"What was worse — having to be heterosexual or being a politician?"

"One of the great moments" in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary "Fall to Grace," according to Carl Swanson in New York Magazine. The documentarian daughter of Nancy Pelosi is interviewing disgraced former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey.

Pelosi tells me the lesson of the documentary is “Don’t let the worst thing you did define who you are now. Think of it as Tony Robbins for the HBO-documentary set.” I ask her if she worries that she is essentially enabling McGreevey’s need for attention, and she admits that the idea “does keep her up at nights.”

This is my second post of the day about McGreevey. The first was about a NYT article that was either atrocious or brilliant satire. I'm writing this one because I have now watched the "Fall to Grace," and I just want to say it's horrible. Pelosi didn't get much good footage, and we mostly see women in prison going through prison therapy, a topic that could be handled in many different ways by serious film documentarians but is here used to promote McGreevey, whom the women just adore, because he tells them they should not be defined by the worst things they've done.

Why is McGreevey doing therapy in women's prisons? Because he left the Catholic Church (because they won't let you feel good about being gay) and went to Episcopalian seminary (where it's apparently okay both to be gay and to have a gay sexual relationship), but the Episcopalians rejected him for the priesthood anyway. Is McGreevey angling to get back into politics? I bet he is, in which case Pelosi's puff piece is supposed to help. It shouldn't though, because it's so awful. Worst thing about it? The maudlin tinkling piano soundtrack that never shuts up.

"Most of his sexual interludes with men had been furtive; to him, gay culture meant Liberace and Paul Lynde."

One of many hard-to-believe sentences in this long NYT article about James McGreevey, the disgraced former governor of New Jersey. He's 55, not 75. He got into trouble putting his lover on the state payroll in 2004, not 1974. He's a big old fraud in my book, and his effort to cloak himself in "I am a gay American" sentimentality is disgusting.

Relentlessly excavating his heart and soul, he later went into psychotherapy and resurrected the calling he said he had felt since he was an altar boy in Carteret, N.J. Now an Episcopalian with a degree in divinity from the General Theological Seminary, he’s embracing the Lord’s work with the same fervor with which he once pursued politics. 

Look, I hope he's turned his life into service and good works, but this article is fawning — PR-style.

Until recently, Mr. McGreevey and his partner had kept their relationship private. This Thursday, however, is the debut of Alexandra Pelosi’s HBO documentary “Fall to Grace,” which explores his spiritual makeover, so he’s sharing the happily-ever-after. 

Sharing the happily-ever-after? Who talks like that?

Not, he stipulates, because he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico, but because he’s eager to focus attention on his work.

Oh, he stipulates? Sorry, this is just making me believe he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico. Did the NYT writer think that passing along this fawning PR was a joke — a nudge to make us think this is such bullshit? We're shown McGreevey's partner, an "Australian financier," 9 years his junior who — we're told is "[s]turdy and handsome in an unpolished way" and "with taste for modern art." The modern art taste is nowhere to be seen in the photograph of the pair in their "pistachio-walled conservatory with worn-leather sofas and ethnic touches that could have been conjured by Ralph Lauren."

With severely cropped hair, khakis and navy sweater pocked with moth holes (his uniform), the ex-governor has the look of a missionary. Upbeat and charismatic, he laughs easily and often exclaims, “God bless!” Mr. O’Donnell has a warier, more reserved air — at least, when he’s on the record. Wearing smart corduroys and a taupe cardigan, he keeps his phone in hand and peers at the screen through thick-rimmed glasses.

Smart corduroys? Cardigan?

ADDED: The cardigan is the main thing that pushed me over the line to finding this article bloggable, because I'd just read this question in the Gentleman Scholar advice column at Slate:

Out of nowhere, my husband of 21 years has started wearing cardigan sweaters. I can't tell you how much this turns me off—the soft, sloppy, indecisiveness of the garment, not jacket, but not fully committed to being a sweater, either. He will point to younger men wearing them and say, "See? I'm bringing them back." The thing is, I'm not going home with those younger men and I don't know why the younger men are wearing them, maybe it's ironic or something? I don't know. But when I see a man in a cardigan, all I can think is Mr. Rogers. My husband usually has excellent taste but every now and then he likes to rock something positively cringe-worthy. He doesn't like me to tell him what to wear. Do I just suck it up? Or do I draw a line in the sand? Thank you!

