm jumping to conclusions and slandering innocent people, you're certainly jumping to your own, taking those very parsed versions of the story - and their lack of discussion of Mauceri's motives - as gospel, as though their lack of detail proves there is nothing to it. They don't say anything, or prove anything. They don't comment on her issues (or lack thereof) at all, but nevertheless you suggest that the absence of a statement proves PM had no issues with gay-friendly material. The same way you suggest that because Chris Engen did not, in fact, leave over a gay kiss, but rather left immediately before other gay material with Yani Gellman, then that means his quitting was not gay-related at all. It's the worst kind of deliberate ignorance, insisting on not seeing the forest for the trees just to prove a personal point, and I think you guys know that. You're not stupid.

I'm also so, so, so tired of hearing these crazy sermons about the evils of Y&R and why don't we condemn it and how dare I attack poor, adorable Chris Engen without giving Y&R proper vitriol, why, why, why, etc etc ad infinitum. Look, you guys already have like eighteen long-ass threads where you whine about Y&R. As the length of this and other discussion proves, absolutely no one is keeping you from making your voices heard about Y&R, though I seriously wish you would all either condense or at least take downers. That said, it's not my call, so good news, your collective ongoing nervous breakdown will continue unabated. Go nuts. Personally, I don't care about Y&R. I have, however, watched some of the gay storyline(s), and I agree with you that a lot of it is either tacky, amateurish or on occasion, outright tawdry and exploitative. I've said so before, I believe. I have nothing to hide. Those scenes with Adam and Rafe are played as sheer camp, like something out of a '70s or '80s primetime soap. The stuff with Phillip so far is like an '80s TV movie, or maybe a campier version of Making Love. So yes, I think Y&R is at least guilty of these stories being tacky, and in the case of Adam and Rafe, guilty of the story being either borderline homophobic or at the very least, seeming awfully antiquated. I don't object to Adam seducing Rafe to further his personal ends because hetero or homo, such a storyline is a classic soap staple; the way it is done, however, is just goofy. So are these stories goofy, antiquated, campy, maybe borderline phobic? Yes. But so what? Y&R's lack of good taste does not mean I can't also be disgusted with Chris Engen. It's not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be as you all sit here pounding your breasts screaming that we aren't lacing into Y&R enough while persecuting these poor, poor homophobic actors. I mean, aren't you tearing the show apart enough for all of us? And have you maybe, just maybe considered the distinct possibility that nobody cares about trashing Y&R anymore because you have all run it into the ground and made it so [!@#$%^&*] boring?

I so hoped you'd be here, marceline. I was waiting for you to explain to me my triple-secret gay agenda and how I am in league with Nelson Branco, a man I have never met, never defended or spoken to, but apparently share a sexual orientation with. We seem to have gotten our wires crossed last time when you decided that as a somewhat more uppity homosexual, I was unworthy to process and receive your direct speech. Good news: You've got another chance. When you find the time to deign to notice us peons, please articulate for me the "my gay or the highway" agenda that I, Mr. Branco, and any other gay posters offended by Chris Engen or Patricia Mauceri's (alleged) behavior share. Or not. I'm sure it all just goes back to how your views are being stifled about Y&R and OLTL, and by "stifled" we of course mean "read and not always responded to with total agreement." Never change.

I don't really care if I get warned or banned but I've just got to say, you people are way over the fuckin' top. Not only do you seem to knee-jerk attack anyone who dares to be offended by these various gay-themed soap scandals, but you always, always, always have to find a way to tie that completely unrelated [!@#$%^&*] back to your personal feelings of persecution regarding your opinions of Y&R. Even with people who don't fuckin' watch Y&R! Constantly hammering us for daring to be offended by Chris Engen is not even about Chris Engen for you; it's about Y&R and MAB and Branco's approval of MAB, and your propping Engen up as some beacon of la revolucion and "actor integrity" in what you consider dark times for the show. Look, how you feel about Y&R is your business. But I would like to think you'd all have a little more consideration for those of us not quite so invested in it out there, and a little less cynicism so as to consider how your applying that viewpoint (about the overall program) to what seems to be a simple case of sad homophobia might make the rest of us feel. You're making a fannish "political" point about the show's production team out of an incident that, good story or bad, in-character or out of character, genuinely saddens gay and lesbian viewers. And then you're basically implying we're "siding with the Man" if we feel that way. Who are you to tell us how to feel? What about people who don't like Y&R today anymore than you do, but also are disgusted with Engen?

