Jeff Jarvis makes a decent point:
Apparently, everyone else in New Jersey media knew McGreevey’s secret. And if that’s so, it raises lots of questions. I’m not saying they should have outed him; I long for the day when a politician’s personal life is just that. But if he indeed hired his lover for a state job for which that reputed lover was in no way qualified… well, that’s a crime. Why didn’t we know?
It’s great that McGreevey came right out and told the world that he was gay without apologizing for it. But if the charges about cronyism for his lover are true, they’re much more serious than Jack Ryan’s trips to sex clubs.
I understand that the specific comparison is meaningless; the individuals who make up the press corps in New Jersey don’t have to answer for the Chicago Tribune, or vice versa. There’s no one to point to, other than the imaginary beast called “the media.” Still, the public right to know is self-evident in the case of McGreevey, and not at all evident in the case of Jack Ryan. This isn’t right.
{ 10 comments }
Dave 08.13.04 at 4:02 pm
What’s sad is that McGreevy hijacked the gay issue to distract people from his real transgressions – and that peole are buying it. Yeah, he’s gay. It shouldn’t be grounds for resigning, especially in a Northeast state. But it does give him a convenient excuse…
Ken Houghton 08.13.04 at 4:27 pm
There are many well-known secrets in politics, sports, etc. (short sports list: Steelers/Bears QB Kordell Stewart is gay; Eric Lindros was f*ck*ng Rod Brind’Amour’s wife in Philly, which is why Brind’Amour was traded to Carolina and Clarke finally got rid of Lindros; Jason Giambi’s current illness is due to steroids withdrawl).
The “scandals”–look at the list and compare with, say, Ed Koch’s administration–have nothing to do with the resignation, which is directly a result of McGreevey’s being blackmailed by the ex.
Would he have lost a re-election bid? Probably (though the current crop of declared Republican candidates wouldn’t make me bet in favor of even that). Might something still come out linking him to the more serious issues? Yes. Did he fail to clean up the transgressions of the Whitman/DiFrancesco era? Yes.
But he’s not resigning because of the scandals, not matter how much Jeff Jarvis may wet-dream about it.
Katherine 08.13.04 at 5:05 pm
Unfortunately we have a lot more examples of corrupt senators and governors and oh, I don’t know, vice presidents serving out their terms than of gay senators, governors etc. serving out their terms.
Perhaps it was an open secret that he was gay, but not necessarily that this guy was his lover (though people probably suspected it.)
God knows I would hate to get that wrong, out a guy, and ruin his career and put his family through hell, unless I was sure of that.
For that matter I would feel pretty awful about doing it even if I got the story right.
Chris in Boston 08.13.04 at 5:25 pm
“What’s sad is that McGreevy hijacked the gay issue to distract people from his real transgressions – and that peole are buying it. ”
Well, I’m buying it, at least to a point, because the closet is still the requisite condition for serious entry into political life. The exceptions are few and limited in scope. This doesn’t absolve McGreevey of responsibility for deceit, sham marriage and serious ethical impropriety, but reminds us that the deceit didn’t take place in a vacuum.
Hence many (not all) gay men and women have mixed feelings – a despair that we couldn’t have had a more outstanding example of a politician coming out, but also aware that the drama of the closet can’t be separated from the individual failings of McGreevey.
Brett Bellmore 08.13.04 at 10:21 pm
What, you expected them to report a crime by a politician they liked? Catch a clue: Burying dirt on one candidate, and exposing it on another, is how the press makes their “in kind” campaign contributions. If they were impartial, they’d lose a lot of power.
Charles Kuffner 08.14.04 at 12:03 am
Sorry, this is off-topic, but this cannot be left unchallenged:
Jason Giambi’s current illness is due to steroids withdrawal
I refer you to Steve Goldman’s The Pinstriped Bible for what I hope is a definitive response:
Giambi has neither admitted to taking steroids or the like, nor has he tested positive for them. Even if he had, there would be no definitive link between his tumor — which was diagnosed as benign, by the way — and steroid use.