I mean, maybe that article was ironic or something... I don't know.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said: Oh my God. That piece has to be satire. Please tell me it's the smartest satire ever written. "

I just noticed the line — in the "smart corduroys" paragraph — "Mr. O’Donnell... at least, when he’s on the record."

AND: More from Palladian: "I'm still trying to imagine how they figured out how to make pistachios work as a load-bearing structural material." 

"In the two months since he was found guilty of using a webcam to spy on his roommate, Dharun Ravi has gone from being a symbol of antigay bias..."

"... to being something of a folk hero, with rallies of his supporters urging the court to 'free Dharun.'"

The link goes to a front-page NYT story about how prominent gay rights advocates are championing Ravi (as he faces sentencing tomorrow).

Mr. Ravi could face deportation to his native India if he is given a prison sentence. Many Indians have been among his biggest supporters. At a rally on the State House steps in Trenton last week, some waved signs with the headline on [former New Jersey Governor Jim] McGreevey’s article: “Don’t Make Dharun Ravi Our Antigay Scapegoat.”

A new angle on why the political wife stands by her husband like that.

Maybe she's not that innocent.

Remember when Dina Matos McGreevey was on "Oprah," pimping her memoir – another phony memoir? — and saying "No one ever said to me that he was gay. It's a cliché that the wife is always the last to know, and it's true." She was making cute faces like this:



Are you reading that face differently now?

Little Miss Attila snarks:

How much time did I spend, in my twenties, trying to get it out of my boyfriend why it wasn't gay for us both to hop into bed with another woman, but it would be if we got into bed with another guy?

(Via Instapundit.)

ADDED: The novelist Richard Russo spun out his ideas for a fictionalized version of the Spitzer story. I'm sure this new rumor about Dina should fire up the novelist's brain. Maybe the wife's interest is not all about her husband and children. She might be enjoying sexual opportunities of her own. I don't know if the rumor is true, but that's an attractive young man her husband allegedly brought home to her and approved of her consorting with. If her husband was, in fact, gay, he was not much of a sexual partner for her. I'd like to see this scenario spun out by a novelist who is capable of seeing the woman as something other than outraged and wronged.

UPDATE: Dina Matos McGreevey says she didn't do it. But Governor Jim — enmeshed in divorce proceedings — says she did.

Why so much talk about Silda standing by her man Eliot? It is really about Hillary and Bill?

Surely, you've noticed all the articles about Silda Wall Spitzer standing there next to her whoring husband, the New York governor, Eliot Spitzer.

The L.A. Times:

That moment of public humiliation stayed with people -- men and women, Democrats and Republicans. At a beauty salon in Brooklyn Heights, at the Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in midtown Atlanta, at a Denver office building, at a bar in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the same questions came up:

How could she?

Why did she?

Haven't we seen this play one too many times?

Why do we go through this ritual of public shame and repentance, with the political wife standing mutely before the TV cameras as her husband admits his sexual indiscretion?

"I find it nauseating . . . phony and awful," said Leah Schanzer, 38, a doctoral student who stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in New York City. She gave an exaggerated shudder.

"It makes it seem like she's Susie Homemaker," said her friend Leslie Heller, 47. "She shouldn't be standing there, next to him."

The New York Times:

Silda Wall Spitzer gave up a high-powered career as a corporate lawyer to raise three daughters and support her husband as he sought elective office, yet has always had deep reservations about his political career. Time and again, she has found herself in the particular bind of encouraging him during critical junctures in his public life while still holding on to some regret that he had chosen to put himself — and their family — there in the first place....

According to friends, the governor’s time in Albany exacted a psychic cost from Ms. Wall Spitzer, 50, who has not been able to fully embrace her role as first lady. “I think the whole period of his governorship hasn’t fit her,” one friend of both Spitzers said. “It strained the marriage.

The Washington Post:

When Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband in ashen-faced misery the other day as the governor made his brief apology in the prostitution scandal, she uttered not a word. Yet she launched a thousand conversations.

