Fox Puts Foot in Its Mouth, Kicks Self

The edited version lacks all references to a heterosexual male's worst nightmare and that "jury of their queers." The "gay lifestyle" remains, however, still in quote marks.

Contacted for comment, a Fox rep told The TV Column, "We made an error; we moved to correct it as soon as we could and we're deeply sorry."

Before receiving Fox's revised and apologetic news release, we'd called the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to talk to them about it.

"The press release speaks to a very backward stereotype that raises red flags for GLAAD," said Steve Macias, the organization's entertainment media director. The show itself, he speculated, probably will be either "flattering" or "tiresome in its premise of yet another straight man pretending to be a gay man.

"This is an old premise -- look at 'Three's Company,' for example -- show after show of straight men pretending to be gay men so that they can find something for themselves."

Macias said GLAAD has asked Fox to send a tape of the special and expects it in a day or two.

And speaking of "what the hell were they thinking?" -- an expression used more and more these days by TRWCT in discussing the latest reality-series concept -- there's the incident of the taping of WB's new "Superstar USA."

WB, having noticed -- as has everyone else -- that the episodes of Fox's "American Idol" that feature horrible auditions do huge numbers, decided to take that concept and run with it. The result is a seven-episode singing competition show, debuting Monday, from Mike Fleiss of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" and "The Bachelor" fame.

During auditions in various cities, the best singers were told that they weren't right for the show while those with "more guts than pipes" were encouraged by the show's music "experts," Tone-Loc, Vitamin C and TV producer Chris Briggs.

Twelve finalists were taken to Hollywood to compete; the worst singer wins.

WB insists it's a "send-up of the genre" but, honestly, it sounds exactly like how "American Idol 3" is playing out. Just think: If Jasmine Trias wins, the third American Idol could wind up being a worse singer than the winner of "Superstar USA," and then WB would be left with nothing but a really bad show. Bummer for them.

Anyway, for the "Superstar USA" joke to work, the audience had to play along. ("American Idol" solved this problem by wisely having no studio audience during the initial auditions when all the truly lousy singers are front and center.)

Fleiss is quoted in WB's news release saying of the show, "The fact that we are able to perpetrate a hoax of this magnitude with thousands of people for more than a month is absolutely incredible."

Actually, not so incredible, according to the Los Angeles Times, which has reported that during a taping last month one of the producers told the audience the contestants were all terminally ill beneficiaries of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The production company issued a statement about the deception, insisting that the producer had "ad-libbed" that comment, which "may have offended someone in the audience."

"For that we sincerely apologize," Fleiss's Next Entertainment told the L.A. Times.