Pointing Fingers

Popping Suze's Cherry

The most frightening coming out announcement ever made happened Friday, after the revered financial guru, Suze Orman, outed herself to Deborah Solomon in an interview for Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

Far more troubling than Britney’s haircut, was the Britneyesque comment Orman made which, itself, translated into global headlines. Not long ago, Ms. Spears told a legion of fans of a certain generation that she was a virgin, and thousands of young, gullible girls believed her.

This week, Orman made a similar claim: “I’m a 55 year old virgin.”

My initial reaction was genuine shock at the thought of such an under-used vagina. But does that make her a lesbian, I wondered.

After reading the article in question, I was left more bewildered than before. In the article, Orman does indeed come out as gay, acknowledging a seven year relationship with K.T. aka Kathy Travis. But in the same article, Orman still claims to be a virgin.

We all know that many, perhaps most, long-term relationships (and yes, seven years is pretty long-term in my books) sometimes do become sexless, leading to unhappiness, affairs or the sad realization that masturbation is as good as its ever going to get, but what about the beginning of a relationship?

In other words, are Suze and Kathy in a platonic relationship or does Orman not consider anything other than the penetration of an actual penis into a vagina sex? Not even Bill Clinton was that evasive.

At first, Orman told the New York Times that she was “in a relationship with life,” in a sort of Clay Aiken-like denial, usually reserved for the likes of Ryan Seacrest or Ricky Martin. When Solomon pressed on, only then did Orman actually come out, announcing her apparently sexless, seven-year relationship with Kathy Travis.

“She must be the most hated woman in the lesbian community,” said my friend Trace. “Can you imagine how furious her girlfriend must have been?”

Orman’s bizarre revelation made me think about how we define virginity. Is Suze Orman really a virgin, or is she a product of a self-hating group that continues to ensure that gay sexuality remain in the closet – even when the person owning it comes out. A strange variation of the distinction between conduct and content. The only places where this distinction really means anything is in the military and the priesthood. Indeed, there exist many a celibate priest that identifies as gay, and the God-fearing are encouraged to “love the sinner, hate the sin.” And the United States military will still discharge a perfectly competent servicemember, recruitment deficits notwithstanding, for simply stating he or she is gay, even if they’ve never so much as touched a member of the same sex.

But is Suze Orman really governed by such absurdity? Does she truly believe her sexual propensities could jeopardize the financial products she dispenses – her books, television shows, infomercials etc.? Or is she joining the ranks of apologists, like Richard Simmons, who flaunt their homosexuality through self-ridicule or exaggerated stereotypes, straining their personas of any sexuality, so chubby housewives can dance to oldies to their heart’s content without being turned on by him or him threatening their out-of-shape husbands.

In my own cloud of disinterest, I had always bought into the notion that the breaking of the hymen was the classic definition of virginity broken, and essentially was relevant to females. In my world, it wasn’t necessarily a penis that broke the hymen, but a finger or toy just as easily. I wasn’t sure about a tongue – whether the hymen was close enough to the surface of the vagina opening for that, or whether a tongue was hard enough.

Trace scoffed at my hymen-centric focus anyway. As if oral sex -- enough to cause an orgasm but not penetrate the hymen -- could be considered anything other than sex.

I suppose a man or woman taking it up the butt for the first time could also be said to be “breaking their virginity,” but I never really took any of this seriously or gave it more thought than that.

After all, who really cares about virginity other than people wanting to desexualize the mother of Jesus with a biological impossibility? Men who want to marry virgins and the women who want to please them, or save their virginity for their husbands? Parents too petrified to imagine their children having sex?

And how does anyone know for sure? Can a hymen not be broken by any number of things aside from, possibly, a hard tongue? An over-zealous probe by a gynecologist, perhaps? A deftly-fingered girl probing the contours of her body in the blossoming of her youth? Would a man intent on marrying a virgin, but not particularly experienced or well-endowed even know the difference? And what if, despite his best efforts, the hymen remained intact? How about virginity being reinvented with each new partner?

Suddenly I realized I’m not sure what a virgin is at all, other than that Madonna was once like one.

Considering those a little more comfortable with their sexuality and their choices, though, Orman’s bizarre claim seems all the more ridiculous when just last night, upon winning an Academy Award, Melissa Etheridge first kissed and then thanked her wife without the world coming to an end. I doubt any of the millions or billions watching assumed Etheridge was a virgin.

