‘Queer Eye’ on Justice

With Hollywood barraging audiences with larger-than-life characters like Spiderman, the Hulk and the Terminator, here’s a plan for the Bravo cable channel to conjure its own summer sociological phenomenon. Let’s match the stylish cast of the network’s new “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” against the Justice Supreme who draws dark power by evoking the scare of a national homosexual conspiracy.

The gay Fab 5, with supernatural attributes in the three Fs -- fashion, food and furniture -- have a mission to overcome the hang-ups and shortcomings of straight men, retooling them in 24-hour make-overs that can cause girlfriends of even the most schlumpy dudes to melt.

Brian “Butch” Scheppel, an actor and Broadway prop builder, plays initial witness to the gay superpowers of exquisite taste and bon mot. Carson, a fashion marvel, wonders in “Queer Eye’s” Episode 1 of Butch: “Do you buy all your clothing at the Home Depot?” The guys deem his bed “prison-like.” They get his long hair cropped at Dop Dop salon. After much muss and fuss, the Fab 5 underscore, Butch isn’t fixed forever; his true essence emerges. He’s newly confident, fashionable and entertaining.

Now, would the result be the same if the Fab 5 wrangled with Justice Antonin Scalia, who found it permissible in a recent dissent for Texas to storm bedrooms to police the sex there and warned against America’s capitulation to a “gay agenda”?

Imagine the wand waving over Scalia, clad in his usual dull suit, a la Hart, Schaffner & Marx. He’d be transported to Barneys for a nifty purple Ralph Lauren suit. How about a pink Ermenegildo Zegna shirt? Prada shoes? That stuffy oak-and-alabaster court decor also just must go. To do so, the Fab 5 might need the aid of Scalia pal and their secret ally: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, he of gold-braided, Gilbert & Sullivan-like robes, just to preside over presidential impeachments.

Resisting this scenario? Courting sexuality angst? Or maybe cartoonish notions just don’t capture? Ah, there may be the real power of the Fab 5. Contrary to what dissenters Scalia, Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas pronounced from the bench last month, gays and lesbians have become part of America’s warp and woof. Camp has gone mainstream and most of America has moved so far that even the “Queer Eye” stereotypes evoke what they should -- a summer giggle.