(1)
Ken Mehlman, President Bush‘s campaign manager in 2004 and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, came out of the closet yesterday, and announced that he is gay.
He gave the scoop to Marc Ambinder, who duly wrote up a very sympathetic post. I don’t have any problem with that. I do have a problem, though, with the blatant dishonesty Ambinder displays in the second sentence of his post:
Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview.
When a 44-year-old man announces he’s gay, one may well wonder what “fairly recently” means. Is Ambinder really saying Mehlman just discovered he’s gay? Did Mehlman really say that?
I guess that depends on your definition of “fairly recently”. Ambinder must be a poet, because he seems to have used a super-size dose of poetic license. Before you read further, you would do well to make sure you have nothing in your mouth.
What Mehlman said was:
It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life. Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.
And:
I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic.
Fairly recently, indeed!
(2)
I found this comment by Ed Gillespie, another former RNC chairman and “long-time friend of Mehlman”, to be utterly hilarious:
Gillespie acknowledged that the party had been inhospitable to gays in the past, and said that he hopes Mehlman’s decision to come out leads the party to be “more respectful and civil in our discourse” when it comes to gays.
So it was okay to be mean to gays when you were talking about Cheney‘s daughter, but now that you’re also going to be talking about Ken Mehlman, suddenly everyone is going to be extra sensitive?
(3)
Amanda Terkel, who is “Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Managing Editor for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress”, is now also writing for The Hufffington Post.
It’s a perfect mystery why. I challenge anyone to read her post about the Ambinder-Mehlman revelation, and explain to me why this deserves to be in The Hufffington Post. (Or anywhere at all, for that matter.)
She barely scraped up the energy to append one sentence at the front-end and two at the back-end of a short quote from Ambinder’s post. Her post says “First Posted: 08-25-10 06:08 PM … Updated: 08-25-10 06:12 PM”.
Really? One of those three sentences was updated within four minutes?
I can’t imagine it was “Ken Mehlman, who headed the Republican National Committee between 2005 and 2007, has come out in an interview with the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder:”. But then that leaves us with “Mehlman headed the RNC when the Republican Party was pushing anti-gay initiatives and increasingly speaking out against marriage equality.” or “Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and Mehlman’s longtime friend called Mehlman’s coming-out “significant,” but added that he remains opposed to gay marriage.”
See what I mean?
Maybe she originally had only two sentences? And some qualms of conscience kicked in to make her add a third?