“Work It” Cancelled After Two Shows

ABC’s entertainment chief must have experienced the world’s most rapid education over the weekend.

Although just last week he publicly declared that he didn’t “get” complaints made by transgender people about the network’s new sitcom “Work It”, it seems that media activists, critics, and a disgruntled general public somehow made him see the light- The ridiculously offensive sitcom has been cancelled after just two shows.

So what’s the takeaway here?

Well, for starters, it’s 2012. Corporate media execs – and everyone else – can “not get” trans issues at their own risk and peril.

Another takeaway is that even though the media landscape can feel overwhelming at times, ultimately our voices do matter in the fight for against hateful media representation.

The last takeaway could be the most meta of them all: how the media covers media, matters. That is to say, in this wild Internet era of ours, we’re all responsible for what we choose to draw attention to, and how we choose to do so. When the New York Times reprinted a story from the AP that used inaccurate and offensive language that failed to call transgender people, people, they were contributing to the very problem they were attempting to report on. Once again folks, from the GLAAD media reference guide, “transgender” should be used as an adjective, not as a noun.