There’s a dear friend in my life, a publicist, a man I’ll call “T” who has very famous clients, a good man, smart, well connected. We chat via email just to say hello, for him to give me some great inside dish, and for us to get caught up on wuzzup with our respective lives. Now be assured, my days are not quite as exciting or glamorous as T’s are. I don’t very often have enormously wealthy and famous people asking my advice on how to best steer their careers. Hardly ever, in fact.
T emailed me the other night from Los Angeles telling me he couldn’t stay on long because he was about to have dinner with a world famous journalist I’ll call “C” here. This guy is very well respected in his field. People pay close attention to him and his opinions and writings. I like him a lot, although my knowledge of C is strictly from the tube and newspapers and, of course, from his books.
I finally decided to check him out on the internet, to read C’s biography, learn about him, find out where he was born, if he had siblings, how he became the world-famous pundit, author, anchor, columnist and commentator he did. What I got was a little of that, but mostly I got page after page of debate as to whether C is gay. Gay! Can you imagine? These ignoramuses who were on these websites “demanded” to know, insisted he come out and tell the world, that he somehow owes Americans this information. He does? Why? Well then folks, since this personal sexuality stuff is such a hugely important item that everyone has a need and right to know, I guess I am now obligated to come out of the closet myself in this column. Here goes. Brace yourselves; I am straight.
Those websites about C and his sexual preferences were downright shocking. Please someone tell me why this man has to “confess” or “admit” or “answer to” his being gay if in fact he is? What on earth has it got to do with his reporting abilities? He went to many war places, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we could all get a look at how those people from all sides, are suffering in ways far too horrible for comfy cozy us to imagine, forcing us to face those too real and too awful occurrences. This remarkable journalist C is making his life matter, he’s contributing, he’s educating and informing us, and yet we have the “right” to know with whom he sleeps? We do? Gee, I really never knew that rule but I kinda think I know who created it.
So tell me, did Walter Cronkite ever once have to defend his sexual preference? I never heard about that and it surely would have been big news, right? What about Tom Brokaw? Did he? How about Diane Sawyer? Barbara Walters? Dan Rather? Peter Jennings? I searched the Internet on these people and didn’t find any questions about their sexual persuasions, so why does C have to defend himself or discuss this intensely personal issue with the media? Why does he have to endure being blatantly asked such intensely personal questions? Who has that right? When he went to Afghanistan four times to report on the real goings on there, did it matter if he was or was not gay? When he wrote the books he wrote, when he went to Walter Reed hospital to try to right the hellacious medical wrongs perpetrated on our very own wounded military personnel, would he have done a much better job of it if we, the American people, had had our prurient desires to know finally satisfied about his sexuality? Do all people of all nations behave this way? My readings tell me that for a modern, forward-moving, wealthy nation, we Americans are in many ways still back in the racist, homophobic, Puritanical days of three hundred and more years ago. Why? Who actually cares? Well, obviously someone does or this stuff wouldn’t be Big News.
I also read that many nations from away laugh at us over these shameful concerns of ours, shake their heads at the adolescent narrowness and stupidity of our focus. For them, these are all non-issues. What has a person’s sexuality to do with his accomplishments? And why ever is it even on the Internet as if it’s a matter of deep, urgent, national importance? And how come after all this time it is still an issue? Why does this matter? I simply don’t get it. It is none of anyone’s business. How would we like it if the almighty press felt so entitled as to demand personal and private information from us? Often on live TV.
I realize I’m not making any big new strides here. This is yesterday’s info, right? To many, all this is so over. Well, it’s not. It is still “today’s important news releases.” I realize and hope that most thinking, rational people don’t care about such things, so my issue is, why is it still an issue? How come? Please, tell me, is the most important focus of this good man’s life who he takes to bed or the enormously important contributions he so willingly has sacrificed for and given to all of us, to educate and teach, to enlighten and most of all, to help? Tell me! Can you? Will you? I really do want to know this. Here’s my email address: lcvs@comcast.net.
LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.
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