"Why is she standing there?" many women wondered. "Should she be? Would I be?"

And for many, who've seen a long line of wronged political spouses do the same, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Dina Matos McGreevey to Suzanne Craig, the immediate answer was a resounding, "Hell, no."

"I watched her and I thought, 'Again, the wife is standing there,'" said Jessica Thorpe, a 38-year-old mother of three in Larchmont, N.Y. "And I had a visceral reaction. I just don't get it. Why does it always have to be that way in politics? What will she get out of standing there?"

The blogosphere was buzzing, too, with the same questions. "Why do they show up?" asked blogger Amy Ephron on huffingtonpost.com. She proposed her own fantasy: "I just want one of them —Hillary, Silda — to stand on the steps of the White House, the governor's mansion, and stamp their foot and say, 'And another thing, I'm keeping the house.'"

Well, the Washington Post is most overt about it: To think about Silda is to think Hillary — to think about Hillary in a negative, damaging way.

Publishing an article that is designed to involve readers in the private decisionmaking and presumed suffering of this individual we've never paid attention to before is a way to drag us back into a slew of old questions about Hillary that we've thought about for years and probably dealt with one way or another by now. Here, let me pick that scab for you.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage writes:

Silda Wall Spitzer is highly intelligent, personable and ambitious.

She is also a master strategist.

This “stand by her man” moment is just one of many well thought-out steps she’s taken as she makes her way to her ultimate goal.

Soon enough . . . she’ll run for Governor.

After all, she has experience.

"You have to be Jackie Kennedy today."

That's what NJ Governor Jim McGreevey said to his wife Dina Matos McGreevey to prepare her to stand next to him as he went public about his gay relationship. I'm hearing her say this on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." (Dina is promoting her book "Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage.") Oprah has been trying for 15 minutes to get her to explain what the hell she was smiling about as she stood next to her husband when he told the world that he'd been unfaithful to her. It's what every woman wants to know, says Oprah.

"No one ever said to me that he was gay," she said. "It's a cliche that the wife is always the last to know, and it's true."

Matos McGreevey said she was shocked by her husband's revelation, which she said came in "cowardly installments."

"I'm not in denial, but I don't think he's simply gay. I think he's bisexual," she said. "I mean, he was married twice. He has two children. And, you know, I never saw him checking out men, but I certainly saw him checking out women."

There's something creepy about this show. The McGreeveys are engaged in a big legal fight over the custody of their daughter, yet Oprah seems to want to present the show as saying something to all the many individuals who find out that their spouse lacks the sexual orientation that corresponds with the marriage. This is a serious issue, but Dina has a legal stake in portraying herself as having been utterly in the dark.

The creepiness swells when Oprah shows Dina a clip of Jim McGreevey when he appeared on her show. Oprah had asked him what it was like when he had sex with his wife. We see a split screen. He says "It was special." Dina smiles. Oprah pushes him: Was it real? He says, "I thought it was real," and so does Dina.

Dina talks about seeing a manuscript, where McGreevey wrote that he married her for political purposes. She says that if he'd been able to keep his secret he'd be running for President right now. And she says that in her hour of need she turned to Hillary Clinton. Hillary took the call, and Dina said "You're the only person that came to mind when this happened." This gets a big laugh from the Oprah audience. (Hillary told her to get her own advisors and to take care of herself and her daughter.)

We learn that Dina continued to live with McGreevey -- and share his bed -- for three months after she learned of his betrayal. Oprah expresses disbelief: Even if you had nowhere else to go, "It's the Governor's Mansion. You had lots of bedrooms. You could say, look, I'm gonna be down the hall, and I'll see you at breakfast." Dina said she thought he should have moved out.

In the end, Oprah asks Dina to say something to all the heterosexual people who discover they have married a gay person. Her message is: You've done absolutely nothing wrong. Don't blame yourself. Oprah asks her if she's dating again, and she says no. She blames McGreevey, who's destroyed her trust in people, "especially men."

