What's the Toll-Free Number for THAT?

I cut my corporate teeth in customer service - an inbound call center. I estimate that during that seven-year span, I took over 125,000 calls. I know that was quite a while ago, but I do not recall ever...EVER...confusing unhappy customers with homophobes.

Or vice versa.

In his weekly column in the July 17, 2008 edition of the Philadelphia Daily News, Michael Smerconish recounts a tale about a recent event in Fort Smith, Arkansas. In brief: Sacha Baron Cohen, he of Borat fame, staged an elaborate, Borat-like hoax for an upcoming Borat-esque film. The Borat-ly ruse involved enticing people to attend a cage-fighting event at the Fort Smith Convention Center. The advertising promised: HOT CHICKS, COLD BEER, HARDCORE FIGHTS. I've been to weddings that fit that bill.

About 1,600 people showed, paid a buck-a-beer, got free t-shirts and were treated to a couple of warm-up fights. That's about when the mood changed. While cameras (under the premise of shooting a documentary) rolled, a disguised Cohen and another actor began a cage match that morphed into something homoerotic, with the men undressing each other down to their underwear and kissing each other's chests. The crowd turned, a riot ensued, beer and chairs were hurled at the cage, security struggled to keep patrons out of the ring, Cohen and Company escaped...and it's all coming soon to a theater near you!

I may never say the word "Fandango" with the same innocence again.

The key question Smerconish raises in his piece is about the reaction of the crowd. Should they be considered homophobic for turning so violently against what they witnessed, or is there something else? It amazes me that the question is even asked.

Truthfully, I like Smerconish; he also hosts a morning radio talk show on conservative 1210-AM (WPHT) in Philadelphia. I don't always agree with him, and there are times I think he drones on for no other reason than he loves the sound of his own voice broadcasting out to the seventh largest market in the country. (Eat it, Seattle-Tacoma! Nobody cares who comes in fourteenth!) However, Smerconish is honest and fair, and while he might subscribe to the conservative talking-points newsletter, he is openly disdainful of those points he doesn't care for, like chickpeas on the salad bar of politics.

But this time Smerconish went all hummus on me. He believes that the crowd's violent reaction was not borne of homophobia, but rather of the simple dissatisfaction any customer feels when he has not received something as advertised. Seriously.

Remind me to find cover the next time Smerconish falls prey to a barcode snafu and is not given the two-for-one deal on hot dogs at the local Acme.

He writes, "...Americans, no matter what part of the country they're from, want the show they paid to see." He later continues, "The producers didn't deliver on a heavily advertised promise of bikinis and brawls, and Fort Smith raised hell. It had nothing to do with homophobia."

Smerconish has taken the issue of mob violence against gays and turned it into an unhappy customer situation. Nice. I don't dispute that all Americans expect to get what they paid for, and they should. But if riots broke out every time they didn't, fast food drive-thru workers would need to wear a cheap headset, bad polyester, and full riot gear. The magnitude of this crowd's reaction says there is more at work here than "not what we paid for."

Sure, Cohen's actions seem carefully calculated and they probably garnered the expected response. But I can't imagine that Cohen said, "Let's do this thing, and when people go crazy because they didn't get what they paid for, it will have the appearance that they went crazy because they are homophobic! It's the old 'perception is greater than reality' gag!"

Smerconish's biggest mistake is giving people too much credit. What he fails to see are what some are capable of when it comes to their hatred of homosexuality.

There are those out there who will cherry-pick verses from Scripture in an effort to use the Word of God to further their discriminatory agenda. Their entire system of faith seems to hinge on one 12-word line from Leviticus, and completely disregard the other 780,000 (or so) words of The Bible. Maybe these folks are just dissatisfied Borders customers.

A few lone kooks not enough for you? How about a well-organized bunch of kooks...and powerful ones at that? Many politicians, those men and women whom we all put into office (and really, what were we thinking), support a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Can you imagine the notion of using this country's most important document as a discriminatory weapon? Maybe the elected elite are just dissatisfied customers of the National Constitution Center's gift shop.

And if that isn't enough to convince you, how about this for a number: 14,631,024. That's the number of people in Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and yes, Arkansas, who, in the 2004 election, voted on ballot measures banning same-sex marriage from their respective states. (Source: CNN.com)

None of those 14,631,024 votes are visually sensational enough to make the new Cohen picture, and while the 2004 election lacked beer-tossing and chair-hurling, a homophobia-fueled riot by any other name is still organized hatred.

What were all of those customers dissatisfied with, I wonder?