[lbo-talk] Musto on McGreevy

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Tue Aug 17 13:44:20 PDT 2004


-Golan Cipel is NOT a Mossad agent

-James McGreevy was NOT caught in a honey trap

-Golan Cipel was NOT able to gain access to information about

the 9/11 investigation.

AB-SO-LU-MENT PAS

Lacenaire


>Alien vs. Predator
>by Michael Musto
>August 17th, 2004 1:05 PM
>
>I'm a gay Americanâ*”applause, applauseâ*”so I've been especially
>mesmerized by McGreevey-gate, the most sweeping allegory about the
>dangers of the closet since David Gest was allegedly brutalized by
>flying pieces of Halston furniture. By his own admission, New Jersey
>governor Jim McGreevey has been a poster child for duplicity,
>finally forced by a legal wake-up call to come clean while wearing a
>patterned red tie that would have outed him anyway.
>
>The gay revelation was a momentous event that, sadly, could have
>only happened out of shame, not pride. Even more so than showbiz
>closets, political ones are generally so airtight that it takes
>flat-out blackmail (or at least a possible sexual harassment suit)
>to fling them open and a smoking butt to keep them that way. The
>days when a married pol announces "Yep, I'm gay" just because he
>feels like it are as far away as Michael Jackson begging the FBI to
>chaperone his next date.
>
>Still, even if only because he had to, the wandering-eyed Jerseyite
>spoke out and did so with enough rising-against-oppression authority
>to make you feel, yep, he must be gay. In his August 12 speech
>saying he'll step down into Garden State ignominy, McGreevey seemed
>as dignified as his administration was unpopular and as
>well-intentioned as his reign was called corrupt, failing to
>register as any kind of stereotypical gay psycho killer or colorist.
>At least that's how it all seemed at first. When the pixie dust
>cleared, it became more obvious that the Drumthwacket-eer had played
>the lavender card and blinded us to the fact that he'd apparently
>put gayroll on the payroll and used taxpayer money to fund dubious
>jobs for what was basically a glorified trick, whether real or
>imagined. "Sexually confused" is what the press first came away
>with, all misty-eyed, but by the next day they were thinking
>"jaw-droppingly sleazy," and that hasn't helped the gay cause any
>more than McGre!
> evey's last scandal helped
>fundraisers-don't-hire-prosties-to-entrap-their-brother-in-law
>awareness.
>
>In his statement, McGreevey insistently portrayed himself as a
>survivor of hormonal bewilderment, not a gleefully flaming queen
>who's been cruising for a bruising for years between dutiful
>ribbon-cutting appearances with the wife. He looked heart-tuggingly
>contrite as he declared, "It was wrong. It was foolish. It was
>inexcusable." What, his marriage? No, he meant cheating on his
>marriage, though he neglected to add that it was with a not
>unattractive, overage rent boy/underqualified employee whose only
>apparent terror advising was in advising himself to be a terror when
>scorned. Adding fuel to the flaming-queen flames, the guy, Golan
>Cipel, then swore he was the victim of predatory advances and horny
>vindictiveness, and by the way he isn't gay, no matter how close he
>lives to Don't Tell Mama! (Not that it matters if people call him
>gay, blah blah blah.) By the time that item leaked, there was more
>confusion and blame flying around than in the Queer as Folk episode
>where Jus!
> tin discovered that Brian didn't go to Ibiza.
>
>I'm not buying into theories that the guy (who's straight, by the
>way) must be some kind of soigné Mossad spy, but I am still amazed
>by Golan's heights of nerve. His accusations, seemingly right out of
>Gore Vidal's dirty-politics drama The Best Man, couldn't come at a
>better time for Republicans, who, led by gaydar-activating Christie
>Todd Whitman herself, are demanding that McGreevey step down
>immediately, presumably so one of their own illustrious, sexually
>unconfused ranks can get voted into the job.
>
>And speaking of confusion, the biggest shocker of all is that
>McGreevey's gay-gay-gay revelation has somehow spelled unemployment
>for him but so far not anything resembling marital termination. In
>fact, right after the admission, the scandalized politico and his
>missus went away for some quality time together. Whereâ*”to the Fire
>Island "Meat Rack"? What's it gonna take to break up this
>arrangement? The whole point of a fake marriage, people, is to keep
>it going only until people find out it's fake. And you certainly
>wrap it up when the wife finds out it's fake!
>
>Butâ*”someone's gotta say thisâ*”Dina's no dummy and he's no genius
>of discretion. She had to have known! Everyone else, from reporters
>to Web posters, had buzzed about the supposed liaison for years, so
>how could she not have gotten the memo? Despite the anonymous source
>running around claiming that Arianna, I mean Dina, was
>homo-clueless, I bet the McGreeveys have a de-lovely,
>we-know-what-it's-about situation and enjoy sharing a home base,
>even more so when power is tasted. Did you see wifey's face at the
>press conference? This was no Mrs. Kobe Bryantâ*“type squirmer. The
>woman almost looked proud! She practically seemed at peace with his