SON has always been vapid and cliquish but this increasingly strange war making every other thread into some game of "tit for tat" about "Y&R zombies versus Y&R haters" is really pathetic, and it not only dilutes your own arguments and people's opinions of you (whereas people's opinions of me are already as low as they could possibly get), but it makes people less inclined to care about what you think of Y&R, and possibly even more sympathetic to the damn show. I hope you someday realize how you've all started to come across. This [!@#$%^&*] ain't healthy, and I think I'm far from the only person who stopped listening to this ranting and raving about the Great Satan that is Y&R a long time ago.

[SteveFrame]

Well maybe we jump to conclusions based on our IGNORANCE.

But you jump to your conclusions based on YOUR HATRED. Which sorry but to me is no different than the hatred you claim to be stamping out. What is the difference it is all hatred. And clearly from your long tirades and name calling even to us WHINERS and such that is all you are full of even for us - your fellow posters here at SON. You attack Engen, Mauceri and so many of the posters. That is all you are full of these days Vee is hatred - hatred for everyone.

I'm sorry when there is lack of evidence or evidence that can be interpreted 2 ways I am going to side of the side of NON HATE and if there is IGNORANCE as you put then I am proud to be ignorant. I refuse to become like you so full of hate for everything and everyone. I have been running from those kind of people and actions for years I damn well am not going to become like them just because I feel I am justified to do so.

All I have been saying is when there is a lack of evidence or evidence that does leave out motives or can be interpreted so many different ways. Then why jump to the conclusion that it is homophobia. There is no other reason than just to HATE.

With the Engen thing there was only one report and that has been totally brought into question now. With Mauceri there have been other reports - some talk about her personal beliefs and some don't. Hinsey actually gave more details than anyone. Of course this week Nelson says that as soon as Mauceri gets back he will have the story straight from her - so we will see if she is willing to give him an interview. If she is the homophobe that I doubt she will give a gay reporter the news, not when there are some str8 reporters out there too.

And by the way if you have such a problem with the 18 page threads of people putting Y&R down - you don't have to read them.

As for me this has absolutely nothing to do with whether I like Y&R or not, I am just like Ann - I do find it hypocrital - very hyporcritical for people to give Y&R a pass on this esp. after they have been so adamant about stamping out homophobia at every chance they get. Why get so up in arms about what Engen did and then not get up in arms about what Y&R is doing. By the definitions that many of you have this is the same thing.

It has nothing to do with whether Y&R is good or bad - it is just plain out not giving gays or gay stories the same treatment they would a str8 story. As I have said before if Rafe was a woman we would have seen a whole lot more. The kiss would have not ended up on the cutting room floor.

You can call it babbling or ignorance or whatever VITROL you want to spout at us next - believe me I am anxious to hear what you call your fellow posters here and the moderators allow next. But anyway it is not any of that - it is a legitimate question.

People have said they hated that this turned so hateful among some posters but how could it not when you are called names, inferred that you are ignorant, even called a bitch in one thread, - all because you don't like a show or can see a different side to a story than someone else. But with hate it is so easy to attack others than it is to try and discuss with them or even listen to what they have to say. Why not when you can just ridicule them and try to beat them down. In the end they will think they are so stupid that they have to come around to your way of thinking. After all evidently there is only one person around who knows everything and is always right. The rest are just ignorant homophobes with a stick up their butt about Y&R.

The last time I looked this is a message board and we are all entitled to discuss what we want - even if we take 20 18-page threads to do so. As I said if someone doesnt' like it they don't have to read.

