perfidy

By now we all know the sordid saga of James McGreevey, soon to be ex-governer of New Jersey. The young and politically ambitious governer of a beleaguered Eastern state is more or less caught in flagrante delicto carrying on an affair with a man who is not his wife. He makes a stirring public confession of guilt and regret, in the process coming out to the world in one unforgettable epigrammatic statement, “I am a gay American,”and announces he will resign his post.

However, it turns out that the soon to be ex-governer’s resignation won’t be until November, which maybe seems a little opportunistic and hollow. We also find that the mysterious dreamboat with whom our hero has had his dalliances is an Israeli poet and a member of the governer’s own staff. Stranger still, indeed. Digging deeper, we find that the Israeli poet in question had acted as director of New Jersey’s homeland security efforts despite no training, prior security or administrative experience, or indeed any qualifications of any kind aside from an uncanny ability to craft a sonnet.

At this point, suspicions begin to arise in the press about the timing and content of our hero’s public confession. Rumors drift out from the New Jersey press stringers, whispers of investigations, ethical violations and crooked fundraising, and a general pall of skeevy wrongdoing settles over the entire affair. The quality of scandal not strained; it falleth as a gentle shitmist over Trenton. Suddenly, our upstanding Gay American is not such a nobly flawed hero after all, but simply a cheap hustler on the make playing his last sympathy card before the hammer can fall.

That fact is the landmark aspect of the whole affair. A New Jersey governer resigns in disgrace, and rather than choose contrition or defiance in the face of evidence, he appeals to the hearts and minds of the country as a gay man. James McGreevey played the gay card, because of everything he could have done, it had the most upside for him.

Gay rights activists and allies, and indeed anyone with a pulse, will naturally be appalled at the sheer brazenness with which James McGreevey used what half the country believes to be a dead-serious equal-rights fight to keep his ass out the fire, and everyone else should be appalled for the opposite reason. With his public coming out, timed as it was to deflect scandal, James McGreevey has cheapened himself and the public image of gay America, and given the moralists and moonbats ammo aplenty with which to fire back at anyone who contends that gay people in general are not sex-mad degenerate opportunistic psychopaths in leather underwear looking to rape the corpse of the US Constitution and its laws.

But there is a silver lining to this. Just stop and think about it for a minute. Today, in 2004, a prominent politician in a partially rural state would rather be known as gay than be known as crooked. If anyone needed proof that the moonbats and moralists are doomed to lose the fight over the acceptance of gays in this country, there you have it. Can you imagine Nixon trying the same thing? In 1974, the only thing that could be worse for your reputation and career than being a megalomanical sociopath with his hands in every nasty thing in Washington would be to be (and I invoke the spirit of John Derbyshire as I say this), an invert, a buggerer, a lily-livered Liberace light in the loafers. But today… meh. So he’s gay. He’s also a crook.

Today is a proud day for gay rights in the United States of America, and it took a dirtbag to do it.

[wik] Proving me so, so right (and it feels so good!), McGreevey’s poll numbers are up since he made the announcement. A coming out bounce! Who knew?