>having gotten a piece! Maybe this is the marriage of the
>futureâ*”one completely open in its duplicity.
>
>Lord knows McGreevey's first wife, Kari Schutz, seems to know the
>score. Last week, The New York Times asked Schutz if she knew before
>their divorce that McGreevey was gay, and she tellingly replied,
>"I'll leave it at that." But funny, the next day, when the New York
>Post and the Daily News trotted out the very same question, she
>shrieked, "I didn't know!" Clearly, Schutz had been visited by the
>same checkbook-wielding angel who contacted Kevin Federline's
>suddenly ecstatic dumped girlfriend.
>
>McGreevey can take comfort in the fact that he's no more alone in
>his double life than Scott Peterson is the only guy with a murdered
>pregnant wife. Public figures are constantly driven into
>surreptitious love by the way society's underlying disapproval of
>gays fuels their own self-doubts. In fact, the same day "I am a gay
>American" became the hottest catchphrase since "Shove it!," the
>California Supreme Court routinely invalidated 4,000 or so
>marriages. The hilarious result is that Rosie O'Donnell is now
>living in sin, but McGreevey's marriage to his beard stands by law!
>(That's good news for him, since he's possibly sticking with it.)
>Adding yet more ironic texture, McGreevey himself helped fuel this
>very climate by arguing against gay marriage (though he did sign
>Jersey's Domestic Partnership Act). I guess hypocrisy is not the
>exclusive domain of the Giuliani-Gingrich-Limbaugh-Ryan-etc. party
>after all.
>
>And sex scandals, as we know by now, are not the exclusive domain of
>any group. When it comes to the proverbial casting couch, the effect
>is always corrosive, whether the couch is from Seaman's or Ikea.
>Deliciously enough, on the very page after its McGreevey story last
>Friday, the Post reported that Bronx state senator Efrain Gonzalez
>had given a longtime gal pal a cushy job. (Obviously Golan Cipel
>wasn't availableâ*”probably busy launching the inevitable handbag
>line.) Well, unless Gonzalez gives a weepy "I am a straight
>American" speech and steps down in shame very soon, I'm moving to
>Canada.
>
>With all these lurid layers wrapped around the McGreevey story like
>a Dolce & Gabbana suit, the gay pundits are having a foofy field
>day. Reaction has been impassioned and mixed, from out Massachusetts
>congressman Barney Frank (who survived his own escort scandal in
>'89) welcoming the closet flinging to Chelsea bar patrons
>pontificating over sour apple martinis, "I never realized McGreevey
>was so cute!" (Or that Cipel was so straight.)
>
>Choire Sicha, the gawker.com blogger-turned-overseer, told me he
>loved the spectacle of Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith having to
>roll around in the story on camera. But what does the whole squalid
>soap opera represent? "You can read it really traditionally," said
>Sicha. "This is why J. Edgar Hoover used to say the CIA wouldn't let
>gays in. They could use it to blackmail you!" Especially if you're
>fully gowned like Hoover. But just as traditional was McGreevey's
>claim to have had an affair with one man. "Like, oh right," smirked
>Sicha. "A man this week."
>
>Conversely, author-Barneys creative director Simon Doonan feels
>McGreevey was too forthcoming. "With his wife standing there,"
>Doonan told me, "he could have at least said, 'I'm bisexual.' It
>really elbowed her out of the picture big time, which made him seem
>a bit less than charitable. Gay people are usually a little sweeter
>than that."
>
>Charitable gay person Michelangelo Signorileâ*”the godfather of
>outing and a talk show host on Sirius Satellite Radio's OutQâ*”has
>his own problems with all the McGrievances in the air. "What I
>hate," he told me, "is that in every one of these stories, there's
>always an evil queen doing something horrible." Or two evil queens?
>"Well, there are several possible scenarios here," he offered. "One
>could be that Cipel is telling the truth and he just wanted to work
>and McGreevey started harassing him. I've written about
>harassmentâ*”it's so typical of closet cases.
>
>"Or it could be the complete opposite, where Cipel's been extorting
>McGreevey from the get-go. How do we know his jobs were not based on
>maybe one sexual romp in Israel and the next morning this nut says,
>'I have pictures of this. I want a job'? The reality is probably
>somewhere in the middle."
>
>Either way, the upshot is that the carefully chosen words "I am a
>gay American" have been resonating beyond all the pulp-fiction
>details of the story. "A lot of people will find sympathy with
>that," says Signorile. "People are beginning to distinguish between
>the fact that he's gay and these other issues. In that sense, it's a
>good thing."
>
>And you certainly have to find sympathy with the fact that, as of
>last Friday, channels were still showing the suddenly riotous
>commercial for New Jersey tourism that has McGreevey and his family
>cavorting on a beach (no, not in Fire Island) as the shark-mouthed
>gov urges, "Come out and see what's new in Jersey." Thanks, honey,
>but I came out and I'm staying right here.
>
>
>
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