[Vee]

Oh, I can be an obnoxious person, but I'm not full of hatred for anyone. You've definitely grown to utterly exasperate me, but I don't hate you or Chris Engen or Patricia Mauceri. What I'm offended by, what makes me angry, are the relentless attempts to quash any rational discussion of these scandals or to conflate them into some ridiculous meta-debate you're always having about Y&R, which is not what they are about. As I said, I haven't jumped to any conclusion any more than you have. I took the multiple reports about Engen and Mauceri at their word; you took a few weak denials at theirs. Why? Because it suited your (and others') interests, which feed back into this endless circle-jerk about Y&R, Maria Bell, Branco, et al. You still haven't offered any explanation for why Chris Engen left just before the gay-skewing scenes with Adam and Rafe in which Adam seduced him; you simply pretend that isn't part of the scandal, and that all we should pay attention to is Branco's as-usual shitty reporting. You're forsaking the nuances to try and win an argument which you can't win because you're ignoring the facts at hand. I may never be able to prove to you that my feelings about Engen are valid, but you'll never get anywhere with this since you don't seem to look honestly at the material Engen actually did leave over; you just pretend it isn't there because of bad reporting about something else.

And normally, I could live with that. That would be one kind of stalemate, so long as I didn't have to suffer these endless long-winded, vitriolic posts by you and others in every other spoiler thread. You guys seem to dredge this Engen/homophobia story up every other [!@#$%^&*] day in otherwise unrelated threads and beat it to death with more fiery rhetoric about how awful people are to believe this of him without proof, when in fact you yourselves have no proof he did not leave over the Adam/Rafe scenes and Engen never denied it. I'd be willing to let it go if you guys just shut up about it, but playing the victim seems to be the favorite part of your collective week and you just have to keep pushing the button about this guy and how unfairly persecuted you, er, he, has been. He's become this weird little figurehead for you, and it doesn't make any sense. Believe what you want to believe about Chris Engen; feel how you want to be about Y&R. All I'm asking is have a little class when it comes to your fellow gay and lesbian posters who might not feel the same - don't drag "poor Chris Engen" into every [!@#$%^&*] discussion about Y&R or Nelson Branco. All it does is offend and hurt more people, and I know I'm not the only one.

You keep talking about how you're just trying to call attention to people's "hypocrisy about Y&R" but I see no one fervently defending it in this thread. People, myself included, have said they find the gay story either tacky or antiquated, or worse. But that doesn't seem to be enough for you guys; nothing is ever enough for you unless we are all intensely furious like you, and ignore the poor maligned actor (who, after all, surely only left because Maria Arena Bell stifled his creativity and ruined his character, right?) in favor of yet another round of endless screaming about Y&R and MAB. There can apparently never be any valid complaints about Engen or anything else related to the show without you dragging it back to the endless Y&R debate you don't appear to be having with anyone. You're just going to keep screaming in our faces every time a Suds Report is released about Engen and Y&R and how bad it is and how innocent he was and how much of a hypocrite all the other posters are for not seeing this and admitting how bad it all is and blah blah fuckin' blah. You want to know what bullying is, Steve? That's it. That's how you try to beat down and ridicule people. You've been doing it for weeks, maybe months over this Chris Engen thing, making it a Y&R issue and shouting people down, and I'm sick of it.

Unlike you and your friends, I do not expect to bully anyone into my way of thinking. I settle for simply trying to show you just how overzealous and willfully blind you come across. I understand you dislike Y&R these days, that's fine. But you have completely failed to understand how there are people out there who don't care about Y&R, who are ambivalent, or even dislike it as well, but don't let that separate opinion factor into how they might feel about the Chris Engen situation, which seems to have been an isolated case of homophobia. Why do you feel the need to so relentlessly police people's feelings about Engen? Why can't people just be upset about him without you guys always chiming in to call us hypocrites for not joining the anti-Bell crusade?

[SteveFrame]

Whatever Vee.

You are the good gay and I am the bad one. Thank you so much for putting me in my place yet once again. I just don't know what would ever become of me if I didn't have the good old sainted Vee to show me the light.

Sayonara SON.

