Let the spins begin...

As I mentioned yesterday, the focus on McGreevey's resignation is centering on his "coming out", not on the myriad of egregious ethics questions raised during his administration. I agree that it would be likely more difficult to weather a charge of a homosexual affair than a heterosexual one, as is apparent given the experience of former Kentucky Governor Paul Patton. He was found to have also had an affair during his administration that involved giving his lover breaks that could only be ordered by the governor, and then - according to her - using his gubernatorial powers to harrass her and her company when she broke it off. Like in McGreevey's case, Patton's illicit lover was not the most ethically sound person herself, but then, what do you expect from someone who has an affair with someone who's married?

But I think if McGreevey had had a homosexual affair without any of the other ethical issues permeating his behavior and that of his administration, he might have weathered this "coming out", especially in New Jersey, especially with the Democrats, especially in this political climate. I doubt seriously he would have run again, but I don't know that he would have resigned. Certainly everyone would have held up Bill Clinton as an example. It's only sex after all, isn't it?

However, it's to the Dems' benefit, and McGreevey's as well, to have the homosexual factor in this situation swamp the rest of the reasons. And of course the media is complicit in the spin. It just makes me grind my teeth. Here is a passage from the NY Times article today:

Golan Cipel, McGreevey's former lover, served in the governor's administration and earned $110,000 a year as homeland security adviser, several New Jersey political sources said. But Cipel, a published poet and a native of Israel, resigned after it was discovered that he had exaggerated his credentials, and he has since moved from one politically connected business to another.

Emphasis mine. That is in direct contradiction to this article published in December 2002 by a New Jersey newspaper (link via Drudge):

Despite his statements to the contrary, Gov. McGreevey, from the beginning, intended to make his now-departed Israeli adviser and friend, whose expertise was public relations, the state's point man on terrorism, documents obtained last week under the federal Freedom of Information Act show.

Using the terrorism attacks of Sept. 11 to justify the hiring, the governor's chief lawyer wrote a letter to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on McGreevey's inauguration day, telling the federal agency that New Jersey wanted Cipel to coordinate increased security with all branches of government and that Cipel had the necessary "substantial experience" in public security...

When Cipel quit last August after a Gannett New Jersey report on the exaggeration of his security credentials, the governor blamed the exaggeration on a poorly worded biography issued by McGreevey's office.

But the governor's chief counsel, Paul Levinsohn, who served as McGreevey's campaign finance chairman and is a longtime confidant of the governor, was detailed when he wrote to the federal immigration service and described how Cipel was qualified to be the governor's point man on security.

Emphasis mine. And there's more in that article to support the contention that while Cipel was likely complicit in the exaggerations, the administration wasn't "shocked, shocked!" to learn he was a PR man, not a terrorism expert.

I think anyone who seeks public office should expect that evidence of misbehavior in his private life, especially during a term in public office, is germane to his public service. It speaks to integrity and trustworthiness. Homosexuality aside, McGreevey cheated on his wife and sought to give benefits to his lover using his state authority to do so. That should be the focus of this coverage, not this maudlin standardbearing of the poor heartbroken confused man finally able to touchingly embrace his true self. The point is not McGreevey is homosexual, but McGreevey is a lying scoundrel.

But this is being very carefully played, and the media is casting itself on the funeral pyre of McGreevey's political career, trying to make it something it is not. Not unexpected. Highly revolting. Likely to continue.

UPDATE: CG Hill sees the same spin. Kevin McCullough at Crosswalk.com adds another interesting tidbit:

It gets more interesting...Mr. Cipel, when he had resigned his post as New Jersey Homeland Security Director went to work for Charles Kushner who was formerly the chief fund raiser for McGreevey. Kushner was indicted 3 weeks ago on corruption charges in a case involving a New Jersey farm deal in which it is reported that McGreevey would speak in code with the owner of the farm to indicate his decision on which way he was leaning. The indictment stated that the Governor would use terms from Machiavelli. On three seperate occassions the feds wired up the farms owner and captured audio of McGreevey doing just that.

Mr. Kushner's indictment named Public Official one as being involved in the scandal but did not name McGreevey by name. What is unclear is...

Did Mr. Kushner - who already had a history of sending prostitutes to people as a way of entrapment and blackmail - decide to turn the sex wedge against McGreevey in exchange for the Governor refusing to pardon him in the federal investigation? Certainly with Cipel working with Kushner the idea and goods would have been known and discussed in terms of ways that kind of plot could be pulled off...

Kushner is also a heavy fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and has even raised funds for John Kerry...

And Jeff Jarvis, unsurprisingly, has the definitive summary of it all:

On the one hand, this was reality TV with more raw, real human drama than any reality TV ever aired and more bluntness than any political speech ever given. Knowing what was going to happen for a few hours before he came on camera, I expected a duck and feint job from a politician. Instead, we saw an emotional, forceful, courageous announcement of a man's secret.

But on the other hand, this was utterly unreal. Roiling just below the surface were a dozen other stories that were not told: There are the reports that the man who forced McGreevey's secret out was his gay lover whom McGreevey hired for a $110,000 state job for which the man was utterly unqualified. There was his wife, standing there as if stoned. There was the hard-slap realization that McGreevey had used this wife and one before and children by both marriages as his beard for his political career. There was the contention that McGreevey was now using his gayness to obscure other sins and crimes. There was the story of an apparently devout Catholic who did the sin thing. There was the anguish of a gay man in the smoke-filled closet. There was the political intrique of maneuvering to avoid an election in November and keep the governor's office in Democratic hands. There was the media's role in helping to keep McGreevey's secret. There were the other secrets waiting to come out: the story of the broken leg and God know's what else. All this down the road in the home named Drumthwacket. Unreal.

McGreevey's speech looked like a blast of steam but that hid the witches' cauldron of bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble.

Usually, what we see in media -- and in politics -- is the unreal masking the real. Here, the real masked the unreal.

Read the rest of Jarvis's post too. Maybe McGreevey's broken leg came when he was flung off by the Dem spin machine? At any rate, we await further revelations and the media framing of same.