Another Week, Another Failure: 'Glee' Misses Mark on Bullying

Bullying: Those who have been with me a while know that this is the ultimate hot-button for me, the issue that will get me fired up faster than dropping a lit match in a bucket of diesel. I was bullied relentlessly for years, so I know what it’s like to feel so degraded that you don’t even want to show your face in public. I know how it feels to be in so much agony that you’d rather cut to the chase and die than live to feel another day. Yes, I’ve experienced the inner struggle of rejecting who you really are because it isn’t good enough for someone else.

That’s why last night’s episode of Glee down right ticked me off. While gays everywhere are celebrating it as a victory (because, lets face it – there’s quite an abundance of homosexuality on the show these days), their “win” comes at such a cost that it’s revolting. The show’s two closeted gay characters (who happen to be the biggest bullies in school) start an anti-bullying campaign in the school as a means of making themselves popular and, therefore, prom king and queen contenders. As if that wasn’t enough, Kurt (the openly gay character) finds out about the plot and is okay with it. He won’t tell anyone as long as they start a PFLAG chapter at the school. PFLAG: Parents, Friends, and Family of Lesbians and Gays.

Are you &*%#ing kidding me? For starters, you’re going to cloak a serious problem around something as superficial as prom king and queen? That pool is so shallow it couldn’t drown a blonde if it had a scratch ‘n sniff sticker at the bottom.

Moreover, this is on primetime, people! It’s rated TV14. Kids everywhere are going to march into their school counselors’ offices today and demand a PFLAG chapter. Look, as evident from my last Glee post, I think there’s room in the conversation to address homosexuality in the conservative camp but this is rubber room-certified insane. Compromise your beliefs and then blackmail whoever you need to in order to get what you want?

This is not a victory for the gays or for bullying victims of any kind. This is a victory for the bullies! Sure, Mr. Bully, you can squeak by with a fake, scripted apology. Of course, Miss Bully, if you can pretend long enough to not publicly hate people, you too can have a shiny new tiara. Lie through your teeth and you can fool anyone. School principals? Yah, they’re all dopes. Teachers, they won’t care. Is this really the message we want to be sending kids, that it’s okay to be so ugly as long as you can manipulate your way around it?

You’d think with the creator being gay that he’d take a more practical approach to the issue, but instead he’s busy figuring out ways to make his adolescent fantasies play out on television. How else would you explain Kurt’s roommate being the star quarterback whom he has a crush on? And this is a zeitgeist show…

Okay, now that I’m no longer seeing red, let’s address the real problem at hand. Kids in hallways all over the country are harassed every day for a multitude of reasons. I was bullied because of the way I looked, or didn’t look, rather. My friends were fellow bullying victims who were beat up for being overweight, mocked for having bad skin, even ridiculed over their parents’ professions. Teachers looked the other way, principals gave detention, but at the end of the day, nothing was fixed. We’ve talked about legislating our way around it, teaching our way out of it, and (now, thanks to Glee) starting on-campus groups for it. This is not how the problem will be fixed.

It comes down to parenting. If a child is never disciplined for negative behavior or if a child witnesses his/her parent(s) behaving that way, it will continue. But what am I talking about? You all already know this! You’re responsible parents who are dedicated to the goings on of their kids’ lives. You know who their friends are, what grades they make, and you have access to their Facebook pages. I don’t want to preach to the choir, so I’ll give you a piece of very sound advice:

Your children are not likely to volunteer the fact they’re being targeted; no one wants to admit they’re insecure or weak, especially not to their mom or dad. Talk to your kids about being bullied and make sure you do everything humanly possible to let them know they can tell you if they’re being picked on, tormented, or harassed. When your child does tell you, take it seriously; it’s so easy to brush it off as “toughening them up” or “real life lessons.” Help them find the solution because that’s when they need you to be a parent the most.