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— Mon, Nov 20, 2006 —
Even More Politics of Outing
We Get Sorta Honorable Mention

maher.jpg
Since the dawn of man - or, at least, since the gay rights movement - people have questioned whether or not pundits and publications have the right to out people, particularly politicians. In the wake of TR Knight, Ted Haggard, Neil Patrick Harris and the rest, the debate has been raised to a pitch higher than a drag queen's hair.

With the whole Bill Maher/Ken Mehlman brouhaha: you know, when Maher called the former RNC leader gay on Larry King Live, a comment that later got the old censorship ax from CNN, The New York Blade's premier homo-journo, Kerry Eleveld takes a look at the ways in which different media outlets covered the story.

Aside from providing a compelling piece, Eleveld does something that we don't think has ever been done in the history of man: she uses our name in the same sentence as The New York Times.

The following Monday, pro-gay blogs such as Queerty.com declared, "Maher pussed out" even as the mother of mainstream publications, The New York Times, ran a story about Maher’s statements on CNN that steered clear of mentioning Mehlman’s name.

It's a rare occassion, readers, so enjoy it. We'll probably never be used in such a context again. That's okay, though, because we've just had a journalistic orgasm big enough to drown a whale (if that's not big, we don't know what is).

We will offer one correction, however. The actual headline read "Bill Maher Totally Pussed Out". There's a huge difference between only just pussing out and totally pussing out. Of course, as a legitimate reporter, we don't imagine Eleveld's ever had to make such a linguistic judgement call.

"New Rules of Outing Messy" [The New York Blade]

Comments


No. 1
Ryan says:

Are you sure about that? Orgasmic enough to drown a whale?

Some whales eject as much as 33 gallons of sperm... which really would be enough to drown a man. (*I cringe to think of swimming in a tub of whale sperm... eww eww eww*)

November 20, 2006 1:33 PM
No. 2
Tagg says:

Congratulations. Alas, your mention is in a story heavily infected by the pompous, mentally-constipated Chris Crain. He had a record of absurd, gay Repug-leaning pontifications before he was gay bashed in Amsterdam. Perhaps the internal damage was greater than reported given than shit like this is coming out of the wrong end: "I definitely think (Ken Mehlman’s) sexual orientation is newsworthy, but is it newsworthy enough? I don’t think it’s justified as journalists or right as a movement to go that far into someone’s private sexual life to prove to the world they’re a hypocrite." You were supposedly leaving the country, Crain, but like anal warts will you NEVER ENTIRELY GO AWAY????!!!

And, what horseshit his opinion is that outing Haggard somehow cost us domestic partner benefits in Colorado when, in fact, it is a rabidly homophobic state, home of Focus on the Family and US Constitutional amendment initiators Marilyn Musgrave and Wayne Allard and countless other antigay religious extremists who backed a state antigay amendment that had to be overturned by the Supreme Court. How the hell could any clear thinking person imagine that the same voters in THAT state who passed the antigay marriage amendment on Nov. 7th might simultaneously throw us a bone? Crain: get help; quickly, please!!! Until then, shut the flaming fuck up!

Other problems with Eleveld's piece include referring to the stuff that pored into ABC about Foley "corroborating" their story. That was apparently their take, but, while probably mostly true, from an objective standpoint they were nothing more than hearsay. Anyone can say that anyone e-mailed them.

Finally, it's unacceptable for him to have left unchallenged the Poytner rep's reference to revelation of anyone's sexuality ipso facto doing "harm."

November 20, 2006 4:05 PM

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