Governor McGreevey Reveals: "I Am a Gay American" (August 12, 2004)

It was late afternoon on Aug. 12, 2004, a Thursday, and I was finishing the exit interview of our department's summer intern (at media buying/planning agency Carat USA.)  Then I heard the soft "ping" from my computer indicating incoming mail so I casually glanced at the screen and saw a CNN Breaking News alert (the 21st century's version of "Extra, extra read all about it!"). 

 

 

It reported that New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey was stepping down upon revealing at a news conference that "my truth is that I am a gay American."  Furthermore, he had been involved in an adulterous affair with his former 36-year-old homeland security advisor who planned to press sexual harassment charges against the governor.  McGreevey's announcement was made to pre-empt this action.  The aide, Israeli citizen Golan Cipel, vigorously denied the affair and claimed McGreevey made three advances that he rebuffed.  (He returned to Israel and hasn't been heard from since.)

 

 

 

Upon reading this news I let out a "whoa!" and chuckled with surprise. The expression on his wife Dina's face in the photo above is priceless.  I'd love to know what was going through her mind at that very moment. A few years later her tell-all book, Silent Partner, told us.

 

 

Since then online news alerts have informed me of other equally stunning admissions of philandering by two other governors, i.e. Eliot Spitzer of New York (March '08) and Mark Sanford of South Carolina (June '09) and online adultery by New York congressman Anthony Weiner (June '11).  For these revelations, however, I didn't make any audible exclamation, I just shook my head silently, exasperated by their transgressions.

 

 

 

Comments

[Will]

I remember this solely because the 'guy' McGreevey was 'seeing' lived across the street from my job.
So when I went to work I noticed all the TV vans and reporters milling about. Course I didn't ask them, lest it might have been about me (eeeeck), luckily I always wear dark sunglasses. Someone at my job informed me what all the media circus was about. (phew not me...)
So after reading it on the internet, I was like huh?? I mean there are governors embezzling money and here we are digging up dirt on a guy whose having sex (granted with another guy...again huh, okay that's another topic). The fact that he gave the guy a job is no big deal, most everyone gets jobs for their family/friends/significant other. McGreevey should have stayed in his post, from what I read he was doing a good job, but then I didn't live in Jersey. As for his wife 'a lady in the street and a freak in bed'!