Musto on McGreevey | and a great pic too!

[nostamj]

What the McGreevey mess means for closets, corruption, and casting couches

<snip>
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 available—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

much more

[jdj]

1. Is he saying Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith are gay?

Alot of people are going to be outed before the election, methinks.

[nostamj]

2. those rumors are not new n/t

[JI7]

3. Anderson Cooper is already openly gay

[Chovexani]

4. Anderson Cooper was dating Carson Kressley

Of Queer Eye fame, or so the scuttlebutt goes.

AC isn't closeted he just doesn't talk about his personal life.

On edit: as sleazy as he is, Cipel is pretty tempting in that pic.

[nostamj]

6. Cooper and Kressley??

there's a interesting couple! I must hang out in the wrong gay bars...

[readmylips]

5. Ciper's lawyer, Lowly is definitely gay....

Lowly voice is just like Carson's of Queer Eye Show. He claimed Ciper was not gay...Ciper just gives it up for the sake of 50Mil.