Oprah crisply responds, "Yeah. Well, we contacted the former governor for a statement and here's what he said and wanted us to say" -- Oprah touches her cheek with her index finger, a gesture I've seen myself make on video and think means I'm not quite saying everything I'm thinking -- "'Congratulations, you're sitting on America's favorite couch. I wish you well in your journey. With the telling of this book, Dina has now had an opportunity to share her story, as I did with mine. Now, hopefully, is the time to look to the future, to raise our daughter, in a loving, nurturing environment.'"

Here's the look on poor Dina's face:



"It's a classic McGreevey performance," Dina says. I wonder if she realizes how much Oprah was on McGreevey's side through the interview. Based on that look on her face, I think she does.

"She mimicked McGreevey in the act of trying to govern amid a miasma of male genitals."

That's a description of the funniest part of Margaret Cho's act here in Madison last night.

The gag combined the two most prominent motifs of Cho's act: Hilarious, gleefully smutty riffing on gay themes, and political riffing that was pointed but, at moments, altogether less funny. Indeed, the show's least comedically satisfying moments came as Cho served up shrill, humor-free barbs that, in drastically tempered form, could have been delivered by a pandering liberal politician. On President Bush: "I don't know why he hasn't been impeached yet." On Benedict XVI: "The new pope fucking sucks." On right-to-lifers: "Anti-abortion people are fucking idiots, and they're wrong."

Thought you'd like to know. (Note my distinct history of defending Margaret Cho.)

IN THE COMMENTS: In the spirit of "An Exaltation of Larks," readers offer alternative "nouns of multitude" for "a miasma of male genitals."

Hey, I'm on BloggingHeads.tv!

Watch me with Newsday's Jim Pinkerton, talking on the split-screen. Topics (and times):

Jim McGreevey and the Church of Oprah (06:10)

Bill Clinton and the vast right-wing conspiracy (13:02)

Bill is to Hillary as Chavez is to Ahmadinejad? (05:11)

Leaking just enough intelligence about the effect of the war (12:15)

Did the Pope bumble into the clash of civilizations? (04:49)

Did Bush? (11:30)

Ann brings out the dead bodies (09:46)

ADDED: If you want just the audio, go here.

Andrew Sullivan picked a bad time to take a vacation.

I'd really like to read what he has to say about McGreevey and the new California Supreme Court case. He's a hardcore vacationer, apparently. And when did the little donkey head get added next to his heading "The Daily Dish"? Did he really put that there?

Best take on the McGreevey resignation.

From the front page of the NYT:

"What it reminds me of is Richard Nixon, the Checkers speech or some of the stuff during Watergate," said Steven Cohen, a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

But he saw already the contrast in the words spoken by the governor and at least some of the reasons for the sudden announcement: "The gender of the person he had the relationship with is irrelevant," he said. "The problem is putting a lover on the payroll in some fashion."

Being impressed that McGreevey came out as gay is like saying "ooh, I love puppies" to Nixon's Checkers speech. I'll stipulate that gay people are as lovable as puppies, but I think it's more appropriate, under the circumstances, to be unimpressed, because he's employing the hard-won positive feeling toward gay people for plain, old political purposes. I'm resigning because I'm gay is no more believable than I'm resigning because I want to spend more time with my family. It's a way to try to hold on to some dignity on your way out. Except that McGreevey is also trying to hold onto his office until November and thus to retain the office for his party.

UPDATE: A question you might find relevant in deciding how sympathetic to feel towards McGreevey is when did he marry his second wife? Answer: late 2000. Are we really to believe he took the "bonds of matrimony" so seriously, that as a gay man, marrying a woman when he was 43 years old, living in the United States in the year 2000, he was planning to refrain from extramarital sex? Either McGreevey wronged his second wife grievously by withholding the crucial information that he is gay or the two of them had an understanding, in which case the bit about violating the bonds of marriage is hogwash! The only other possibility is that he was still deceiving himself at age 43, which is incredibly hard to believe. Yesterday's speech was a shameful, self-serving travesty! "At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world ..." Oh, please!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I see that E.J. Graff in TNR Online is saying "Oh, please" too. He also says "Gays and lesbians should leave this guy dangling on his self-constructed gallows" and is irked that McGreevey is diverting attention from the California Supreme Court's case yesterday.