We just received in our inbox Time Inc. chief John Huey's announcement of three high-level promotions at Entertainment Weekly. The news — Jay Woodruff to managing editor of EW.com, Henry Goldblatt to executive editor responsible for front-of-book, and Mark Harris to executive editor responsible for film coverage — was reported in the Post this morning, so we were finding the memo rather uninteresting. Until we noticed a certain snippet of each man's bio caught our eye:

When Cynthia Nixon left the father of her children for another woman, it seemed only natural that the 25% of Sex and the City's female audience who identified with her character's "hard-edged, sensible" template would be thrown into a tailspin of scandalized despair. This, after all, was the woman they patterned their lives after; were they doomed to a life of she-love as well? So when another no-nonsense TV Cynthia, Nightline's Cynthia McFadden, sat down with the actress and tenderly broached the L-word subject (so tenderly, in fact, that the word is never uttered), she was surprised to learn the entire affair just was not that big a deal. A partial transcript:

While some would be content to relegate Britney Spears to the dustbin of forgotten pop-tart history, as you can plainly see from these images made available by blogger mykeywood, Spears has managed to pull herself together nicely for her guest star turn as a Christian TV personality on an upcoming Will & Grace. (1) Britney makes sure her very real wedding ring is visible in every take in order to offset tabloid rumors. (2) The costume department comes to the rescue of a forgetful Spears with a cleverly fashioned scarf upon which all of her dialogue was printed, somewhat annoying co-stars Sean Hayes and Eric McCormack. (3) Between takes, Britney had the exhausted studio audience on their feet with her sexed-up version of "I'm a Little Teapot." (4) Sadly, an increasingly diva-like Debra Messing refused to share even a minute of screen time with her sexy blonde co-star, so cutting-edge blue screen technology was employed, allowing Grace to be added in post.

The often imitated but never duplicated Andy Towle takes a look at the new issue of ESPN The Magazine and wonders: Why did this not get named the gayest mag ever?

It will be the most extraordinary collection of homosexuality to have ever been gathered in Carnegie Hall — with the possible exception of when Liberace rehearsed alone.

We almost feel sorry for erstwhile Most Powerful Man in Hollywood Michael Ovitz, who's learning the hard way that making one teensy-weensy paranoid comment to a national publication claiming that a secret society of powerful homosexuals is trying to destroy your career can result in a lifetime of watching your back. Says Page Six:

Choosing the gayest moment in American Idol history is like trying to choose your favorite Ken doll: There's just too, too many and they're all so, so gay. A decent case, however, could have been made for the events following the dismissal last night of 18-year-old Garet Layne Johnson, a tiny Wyoming cowboy who managed to inspire and/or creep all of us out a bit, thanks to his green world view and "aw, shucks" humility, not to mention his singing (like a tone-deaf, gay cowboy angel). When Garet got the boot last night, he crumpled into a ball and sobbed into the chest of his co-bootee, hunky cowdaddy Matthew Buckstein, who caressed him and told he had nothing to be ashamed about. As queer Idol moments went, it was a doozy: Clay Aiken once tried a similar maneuver on Ruben Studdard, but the velvet teddybear swatted him across the stage moments before contact.
Don't expect Johnson to just stumble off, though, mutilating Elton John songs into the sunset. This is post-William Hung America, where a strange little man with no discernible talent except for moving fairly easily in dangerously tight jeans can still manage to carve out a showbiz career for himself. The dream begins right now, right here, at GaretJohnsonOnline.com.

Metro NY — that would be the green-accented mediocre paper you're accosted with as you try to get on the train — today has a piece on the annual Valentine's Day gay-rights protest staged by Marriage Equality New York. Cathy and Sheila Marino-Thomas, who have been together for 13 years and have a six-year-old daughter, were scheduled to request a marriage license from the City Clerk's office at 8 o'clock this morning. They were also scheduled to be turned down, of course, which is what makes it a protest.

In covering Barbie's longtime, on-again, off-again lover Ken's new look somewhat butcher, better clothes, and, like most Hollywood celebrities, still youthful thanks to a head full of plastic CNN's slice-of-life reporter Jeanne Moos ran into Harrison Ford's tongue-happy Firewall co-star Virginia Madsen on a New York street (video available here). Throwing Barbie's beau in the somewhat stunned actress' face, Madsen calmly stated the following as national news cameras rolled:

The executives at the network that brought us Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer Eye for the Straight Girl, Project Runway, Boy Meets Boy, Gay Weddings, Showdog Moms & Dads, Sean Hayes' Situation: Comedy, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, and Blowout have decided the time has come to start courting a gay audience:

Not two days after news that Britney Spears would be appearing on an upcoming episode of Will & Grace playing a loony, bible-thumping TV host who "decides to do a cooking segment called 'Cruci-fixin s,'" loony, bible-thumping advocacy group The American Family Association has begun its protests:

A correction to a THR report on Elton John's ABC comedy pilot Him and Us has been winding its way around the Reuters wires:

Here's a nice lesson in why you must never, ever tell the truth about a bitchy queen with a good publicist. (Or: Here's a lesson in why all Hollywood journalism is inherently bullshit because it's all so publicist-mediated.)

The canny execs at Showtime have co-opted the popular trend among The Gays of "fan fiction" wherein viewers write fantasy episodes of TV shows in which the characters give in to their deepest, lustiest, same-sex inclinations (ex: The OC's Seth and Ryan doing the naked jacuzzi). In their official L Word version of fanfic, viewers are invited to submit scenes for a special "fanisode" (translation: it will be a frosty Friday in lesbian hell before this thing makes it to air), and since most of the show's characters are already bed-hopping sisters of Sappho, half the work's already done for them! The illustration above from the official site is not, as we initially thought, a visual representation of a woman's reproductive cycle, but instead a simplification of the contest's rules, with the multicolored figures in the center representing "L Word Fans" (yes, they all appear to be the men's room symbol, but lesbians don't wear skirts, sorry).

A former green beret has told the National Enquirer that "Measure of a Man" singer Clay Aiken read his man measurements on a gay internet personal ad and arranged a steamy, man-on-effeminate-AM radio-friendly-songstylist encounter:

Coming out of the closet is a deeply personal journey for a gay individual, often a gradual process involving much soul searching and courage. Sometimes, however, that process is inadvertently helped along by a third party, such as the flappy-lipped TV exec who outed Crumbs creator Marco Pennette to his family on a red carpet:

If we may briefly steal your when-gays-meet-awards attention away from Brokeback's Oscar prospects for just a moment, we'd also like to note that GLAAD announced its 17th Annual Media Awards nominations today. We'd particularly like to direct your gaze to the "Outstanding TV Journalism — News Segment" category. For that one, the nominees are:

A reader sends in this pic and an inquiry:

The Golden Globes, as it turns out, were pretty good to The Gays, with Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica taking home the lion's share of the major awards. So welcome have these portrayals of the previously marginalized been and in particular, Brokeback's unflinching gaze upon two (ick!) masculine, sexually active men in love that some are going so far as to call last night's ceremony a "watershed" moment in the history of gay social acceptance:

(Thanks to Towleroad, who was actually watching 360° last night.)