LGBT in Cincinnati

"Mainstream content creators are discovering that TV shows popular twenty years ago are not aging well in today’s insane diversity, equity, and inclusion entertainment climate," reports the Wokeperts at GetWokeUp.com.

With these old shows streaming online to a "whole new audience of mostly brainwashed, woke millennials" production houses are looking at using AI editing software to make them "appeal to their new BLT+ snowflake fanbase.”

Scheduled for "conversion therapy" was one of my favourite sitcoms, WKRP in Cincinnati. Its first episode aired the year I was born (1978) but a decade passed before I saw it in syndication. It still stands out as an oasis of quality story-telling in the vast wasteland of television programming I traversed for most of my childhood.

Despite being a comedy, it dealt with hard-hitting social issues such as recreational drugs, racism, homosexuality and even animal rights. ("As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly")

In the third episode, for example, Les Nessman (the radio station's eccentric news reporter) is banned from the men's locker room at the local sports stadium because one of the athletes thought he was gay ("a queer little duck"). Thinking this was the end of his career, Les climbs out on the ledge of WKRP's building and threatens to jump. At the last minute, however, the athlete recants and the show goes on for another 86 episodes.

Of course, this fifty-year-old story about tolerance towards homosexuals is still not inclusive enough for today's woked up audience. I guess in the re-woked version they plan on releasing, not only will Les never have been banned from the men's locker room, he will be invited into the women's locker room.

In that same episode, Jennifer, the knock-out secretary, is tired of Herb, the sleazy sales manager, flirting with her. To get Herb to back off, Johnny the DJ tells Herb that Jennifer is actually a man who had a sex-change operation.

As you can see, WKRP in Cincinnati was already LGBT in Cincinnati — but, still not quite woke enough.

Anyway, Get Woke Up! managed to gain access to leaked plot summaries revealing the DEI rewrites for other classic shows such as Friends, Seinfeld, The Office, The Jeffersons and even Gilligan's Island. You can read the synopsis, plus see stills, over at: https://getwokeup.com/friends-the-office-and-seinfeld-getting-woke-makeovers/ 

—John C. A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/