As Will Carroll, author of “Saving the Pitcher” and injury guru of BaseballProspectus.com told me, “The link between cancer and steroids isn’t rock solid. There are plenty of studies where there’s some connection, usually liver or prostate related, but the usual effect is just an amplification of a current process, i.e. steroids make cancer cells grow big and strong also. Ironically, steroids are also a treatment technique for some cancers, including testicular (Lance Armstrong) and Hodgkin’s (Mario Lemieux.) Everyone likes to point to the late Lyle Alzado as a link, but Alzado also took massive, impure doses of HGH (human growth hormone), something that has angiogenic effects on tumors.”
[…]
The sad, frightening truth is, sometimes cancer just happens. It occurs not because of diet, smoking, drug use, too much time spent in the sun, reading in dim light, failing to eat your spinach, or spending too much time sitting next to Donald Rumsfeld. It just happens.
All it takes is one tiny chromosome on one cell to malfunction and you’re in deep trouble. To repeat, blaming Giambi for his current predicament requires three leaps unsupported by current evidence: 1) You have to assume that he took steroids. You don’t know that. 2) You have to assume that performance-enhancing drugs cause tumors. You don’t know that either. 3) You have to assume that his tumor is of a kind that could possibly be related to steroid use. Unless you’re a Yankees insider, you haven’t been told.
raj 08.14.04 at 12:13 pm
While doing a little googling on the subject yesterday, I ran across an column in a NJ paper from May 2002 in which he was, indeed outed:
>THE PROBLEM WITH GOVERNOR MCGREEVEY’S ‘STRAIGHT TALK’
http://www.ahherald.com/bishop/020502_straight.htm
As far as I’m concerned, McGreevey isn’t–or at least wasn’t–gay. IMHO, he was a straight man who had homosexual affairs. I consider him to have been “straight” because that was the face that he presented to the public, with all the attendant advantages of appearing straight–such as a viable political career. Just because he had homosexual affairs doesn’t mean that he was gay.
Steven Pierce 08.14.04 at 2:06 pm
There’s a problem with the argument that McGreevey’s crime wasn’t being gay but hiring his unqualified lover. There are, after all, many instances of straight politicians’ doing precisely the same thing and not being hounded from office. It does sound like McGreevey would have been defeated for reelection. It also sounds like he would have been unable to govern for the remainder of his current term. But in addition to the homophobia inherent in his problems with New Jersey politics, there’s something rather similar in the position being taken by many straight liberals, that his real crime was nepotism.
Matt Weiner 08.14.04 at 4:29 pm
To add to what Charles K says–to my shame, I think just about every unpopular and unmarried athlete in Pittsburgh is the subject of rumors that he’s gay. Nor has the Kordell Stewart rumor been kept out of the papers–it was widely reported that he denied them in a team meeting. Nor is Kordell Stewart’s sexual orientation the business of anyone who doesn’t want to sleep with him–unlike the question of whether a governmental executive has given his lover a cushy government job (and I agree with ken, katherine, and steven that there are probably straight people doing similar things and not getting called on it).
Brett, I don’t think it’s a question of covering for politicians of one party or another–I think there may be something like regulatory capture going on, where reporters don’t want to delve into questions about the personal lives of executives they know. Otherwise the liberal press would surely have done something about the rumor Mark Kleiman mentions in the last two paragraphs of this post.
cj 08.16.04 at 4:56 am
Well, I’ll come right out and admit that I am a 41 yo mother of three from Kansas (although I’m from the liberal Johnson County sector, read that for waht you will) — I’ll tell you what bothers me about this.
One, the corruption. Hiring a “lover” into a gov’t job, apparently sans qualification.
Two, the marriage vows. To me, this says you have a person who is (was) willing to “assume” a persona (i.e., a married person) in order to further his political ambitions.
Three, you have a person who is trying to “spin” the issue as to homosexuality — the “issue” is that he was willing to lie, and use his power, to further his political goals.
And frankly, I don’t have much respect for his wife. Either she knew about his homosexuality, or she didn’t — and if she didn’t, why in the hell is she pulling the “stand by your man” B.S.?
This all stinks. The entire citizenship of NJ was flummoxed — let alone the deeper levels of corruption.
It all stinks, the man should not be allowed to hide behind “homosexuality” as the issue.
The issue is personal integrity — and this gov’n’r “ain’t got none.”
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