Narcissism is thy Governor’s Game

I have very little interest in the sex lives of other people and I have, more or less, always been that way. My philosophy has always been; if it is not my sex life, who cares? But every once and a while something will happen that will make me peep out of my self-imposed isolation and peek at another’s sex life.

The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal made me raise my eyebrows and I probably wouldn’t have bothered but for two things that grabbed my attention. The asinine denial from the former US President (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”) and who in their right mind keeps a dress hanging in there closet for a year with semen stains on it? I just couldn’t imagine the circumstances where I would want to bring the dress out as a keepsake to show off the dress I was wearing when I blew Wet Willie. It is just not the kind of thing I would do nor would I want to imagine what the children would say.

I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey when he resigned over the open closet sex scandal and I can’t say I caught him sharing his pain on Oprah either. Frankly, I think his pain pales beside the horrendous ordeal he chose to put his wife and children through by practicing such a deception. If anything, it was the plight of the wife and children which initially caught my attention. Thank my lucky stars that I had not to live through that kind of nightmare, but apparently, the wife and children are not the only victims of McGreevey’s selfish hubris reports Ynet News:

Since the case made waves on two continents over two years ago, Golan Cipel has been hiding from the media. The story of the relationship between the governor of New Jersey and the advisor from Israel was all over the American and Israeli papers, but until now Cipel has refused to be interviewed. With the publication of former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey’s tell-all book The Confession, Cipel has decided to break his silence.

Since the story died down, Cipel has attempted to lead a quiet life. “It took me a long time to find work,” he notes. “At first I wanted to continue my struggle from abroad, but after I saw that my family was being attacked by journalists I decided to conduct my struggle from Israel. The whole story is painful. What hurts the most is that my entire life I’ve kept my integrity, and suddenly I got involved in this case because of someone else. I wanted to get married, to have a family, and because of him I’ve lost a good many years of my life.

“When I returned to Israel my feeling was that this man would try to return to public life, and that’s what’s happening now. That’s why I’m no longer prepared to remain silent. Why is he writing a book? If his only concern was his two daughters, the two families he destroyed, he would have focused on his personal life. But he needs the public’s sympathy, the applause, for them to love him. That was his main motivation for getting into politics.”

The case exploded in August 2004 when James McGreevey held a press conference in which he confessed his homosexuality, told of a long affair he’d had with Golan Cipel, and claimed that Cipel had blackmailed him. Cipel vehemently denied the charges, claiming he’d been sexually harassed by the governor and had never had sex with him. An FBI investigation examined both the blackmail allegations and the sexual harassment charges, but the case was closed and none of the people involved was put on trial.