[whiteperil] Sean: Reflection without introspection

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Posted by Sean:
Reflection without introspection
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1158565599.shtml


   Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's memoir is [1]excerpted in
   this week's New York magazine. I was prepared to warm to the guy.
   However self-serving his initial reasons for coming out as he did may
   have been, McGreevey's had nearly two years to do some hard thinking
   since then; there's nothing we Americans like more than a redemption
   story.
   I'm not really worried about whether, in general, McGreevey will do
   good work for the causes that employ him from here on; it seems almost
   certain that he will. But a good portion of the gay press has been
   touting him as a potentially worthy and worthwhile public
   representative for our interests. My sense--and I'm just going by the
   New York excerpt here--is still that we can do better. This is how
   McGreevey describes the beginning of his affair with then-aide Golan
   Cipel (or alleged affair, since Cipel denies that anything beyond
   sexual harassment by McGreevey ever happened between them):

     It was wrong to do. I wasn't an ordinary citizen anymore. There
     were state troopers parked outside. My wife was in the hospital.
     And he was my employee. But I took Golan by the hand and led him
     upstairs to my bed.
     ...
     My core group of supporters still felt [when the scandal was about
     to break because of Cipel's threatened lawsuit] I should serve out
     my term, but not run for reelection. I wasn't convinced that was
     penance enough for my transgressions. What I did was not just
     foolish, but unforgivable. Hiring a lover on state payroll, no
     matter the gender, was wrong. I needed to take my punishmentâand to
     begin my healing out of the fishbowl of politics.

   Having sex with state troopers outside? Hot!
   Uh, I mean, the logic of that first paragraph eludes me. I can see the
   point about its being a betrayal of voters' trust to court scandal
   just when you've ascended to the job they elected you to do. I'm not
   sure whether cheating on your unwitting wife is worse when she's in
   the hospital, but her having just borne your child would certainly
   make it more difficult to leave you if she decided to do so. And no,
   one should not be propositioning employees, who may not feel in a
   position to refuse without repercussions.
   It's still difficult to shake the sense that McGreevey sees his coming
   out as a way to spin potential political and legal lemons into
   lemonade--a convenient opportunity to start a less pained and
   stressed-out life but not a moral or ethical necessity. McGreevey has
   an interesting way of using the word integrated to refer to "not
   feeding different people different lies to get what you want from each
   of them," but one is left wondering whether he thinks that approach is
   good and right or just eats up less space on his BlackBerry. And as
   for his "punishment," well...the gay political machine may not get you
   into the White House, but it's powerful enough in liberal circles in
   the Mid-Atlantic to be a good place for a soft landing from the
   governorship of New Jersey. Especially if the alternative is a costly
   sexual harassment suit.
   Homosexuality isn't a club, and the guy is clearly as gay as the rest
   of us. We own him now. I'm just not sure why we're exhorted to be
   proud of him.

References

   1. http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/politics/21340/