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...Brown for choosing to have a child out of wedlock. One can endlessly debate the question of whether television influences society or reflects it: Does Ellen Morgan's coming out in what is still our massest medium legitimize homosexuality, or does the sponsorship of a bottom-line business like ABC merely reflect its acceptance by a significant portion of the population? Clearly, the answer is both, that TV and culture play off each other in ways that are hard to codify. Any attempt to reduce these complex reverberations to a black-or-white issue is, well, the kind of thing...
...Both ABC and Touchstone seem to be genuinely pleased with the results. "We're very proud. We think Ellen and the show's staff have executed it beautifully," says Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment. At the same time, she adds, "obviously this is an experiment. We're not sociologists. We don't know how this is going to be received...
...with Ellen" day around the episode; and predictable denunciations from the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who referred to the star in gentlemanly fashion as "Ellen DeGenerate," and from the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, whose American Family Association has issued barely veiled threats to boycott Ellen's advertisers. A stalwart ABC says it nevertheless expects that Ellen will be fully sponsored, although two occasional advertisers on Ellen, J.C. Penney and Chrysler, have announced they won't continue to sponsor the show. This can't have made ABC happy. But even for controversial shows there are usually enough advertisers to go around...
DeGeneres is certainly not averse to the idea that the new plot twist is organic rather than desperate: "It made sense the character was gay--not that I ever started with that intention." At ABC and Disney, the idea of Ellen Morgan's coming out had been discussed off and on as a possible fix for the show almost since its inception. So executives were receptive, if cautious, when DeGeneres and the show's producers first approached them last summer about the possibility. "It's not a no-brainer," understates Tarses, but tentative permission was granted for the show...
...overzealous reading of management's mood--that the Ellen decision might best be delayed until after last February's Disney stockholders' meeting so that chairman Michael Eisner would be spared having to defend that as well as his salary and Mike Ovitz's lavish payout. "When Disney or ABC were worried about boycotts or this or that, I kept saying to everybody, 'I'm the one who's going to get the biggest boycott,'" says DeGeneres. "'You can cancel the show, you can go and make another one. It's not going to hurt you. I'm the product here...