More on the Sinatras, I mean, McGreeveys
The Star Ledger says Dina Matos McGreevey’s Stuck inside these 4 walls: First lady’s house of broken dreams, and is “rattling around the mansion”. The article credits Mrs McG with single-handedly transforming “the musty 170-year-old mansion into the place she loved to come home to.” The Star ledger carefully forgets that
In 1982 the Drumthwacket Foundation was formed, accepting the responsibility of restoring, curating and preserving the magnificent house and grounds, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
so people other than Mrs McG had been transforming the place for two decades prior to her arrival. Lots of people. Yes, the private living quarters were neglected, but Drumthwacket was well on its way to full restoration years before Ms Matos became Mrs. McGreevey.
But on the matter of their marriage, yes, Mrs McGreevey is in a most difficult position. Some women have married — and have stayed married to — men knowing the man was gay or bisexual.
Other women have found out that their husband was gay after they married, and divorced the man. Mrs McGreevey is in a better situation than most — while she’s in the public eye, she can afford to stay home and not have to face the pressures of a divorce, keeping a job, and dealing with the trauma older children suffer during their parents’ divorce. Travelling 30 miles to go shopping at the Short Hills Mall is the last thing women in that situation would be doing, and which most of them can’t afford.
Mrs McG is in the unenviable position of having to stay with a man that writes in the NYTimes
Now at peace with arguably one of the most important truths of my life, it is my prayer that I will now be free to live openly and integrate my sexuality with my daily life.
which ignores one truth: A married man who would take his prayer and his marriage seriously knows that he’s not “free to live openly and integrate my sexuality with my daily life”, except with his spouse.
Or she can divorce him.
Mr. McGreevey, unlike Marley’s ghost, is definitely not “rattling around the mansion”, since he’s looking forward to A media breakout near for governor. As I here in this blog predicted the day after McG’s announcement, now he’s
negotiating with major television networks and TV hosts for interviews in which he hopes to explain how he has struggled to suppress his homosexuality and to pursue a straight life as a husband, father and politician who has been elected governor, state senator and mayor of one of the state’s largest municipalities – Woodbridge.
The NY Times, which last Friday had urged him to step down that day, hence doing the right thing for his fellow New Jerseyans, says today McGreevey Stays Put, and Intrigue Builds
Given the various corruption scandals that have surrounded Mr. McGreevey’s aides and fund-raisers, however, many New Jersey political officials and analysts say they believe that there is more to the story involving either additional personal indiscretions or outright corruption.
In the article, Paul Batista, Golan Cipel’s new lawyer, asks
I would love to know where Mr. Lesniak was going to go to get that $2 million they promised to Golan,” said Mr. Batista, who did not represent Mr. Cipel until after the negotiations between representatives for Mr. McGreevey and Mr. Cipel ended. “How was he going to get it? Who was he talking to?”
If I were a betting woman, I’d bet those questions will go unanswered.
As for McGreevey, remember what I said yesterday about his 2005 campaign song.