Call me blasé, but I didn’t even twitch when Bill Maher outed Ken Mehlman on CNN the other night. Of course it was atrocious behavior to do this, but Maher isn’t exactly Miss Manners. What troubles me is that it’s been reported — incorrectly in my opinion — that CNN is going to a lot of trouble to tidy up the whole episode, to redact the news. This from America Blog:
I just got a cease-and-desist letter from YouTube, see below, regarding my CNN footage I posted. The footage, you’ll recall, was from Larry King Live last night in which Bill Maher outed Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman as gay. It seems that CNN has suddenly decided that it no longer wants bloggers, or YouTube, posting any of its video, which is kind of surprising since I always thought we were doing a CNN a favor by constantly touting their network. Apparently I was wrong.
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CNN has also now edited the official transcript of Larry King Live, so that no one will ever know what really happened. Here is CNN’s transcript:MAHER: A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay. I don’t want to mention names, but I will on Friday night.
KING: You will Friday night?
MAHER: Well, there’s a couple of big people who I think everyone in Washington knows who run the Republican…
KING: You will name them?
MAHER: Well, I wouldn’t be the first. I’d get sued if I was the first. (A PORTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN REMOVED)
KING: Great way to close out this segment. It’s poignant.
CNN didn’t just edit out the naming of Mehlman as gay, they even edited out Larry’s question, and Maher’s answer, about why gay people sometimes work against their own people [sic]. Now why is that question being censored by CNN?
Maher’s mordant observations regarding the inner conflicts of the closeted Republicans, about why they seem to work against their own best interests, were the best parts of the piece. It would be a shame if they were self censored by the network. But as I read the transcript, they were not. What’s been redacted is the naming of a prominent Republican as gay. To the extent that we allow that kind of name calling, we do everyone a disservice because to “out” someone is to lend the observation the weight of an opprobrious value judgment.
Is it just me or is America Blog looking for some kind of Rupert Murdoch award here? Is it just shabby writing or is America Blog trying to pump up a story where a story barely exists? Is that blogger just pissed because CNN had him tear down a lengthy YouTube posting? I think the schmuck ought to frame the cease-and-desist from CNN, hang it on his wall of fame, and get on with life.
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Politics by it’s very nature leads to hypocrisy… get too transparent and you become unelectable. People seem to fault the politician for their contradictions but the larger issue is the lack of rigor that the electorate applies to the selection process.
Am I surprized that many republicans are gay? No. You can be gay and aspire to wealth, status and power. You do need to hide that fact in that segment of the political spectrum… It won’t play with that power base.
It is, however, refreshing to see the media stepping up to their role as exposers of flagrant weasels.
The most profound political post I read yesterday mention the new role of James Baker in fixing our current foreign policy… one can only hope.
I don’t blame CNN - they are just covering their legal liability. I no longer support the outing of closet gays, regardless of political stripe. If someone outs a staffer I hope that staffer, or his/her family should he or she take their life as a result of the outing, sues the outer into eternal poverty. You simply don’t have the right to destroy someone’s life with impunity, regardless of them being hypocrites by supporting a party that is doing it’s best to put them down.
It seems to me is that outing people plays to stereotypes held by guys like Maher of your average conservative, not the reality on the ground.
Brian, I think Maher is in the business of putting on a freak show, and actually gave little thought to this move of his. I watched his show a couple of times, a few years ago. He went for easy cheap shots wherever he could find them, without any consideration of ideology or social circumstance beyond what can be made into “entertainment”. That does appear to be widely practiced among media personalities. To that extent I agree with you. They’re vapid. I doubt any of them know the least thing about conservatives, however.
Maher apparently wasn’t breaking new ground. Viz: a blog that outs gay republicans that publically oppose gay rights.
In the hoopla over the media events, some basic things get overlooked. For example, if homosexuality is so awful, why don’t the Mehlmans, Haggards and Foleys seek out aversion therapy, or reparative therapy? The faith-based activist group Exodus could find them a provider. Then their hypocrisy wouldn’t be an issue. Once they’d been through it, they could agitate against the sexual orientation they find reprehensible without worrying about media exposure. I imagine they’d get a certificate of some sort verfying their status. Exodus claims a tremendous success rate for the methods they recommend. Admittedly, they’re somewhat controversial.
Hmmm. I don’t think the people at blogactive thing being gay is a bad thing. They’re gay after all. What bothers them is tartuffery:
We can forgive inconsistencies, and even admire trying and failing, but when someone amasses power from us based on his personal superiority, and is proved a fraud, he has broken the basic bargain of leadership. We mock him not out of meanness, but out of a communal survival instinct.