Then he asks himself, and the audience, and Wynonna, and God: "Why did I say Winona Ryder??" I don't know, Sam. I just don't know. Maybe you were thinking "that Wynonna has stolen my heart," and then you thought of thievery as a concept, and then you thought of Winona Ryder. Or maybe you were just up too late last night watching Mermaids on Oh!, the Oxygen Oprah network for ladies.

Laugh childishly along with the GMA crew in the clip above, courtesy intern Bette Bentley

Ask the press to call a gay news host like they see one, and all of a sudden demureness is a virtue. For every stab taken at outing a closeted news man, a contradictory report pops up. ABC's Sam Champion made out with a chick! Bill Hemmer was seen loving a lady on the Empire State building! But let's be careful not to point out why both those things are newsworthy enough to be mentioned.

Gay? Not so much? Maybe? You tell us. Our bastardization of the Kinsey scale below uses a scale of 0-6. The higher the score, the gayer the news gay.

Hemmer's star rose at CNN, where his boyish looks endeared him to legions of grandmothers and gays. We hear the lady he showed off yesterday has been his girlfriend for several years. Whatever, we giggle when he says "lover" in this video.
Bill Hemmer—1.5

We and everyone we know have seen Anderson Cooper out and about at gay bars for years, so the charade seems a little beyond the point.
Anderson Cooper—6

ABC weatherman Sam Champion was spotted the other day sucking face with a woman, which might unnerve his ex-boyfriend Jose or his current flame Sean, if you believe our commenters.
Sam Champion—5

Fox News anchorman Shepherd Smith has lovely locks, a Southern twang and piles of rampant homosexuality rumors. Of course, he doesn't help matters much by saying "blowjob" by accident during his live newscast, like he does here. A Washington Blade columnist basically outed Smith two years ago when he wrote about running into the anchor at a New York piano bar. He declined Smith's invitation to go back to his place.
Shepherd Smith—5

Fox shoutman Sean Hannity's college radio show was canceled when the station accused him of discriminating against gays. Besides his pundit duties, Hannity puts his name behind a match-making feature on his website called, we kid you not, Hannidate, which is the creepiest thing ever. The site's options allow same sex couple searches. "Hannidate is open to everyone," he told a newspaper in 2006, including, the site says, those looking for life partners.
Sean Hannity—3

Check the video bin for a clip i just uploaded called "GMA_Ryan_and_Sam_being_gay"

Sam Champion and Ryan Seacrest are on GMA being VERY GAY!
i.e. Ryan just said to Sam: "Thank you for completing the ball assembly!"

-Nick :-)

It goes without saying that no one can predict the weather. And in the face of 60% chance of showers, possible scattered thunderstorms and partial cloudiness, America needs a weatherman who is consistent—consistently good looking, that is. Enter Sam Champion, who has, for nearly 20 years, fabricated the weather and looked damn good doing it.

As the predicament of the polar ice caps has become increasingly dire, the need for better-looking weathermen has grown exponentially. With the extinction of "mild and sunny" weekends, Al Roker soon realized he could no longer get away with pounding doughnuts, and therefore stepped up his game with gastric bypass. And with hopes dashed for the white Christmas he is always yapping about, Bill Evans (who is Jewish, naturally) kicked shit into high gear with a new set of hairplugs.

Indeed, though 2007 went on record as the year with the most "x-treme" weather, instead of demoting Sam, WABC instead promoted him from AccuWeather weatherboy to Good Morning America Meteorologist, despite the fact that he did absolutely nothing to stop Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami that nearly took the life of Petra Nemcova. WABC did not even dispatch Sam to the scene of those natural disasters, preferring to send uglier and more overweight correspondents, ones whose faces could be spared if nature should again attack.

Thus it comes as no surprise that this morning, while millions of commuters were squashed on broken trains and seconds away from punching the people next to them, Sam Champion prepared New Yorkers for the upcoming storm the best way he knew how—with a pre-storm trip to Dr. Zizmor, and a cruise through Chelsea with his blepharoplasty down. Streets may explode, bridges collapse and levees break, but America can take comfort in the fact that Sam's gorgeous face is staying put.

Previously: Geraldo Rivera Protects And Serves

CHILDISH staffers at the "Today" show have been reduced to homophobic name-calling about their rivals at "Good Morning America" - Diane Sawyer, Chris Cuomo, Robin Roberts and Sam Champion. A network source says, " 'Today' staffers, from top to bottom, executives to interns, refer to 'GMA' as 'Gay-MA' " and snicker about the hosts. "GMA" has been gaining in the ratings on No. 1 "Today" and cut its lead in half. For their part, the "GMA" folks are said to refer to "Today" as "Yesterday." Reps for both shows declined to comment.

Sticks & Stones [NYP]