Dumb Spiro Spero

I wasn't planning on weighing in on the whole South Carolina Is So Gay thing (because it is) until a fellow Chronster sent me this awesome Gawker link to their simple (yet elegant) blog post about it.

I had previously dismissed the story – of the state's tourism board pulling an overseas ad campaign it had previously approved – as story-worthy mostly because

the catchphrase sounds like it's coming out of the butt of a whiney 12-year-old. Or that of a whiney white guy in his late-Twenties/early-Thirties who still seriously uses the phrase, "Oh snap!" while not even being gay.

The story itself is ultimately a non-story. It's your textbook case of cross-cultural misunderstanding: Europeans "get" triple entendres and are more sophisticated about "gay" things than are myopic Americans. The clever campaign probably would have generated the god-forsaken home of Muzak and Stephen Colbert a shit-ton of real business, luring not only gay folks but people with great senses of humor, worldliness, and wads of disposable cash.

Too bad. The first state to secede from the union (back when states were doing that sort of thing), will instead have to rely on this.

Do read that post my friend bothered to send. Then scroll down; Gawker commenters are the best.

Why can't you guys be more like them?