On her Facebook page, Canadian teen Brittany McMillan started the new day of obli-gay-tion, and wrote: "Many of [the teens] suffered from homophobic abuse in their schools or in their homes. We want to take a stand to say that we will not tolerate this. Purple represents Spirit on the LGBTQ flag and that's exactly what we'd like all of you to have with you: spirit." On the GLAAD Blog, intern Max Gouttebroze listed all the media activism for "tolerance" and against "homophobia."
To honor those teens who have lost their lives to anti-LGBT bullying, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wore purple. Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb wore purple during The Today Show, and the hosts from E!’s Chelsea, Lately, CNBC, ABC’s The View, NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams and World News with Diane Sawyer, CBS’ The Talk, HLN’s The Joy Behar Show and Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Thomas Roberts also wore purple during yesterday’s programs. Ellen DeGeneres spoke about anti-gay bullying with Fort Worth, TX City Councilman Joel Burns and both sported the color in support of Spirit Day. Katie Couric will also be wearing a purple outfit and check out these screen shots of CNBC hosts.
MTV Networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, Vh1, Comedy Central, Spike, etc.) has distributed a memo to all employees with information about Spirit Day and will also be giving out thousands of purple ribbons to staff. LOGO will be running a purple ribbon on air all day and plans other activities.
Yesterday, GLAAD announced that E! Networks would be going purple across their platforms and E! News’ hosts Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic, as well as E! News Now hosts Amy Paffrath and Melana Scantlin, and E! columnist Marc Malkin would be wearing purple today in support of Spirit Day. E! Online even turned all their news headlines purple!
GLAAD's list of participating media companies included:
CNBC
E!
Logo
HGTV
MTV Networks
Philadelphia Magazine
People En Español
Ms. Magazine
Today Show
The Talk (CBS)
The View (ABC)
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Joy Behar Show
Maria Celeste Arrarás, the host of Al Rojo Vivo on Telemundo wore purple in honor of Spirit Day, and producers did a terrific segment about the day’s significance. Rodner Figueroa, a fashion expert on El Gordo y la Flaca on Univision also spoke movingly about youth suicide and added a purple scarf to host Raul de Molina’s ensemble. Numerous other Spanish-language programs included segments on Spirit Day, including Primer Impacto on Univision.
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