Gays Want Washington Back on Set

Jasmyne Cannick, who worked with Washington on the Pan African Arts Festival, said she’s infuriated ABC booted Washington from the show’s upcoming fourth season for calling Knight a “faggot” during a scuffle on the set and believes it smacks of racism. So she’s launched a petition - which had 1,233 signatures as of last night - to get the actor his job back.

The petition says Washington’s firing “further adds to a disturbing new trend at ABC wherein minority actors have been dismissed at an alarming rate over the past two years. Blacks, including . . . Star Jones (’The View’), Harold Perrineau (’Lost’), Alfre Woodard, Mehcad Brooks and Page Kennedy (’Desperate Housewives’) have been let go . . . One must ask themselves, what is going on? . . . While we don’t approve of [Washington’s] use of the F-word at the Golden Globes, Washington has since apologized and gone on to perform community service by way of a public service announcement for the very organizations that have been orchestrating his dismissal. But it seems it wasn’t enough.”

Cannick told us: “Isaiah has done more for the gay and lesbian community than T.R. Knight did in or out of the closet. He did what they asked him to do, and now they want to make sure he will never work again. At what point is enough enough?”

That his firing was racially motivated is a bit ridiculous, but that his firing was necessary following the anger management classes and public service ads he was driven into by ABC execs seems superfluous. Not that a person shouldn’t be fired for violence and aggression toward coworkers, but if that’s to be the case, dispatch of that offender quickly, regardless of whether or not that puts your ever important medical drama plot lines at risk. If you don’t, you run the risk of appearing to say, “Saying ‘faggot’ is abhorrent, but we really need this bigot to settle things with Dr. Yang.”

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