Glee is here! The long-awaited, much-hyped Glee finally made its debut on Fox last night, and I've got to say it's funny and hip and diverse and ironic and postmodern and unlike anything you've ever seen.

See, this straight white teacher wants to help the misfits in the glee club, though his straight white wife wishes he were in a more profitable profession. To make the club more hip, he blackmails the straight white football star into joining, and instantly the club's straight white Vanessa Hudgens-wannabe is smitten, though the hunk already has a straight white girlfriend. Surrounded by the hilarious ensemble of a gay, a black, an Asian, and a geek in a wheelchair, much hijinks ensue.

Oh. Wait. Maybe it's like everything we've seen before.

Fox has torn pages straight out of the Republican playbook to create this delusional crap. Since when did "diversity" mean adding minorities for comic relief? It was insulting in Gone With the Wind and it's insulting now. Since when did "equality" mean throwing on a queer kid who constantly worries about dirtying his Marc Jacobs sweater? It didn't work for Mel Gibson, and it's not working now.

New and hip? Ironic and postmodern? Sorry, no. This is the same old bullshit. In fact, maybe it's a step backward, blithely offering up the same old bullshit while pretending it's something new. Once again the diversity sits squarely behind the white stars. There's no lead singing or romance for that effeminate gay kid, or the fat n' sassy black girl, or the quiet Asian (who, something tells me, is going to have to decide whether to continue singing or devote all her energy to pre-med like her controlling, heavily-accented parents want.) The helpless geek in the wheelchair doesn't take center stage. Heck, he can't even find his brakes.

I'll concede one thing: the show tries to be postmodern. When the lead whites sing their first number -- "You're the One that I Want," which surely would have been spoiled by people of color -- FNSBG (Fat N' Sassy Black Girl) protests. She breaks up the number, declaring, "Hey, I ain't having it! You got Beyoncé here! I ain't no Kelly Rowland!"

But then for the finale's whites-only number, she's all "Doo wop. Bee bop. Doo wop. Bee boop."

Evidently between the first half of the show and the second, she learned something.

Heterosexual whites in the front. Everybody else in back, please, waiting for the white man to call.