[Vee]

What a coincidence! Neither was I, Steve, since that never actually happened. [on the off-chance that Steve has actually put me on Ignore, someone please feel free to let him know about that] The thing is, you keep claiming that the Chris Engen issue is unrelated to your issues with Y&R, yet with each post you continue to explain how it all ties together in your mind to the writing, the storyline and all these other excuses you make for him by going back to your complaints about the show. You are unable to separate them, even when you claim to separate them. Even in your last post.

As for who's being hateful, you're not "dead to me" as you say I am to you, but you sure as [!@#$%^&*] can't make a rational argument. I'm honestly saddened that you would choose to leave the forum just because you can't win an argument, but you should know I'm no saint, and I am far from "the good gay." I wouldn't want you to leave SON over me, because really, more people disagree with me than agree; I'm the pariah around here. Running away from the entire board in a tantrum over me and Y&R is silly because no one is stifling you, and I don't see some groundswell of support for me anywhere around here, do you? If you don't want to deal with me anymore, then don't, but don't take your toys and go home because one poster gets your goat. That's just lame.

ETA: In the interest of full transparency, I adjusted my search criteria to check over my old posts for any sign of my calling people "bitches" for not liking Y&R. That didn't actually happen, although Steve is correct that I did casually say "you bitches" in a post about Thom Bierdz a little while back. The thread in question had devolved into a lot of nasty backbiting and "run and tell that" about different groups of posters and how each group liked or hated the Phillip Chancellor storyline and why these posters were either stupid or brilliant for doing so. I voiced my opinion on Bierdz, and expressed my dismay about the way the discussion had gone by saying I might take "you bitches" more seriously if they'd talked about the show and its storylines instead of complaining about the production staff and each other. It was a flippant remark at best and was not at all about Y&R's quality or lack thereof. Perhaps it's a sad commentary on today's society, but I think we can all agree it's become common parlance to use "bitches" as a casual term of endearment or to refer to any group of people (i.e., "Jealous, bitches?" "Go for it, bitches"), and that's all I did.

[Antoyne]

So if you're gay and you support Chris Engen, are you considered a homosexual homophobe?

[Vee]

Not by me. It's not what I would do, but if you can refrain from bludgeoning me with it and not try to make the issue into a referendum on Y&R, AFAIC it's your business.

[alphanguy74]

Vee, I agree with you on most of this. Consider this... my 73 year old MOTHER was watching Y&R with me the other day, (This is a woman who knew NOTHING about the Engen scandal, she doesn't look at soap mags, doens't do internet, etc.) and she piped right up and asked me.. "The old Adam quit because he didn't want to play gay, didn't he?" I told her I thought he did, and the reports said so.. but some people weren't sure. She then said.. "He probably couldn't have done it justice, anyway". So, if the 73 year old wife of a baptist minister can deduce such a thing from just watching the show, and no other input whatsoever... what does that say? My mother is happy as a clam that people like HER SON are finally represented on this show, she's loving the Phillip SL to death! You know, I have a theory or two on the Adam/Rafe kiss issue. I was Ok with the first scene, because they didn't show it at ALL. Then I was hacked off at the scene where Nikki catches them, because they "go in" for it, and then the camera cuts away, and that pisses me off. I'm actually WONDERING if Maria and Co. didn't do this purposely to piss off Engen? We don't know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but if he made a such a big stink, and pissed everyone off about the kiss (And truly quit over it), it would be a great way to twist the knife if they decided not to do the kiss after all, after Engen quit over it. It would make him feel like he quit for nothing. Just a theory. I'm over being pissed about not seeing Rafe/Adam... I don't know if they are waiting to make the first gay kiss more "special", when people are being politically correct, that's certainly something people seem to do. On the other hand, I would LOVE for Bierdz to be the one who gets the "honor", so I'm torn on my feelings. I guess we'll see what happpens.

[Eric200]

As long as we are talking about Nelson why is he always such a prick to Catlin Van Zandt? today he wrote "Scream queen Caitlin Van Zandt (Ashlee) recently became engaged to Daniel Tighe. Good luck with that, buddy."

[Vee]

He is a prick about Caitlin Van Zandt and several other undeserving people. I like CVZ, I don't get it.