Coda
'The Confession': More than we needed to know
Greg Bean

After the whirlwind of detail surrounding former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey's life as a closeted gay, I have three words to describe my reaction: too much information.

Like most people in New Jersey, it came as no particular surprise when McGreevey outed himself as a "Gay American" in 2004. Despite his marriages and various children, his sexual orientation had been an open secret for years. And like most people in New Jersey, I didn't hold homosexuality against him.

What I did hold against him were the lies. Lies to the mothers of his children. Lies to the people who voted for him. Lies to his staff and colleagues.

I was especially angry he had abused his official power with his greatest dishonesty of all - putting the man he claimed was his lover, Golan Cipel, in charge of homeland security in the state less than a year after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Since the man had no experience in that area, McGreevey jeopardized the lives of thousands by appointing him - and that can never, should never, be forgiven.

Because of the shameful circumstances that forced him out of office, I assumed that after his resignation he would simply fade away into obscurity - get a low-profile job, buy a house and live out the rest of his life far from the public spotlight. I didn't buy his "victim of my own sexuality" story, but I believed he should be allowed to go in peace. In his stated effort to accomplish that, at least, I wished him well.

In the last two weeks, however, even that modicum of goodwill toward the former governor has been crushed.

On Aug. 19, McGreevey's tell-all book, "The Confession," was released by Regan Books, the same publisher that gave us "I Can't Believe I Said That" by Kathie Lee Gifford, "Miss America" by Howard Stern, "Rewriting History" by disgraced political hack Dick Morris, and "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" by ubiquitous sex icon Jenna Jameson.

And between the book, and McGreevey's appearance on Oprah last week (she didn't ask him the question any real reporter would have asked: why he put his unqualified lover in charge of homeland security, but did make him read an excerpt from the text, the one where he describes his first encounter with Cipel), we've learned more than we ever needed to know about McGreevey's libidinous past.

We learned about the truck stop pick-ups, the encounters at various Garden State Parkway rest areas and back lots with a host of anonymous men.

"As I got older, my sexual expressions became even more baroque," McGreevey wrote. "I began lurking around Parkway rest stops, exchanging false names and intimacies with strangers. I met every conceivable type this way: bikers, executives, blue collar workers, old and young, every shade of race."

Nice, James, and thanks for sharing.

We also learned the intimate details of his version of his first sexual encounter with Cipel, learned skeevy details of their liaisons at Drumthwacket (the governor's mansion in Princeton) on the floor of McGreevey's Woodbridge condominium, and at Cipel's apartment, always with a New Jersey State Police guard detail keeping watch nearby. (Cipel, by the way, denies the whole thing and claims that not only did he never have a sexual relationship with McGreevey, he was the victim of sexual harassment at the governor's hand).

In addition to that, we also learned intimate details of his marriage to Dina Matos McGreevey, the loving woman on whom he cheated while she was in the hospital after the birth of their daughter.

We learned that not only was this callous man capable of such hurtful infidelity, he was capable of reopening those wounds by exposing them in his book and talking about them on television. We learned that he is not only capable, but eager, to sell what remains of her privacy and dignity to the highest bidder.

Maybe I was raised in a different era, but I was always told that a gentleman - a real gentleman - keeps his private life private. He doesn't kiss and tell, and he most certainly does not kiss and tell in print. The reason for that is simple. If a man, or woman, exposes private romantic detail, they are not only exposing their own lives, but the private lives of their partners - and that is never fair, nor right.

My heart goes out to Dina Matos this week. She believed she was marrying a kind gentleman - and she discovered, too late, that James McGreevey was neither. Now, she must see the details of her humiliation repeated thousands of times as strangers read the pages of her ex-husband's book.

James McGreevey should be ashamed of his betrayals of his wife and his state, and should spend what remains of his life contemplating them and working to make amends, or at least making himself invisible.

Instead, he's hoping for a best seller, and spouting a lot of psycho-babble (he doesn't want to "own" his guilt, for example) to justify his miserable behavior. And some people are buying it. An Amazon reviewer, for one, wrote, "More than a coming-out memoir, 'The Confession' is the story of one man's quest to repair the rift between his public and private selves, at a time in our culture when the personal and political have become tangled like frayed electric cables ... written with honesty, grace, and rare insight into what it means to negotiate the minefields of American public life, it may be among the most honest political memoirs ever written."

What hogwash! Cruel? Certainly. Disingenuous? Absolutely. Honest? Maybe, but coming from McGreevey, it's certainly suspect, given his propensity to lie.

Late last week, McGreevey told The Star-Ledger that he plans to drop out of public view after completing the publicity tour for "The Confession." The book is available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.com (already priced at 40 percent off the list price of $26.95), recommended for purchase along with "Inside Out: Straight Talk From a Gay Jock" by Mark Tewksbury, a gold-medal-winning swimmer, from Canada.

"This is it," he said. "This is the last thing you will ever have from James E. McGreevey."

We can only hope that this time, for once, he's telling the truth.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.