Keeping up my end of the bargain

Friends of friends,

I think, like moderators of any good blog, bloggers should push the limits of journalism and make mainstream journos feel uncomfortable in their cutting-edgeness in interpreting what's news and what's not. (Nevermind the fact that I am, in fact, a "mainstream journalist." Let's pretend I'm not here.)

So hear this:

This weekend, I spent QT at home with the family in scenic Corpus Christi, Texas. And we were talking about something with my teenage cousins about something that was fairly dumb. And one of the kids, who is quite intelligent, said, "that's so gay."

As in, that's lame. Uncool. Unhip. Unhappening. Gay?

Now my dear porch residents, some of my best friends and even co-workers consider themselves gay. But, those folks, more than likely, don't consider themselves uncool. Yet however, in our modern vernacular "gay" has come to mean something more than itself, particularly for young people. And nothing against my good cousins, who if anything, are guilty of being hip.

It is hard, I think, to come across any young people who aren't tempted to use the word "gay" as something that means something completely different than what, ahem, gay people intended it to mean.

This is not exactly news, per se. In fact, in Fresno, California, school officials are already warning kids not to push it with their remarks about what's gay and what's not. But I wonder: Is the damage already done? Have we as a society decided that the word gay = lame? And why?

Your thoughts?