Robert David Sullivan

New TV cliche: All attractive women (but zero attractive men) are bisexual

Alyssa Rosenberg is intrigued by the possibility that Community could get a lesbian storyline. She quotes actress Alison Brie, who plays Annie on the NBC comedy:

“With Annie, to be honest, I could see her getting with a girl,” she told me... “It seems like it would be out of character for her, but I just like to go back to the fact that she’s young and impressionable and still figuring out who she is and what she wants to. It’s one of her best qualities that though she seems uptight, she’ll try everything.”

"I hope Harmon and company give it a shot," Rosenberg writes. "Community‘s so smart about so many other aspects of friendship, dating, and growing up that I think the show could knock an arc like this out of the park."

At the risk of offending part of the LGBT community, stories about young, attractive women experimenting with lesbian sex do not count as daring or progressive. They're already all over TV, and I think it has something to do with straight male writers and producers who don't mind girl-on-girl action.

Here are some highlights from just the past week in Sitcomland:

• How I Met Your Mother: Every time Lily gets drunk on martinis, she tries to make out with Robin.
• The Big Bang Theory: When Amy fails to get a response from kissing Sheldon, she happily kisses Penny instead.
• Parks and Recreation: When Andy sees a painting of a topless Leslie, he says, "I'd hit that." His wife, April, adds, "I would, too."

I don't remember an example from last Thursday's 30 Rock, but we've already seen this (SFW because it's two chicks):

In addition, we have young, attractive bisexual women on The Good Wife (Kalinda) and House ("13").

Not that there's anything wrong with that... But the hot girl who will have meaningless, commitment-free sex with another girl is a pretty tired comedy trope by now. And I can't think of similar examples involving good-looking men. Sure, there are male friendships (like Abed and Troy on Community) that have all the emotional aspects of a romance, but these characters are still repulsed by physical contact. Even on Will and Grace (hey, remember that show?), there's an episode in which Will and Jack react with disgust and revulsion when they (innocently) wind up next to each other in the same bed — and they're actually supposed to be gay!

So go ahead, Hollywood, and keep teasing the young-straight-male demographic by having hot TV chicks make out for laughs, but don't pretend you're doing anything new.

New York, San Francisco, Boston lead in "diversity density"

Boston is the most racially diverse place in America outside of New York and San Francisco. That is, if you measure diversity by the likelihood of running into people of several different races during a brisk walk across town. (Update: See this post for data about individual cities and towns in Massachusetts. Also: more on diversity density in a story I wrote for the Boston Globe.)

Below is the list of 20 counties with the highest "diversity density," which I based on newly released Census data. Since I wasn't looking for counties that are merely "non-white" or places in which just two racial groups are nearly even, I calculated the percentage of the population who didn't claim membership in either of the racial groups that were the two largest in that particular county. (The US as a whole is 64% non-Hispanic white and 16% Hispanic, leaving 20% in other groups: 12% black, 5% Asian, 2% two or more races, and less than 1% identifying as American Indian, Native Hawaiian, or "other.")

I added population density as a factor because I wanted to get a sense of real interaction among people of different races; without this factor, the list would have a lot of small, isolated places (chiefly in Alaska and Hawaii) and sprawling, highway-laced counties with large areas dominated by one or another racial group (chiefly in Texas). I admit to an urban bias here, but I'm open to any research showing that suburbia is actually more socially integrated.

Note: Baltimore and St. Louis are among the 20 most crowded counties in the US but did not make this diversity list; more than 90% of the populations in both cities are either black or non-Hispanic white, with few Hispanics or Asians. Counties that rank higher on diversity density than on overall population density are in bold.

20 COUNTIES WITH THE MOST PEOPLE PER SQUARE MILE WHO DON'T BELONG TO THE TWO LARGEST RACIAL GROUPS IN THAT COUNTY

(compared with rank in overall density)

1. New York, NY (Manhattan): 18,328 (1)
2. Kings, NY (Brooklyn): 11,504 (2)
3. Queens, NY: 9,156 (4)
4. Bronx, NY: 5,401 (3)
5. San Francisco, CA: 4,328 (5)
6. Suffolk, MA (Boston): 3,957 (7)
7. Hudson, NJ (Jersey City): 3,660 (6)
8. Philadelphia, PA: 2,362 (8)
9. Alexandria, VA: 2,326 (10)
10. Cook, IL (Chicago): 1,745 (17)
11. Essex, NJ (Newark): 1,706 (14)
12. Arlington, VA: 1,673 (11)
13. Richmond, NY (Staten Island): 1,496 (12)
14. Washington, DC: 1,485 (9)
15. Manassas Park, VA: 1,429 (16)
16. Union, NJ (Elizabeth): 1,418 (18)
17. Falls Church City, VA: 1,050 (15)
18. Nassau, NY (western Long Island): 931 (20)
19. Orange, CA: 847 (26)
20. Bergen, NJ: 828 (25)

In general, a high "diversity density" seems to be correlated with a stable or growing economy, as found in New York, Boston, and Washington. Other highly ranked counties include Oakland, California's Alameda County (ranked 59th in overall density, 21st in diversity density); Middlesex County in New Jersey, home of Rutgers University (ranked 45th overall, 24th in diversity density); and Dallas County, Texas (42th overall, 25th in diversity density).