America still has a way to go. While there are plenty gay characters on network TV nowadays, the occasional kiss is about as far as they’ll go, and shows like “Queer Eye” perpetuate the myth that gay guys are more likely to be shopping with girlfriends, coaching straight guys on how to decorate and how to become metrosexuals than they are to be kicking their asses in sports, as many of my friends learnt the hard way.

Whether Suze has actually popped Kathy’s cherry, or whether the financial guru is dispensing abstinence in addition to financial guidance, or whether she is keeping her "box in a box" for her actual wedding night, we’ll have to just keep guessing, but as far as role models are concerned, perhaps Suze should pop back into the closet, and stay there.

Until she opens her box anyway.

Bald Face Lies

How apt that the media would turn a haircut into an all-out media event, rivaling if not topping their own demented coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

No, it’s not the President sitting on a runway in Los Angles, delaying planes while he has a haircut on Air Force One. (Although wouldn’t Jet Blue love that as an excuse!)

You guessed it. The train wreck known as Britney Spears shaved her head after checking into and then immediately out of a rehab center, showing Ted Haggard that rehabilitation stints can be much quicker than a drawn out three weeks it took for him to become "completely heterosexual". (Not to be confused with Ryan Seacrest heterosexual.)

Yes, Britney Spears is out of control. From the moment she married a loser in Vegas on some substance-induced whim (although even that marriage lasted longer than her rehab), it was obvious the girl was existing in a realm that most don’t have the luxury of playing in.

And who hasn’t, in their twenties, gone all out on drug-fueled binges of sex, ecstasy, alcohol and a million other combinations and variations thereof? Who, other than James Frey, has to make this kind of stuff up? And who hasn’t, even in their forties, got irritated with their hair and shaved it all off? (I did it last week.)

That the media would point to this as evidence of a newsworthy breakdown is more troubling than the notion of a super-rich, spoiled-rotten woman our society has deemed fit to raise two young children by mere virtue of her sexual orientation, yet Rosie O’Donnell or Melissa Etheridge, by virtue of theirs, are not.

Once upon a time, this same woman, Britney Spears, suggested that we support our President, simply because he’s our President.

However, this week, owing to a lack of a cohesive strategy, the President was wagging an angry finger at Iran, pointing to supposedly irrefutable evidence that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was responsible for arming insurgents with deadly IEDs, even as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, contradicted him Monday, refusing to endorse the President’s accusation. "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this. It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit," Pace told an Australian audience in Canberra.

In an inappropriately jovial press briefing, the President literally beamed with pride when asked what made him so "certain that the highest levels of Tehran's government is responsible." Leaning forward, he forcefully stated: "But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know?"

So incredibly pleased was he with this brilliant verbal trap – to hold Tehran accountable no matter what – he raised it again. "And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?"

Let’s apply his brilliant argument to Abu Ghraib, shall we?

Despite memos from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorizing certain forms of torture, despite memos from then Counsel to President, Alberto Gonzales, calling Geneva Conventions quaint and outdated, and despite efforts across the board to characterize the torturers at Abu Ghraib as "bad apples" and aberrations,” the President still audaciously claimed that America did not torture.

What’s worse Mr. President? In light of the torture that occurred in Abu Ghraib prison, what's worse -- you ordering it and it happening, or you not ordering it and it happening?”

Go shave your head, you idiot.

Anna Nicole Plame

It pisses me off that America cares more about the untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith than it does about the prospect of its Vice President looking increasingly like the man responsible for the treasonous act of outing a CIA operative to punish her husband for exposing the lie that was used as a justification to kill thousands in an expensive and deadly war in Iraq with no end in sight.

The celebrity-worshipping culture that obsesses Americans (and unfortunately is exported abroad and swallowed with almost as much relish) sickens me to the stomach.

The Scooter Libby trial continues to expose the horrifying workings of the Bush administration. The leaking of classified information. The parsing of words and carefully constructed positioning of the likes of Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, Judith Miller and other government shills posing as journalists, wrapping themselves in cloaks of First Amendment martyrdom to hide the extent of their cozy, symbiotic relationships.

