It's not often that the Hollywood gossip bloggers are behind the curve. All you have to do to register that fact is see how long it takes news that breaks on TMZ or Perez Hilton to hit the MSM, and to note that the MSM is getting a lot of its Britney, Paris, and Lindsay news (if it can even be called that) from those sites.

So it's fun to see a little reversal now and then. Last week, Perez Hilton belatedly got word that at the University of Michigan, you can take an English class called "How to Be Gay." His posting in turn made the rounds of the internet, touching off commentary on sites ranging from gawker.com to townhall.com. Today, the Michigan Daily reports on Hilton's reporting, noting the errors it contained (contrary to Hilton's claims, the course is not offered this term), and noting, too, that this is not exactly news. Controversy has surrounded this course ever since it was first taught seven years ago.

It's fun to see fluffy but hugely trafficked sites taking note of what gets taught in English departments, even if those sites are a bit factually challenged. And it's interesting to see how debates about what should and should not be taught in literature courses tend to cycle round and round and round over time--because for every delighted Perez Hilton out there celebrating courses such as Halperin's, there's a dour state legislator trying to shut them down, and the back and forth just repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, then as background noise. It's as though our memories are so short, and our capacity to advance collective understanding is so minuscule, that all we can do is rehearse the same basic polarized positions year in and year out.

I'm not really up for that this morning, so I will just link to the long post I wrote about Halperin's "How to Be Gay" class back in 2003.