John Scalzi has a hilarious post calling the NYT to task for its, as he puts it, “mild heterosexual panic.”

It doesn’t seem likely people would confuse me for being gay anymore, what with the wife and child and rural red-state lifestyle and the Wal-Mart clothes, but if they did, you know what I would think? Good. Here in the US, gay is the new British, which is to say that if people think you're gay, they also think you are smarter, wittier, and more fun to be around than the average guy. Sure, you sodomize other men on occasion, but that’s your business, and we Americans always suspected British men had sodomy as a required subject at Eton. So it’s all the same, really. And in the meantime you always say the perfect thing at the perfect moment. You’re more entertaining than cable! And what could possibly be wrong with that? If people know you're a straight guy, on the other hand, they automatically think you’re a beef-witted social dullard in a Linux shirt hoping to delude some poor woman into accepting a sperm packet or two. In a word: Eeeeeeew.

I actually thought the gaydar article — yes, the filename actually is 19GAYDAR.html, and how much more fabulous than that can you get, really? — was amusing and, generally, positive. But John’s still right. Confuse away.

(The “man date” article, on the other hand, was from another planet. Possibly the same planet — hi, Marie! — where a woman eating alone in a restaurant has to worry she’ll be mistaken for a prostitute.)