The incestuous cesspool that conjures up repulsive images of Mary Matalin sitting on Dick Cheney’s lap telling the copious note taker, Scooter Libby, to call Tim Russert to complain about the spit-spewing sycophant, Chris Matthews, because Tim apparently hates him, resulting in Tim dropping to his knees and talking dirty, freely and openly to an FBI agent, spilling more than just a few beans, while his putrid wife, Maureen Orth lies home oblivious, masturbating to video footage of Michael Jackson, plotting her next attack in Vanity Fair.

A vile, blood-stained intertwining of access, power, greed and money, where in a topsy-turvy world, decrepit radio host on MSNBC, Don Imus, manages to take time out from pimping his wife Deirdre and her new autism agenda and accommodating the penis obsession of his straight-acting, homophobic sidekick Bernard McGuirk, to emerge as the only person able to ask a legitimate, hard-hitting question to Mary Matalin.

Amidst all of this, Republicans in congress are more concerned about the size of Nancy Pelosi’s plane than the treasonous reality that the Vice President short-changed America’s national security interests by outing a CIA operative involved in nuclear proliferation related to Iran. Out of spite and vengeance. Yes, it bears repeating.

Someone more cynical might wonder whether General Electric, (which owns NBC and Tim Russert) have a defense contract or two worth selling out journalistic integrity for. Maybe that’s why this week’s Newsweek, also owned by the same war-enabling mouthpiece, chose to put on its cover, not Valerie Plame, but Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

And we, the duped and deserving, lap up every last drop of all of it.

Lucky Anna Nicole Smith. Shame she didn't pull this stunt on a Friday, though. She too, might have made the cover.

Gavin's Gamble

Very clever, Gavin.

It might be difficult to spot at first, but it’s lurking just beneath the surface.

San Francisco’s media machine is in a tizzy over Gavin Newsom’s mea culpa. And given the above-the-fold attention its being given, it seems like the whole city is gagging over it, commenting, blogging and opinionating like nothing since a certain friend betrayed the confidence of another, and what would become the most talked-about blow job in history was revealed in what would become known as, annoyingly, Monicagate.

Already, this Viagra-deficient scandal doesn’t have legs by virtue of the naming conventions alone. Ruby Rippey-Tourk sounds more like a tongue-teasing, spoiled debutante than a salacious, substance-abusing adulteress, and Rubygate would be worthy of attention if it involved a jewelry heist, not a lame, supposedly short-lived affair.

One of my fellow bloggers on SFGate almost hit the nail on the head. In a post titled, “So much for all the ‘Gavin is gay’ rumors...”, he went on to astutely observe that this is a media-manufactured scandal, and that now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, we can stop worrying about whether he is gay or not, and move on.

However, he underestimates the poignancy of his own analysis. The truth is that, despite assertions to the contrary, its not those of us in San Francisco who could care less about whether Gav takes it up the butt or not (and the occasional affair with married woman and underage girls doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t), it’s those outside of San Francisco, upon whom Newsom’s prospects for higher office rely.

The mayor’s support for gay marriage, and the national furor he ignited, left many in the national arena wondering the same question, if not blatantly accusing San Francisco’s mayor of being a typical, liberal, pinko-commie fag.

Unfortunately, the broader political reality is that Newsom’s latest affair has just cemented his status as a red-blooded, heterosexual American, and nothing could be scarier for his opponents or more attractive to the Democratic machine.

Ironically, the Ku Klux Klan’s D.C.Stephenson, of all people, is credited with the infamous quote: “Everything is fine in politics as long as you don't get caught in bed with a live man, or a dead woman.” Although this chubby, arrogant Grand Dragon died in 1966, his words couldn’t be truer today, and Newsom couldn’t better embody them.

Newsom’s biggest problem from this affair will not be his standing among woman, but rather among men. If you’re going to do another man’s wife, make sure it’s not your friend’s.

But even that is hardly an insurmountable problem. Ask the same men if they would have resisted a blonde temptress while their own marriage was falling apart, and the ethics become even murkier.

Meanwhile, if Newsom has any ambitions to occupy a certain residence on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, he has a good few years to turn this whole thing to advantage.

His immediate apology scores high in the crisis management department, because now, he can take the high road and move on, and leave those of us writing about it and dwelling on it, wallowing here in the dirty gutter of our own making.