The other side of the Comeback Mountain

Divorce is one of the most painful and traumatic experiences anyone can endure. Heartbreak, disappointment, betrayal, anger and humiliation are part and parcel of a failed marriage.

Now imagine what it'd be like if your soon-to-be-former spouse dragged out into the open the most intimate details of your marriage in a book, and tomorrow, in the national and world-wide confessional self-help and possitive affirmation^tm forum at the Church of Oprah, so that (as Tom Moran put it) "he can make money and work through another stage of his personal growth". Not that he's slumming it, mind you, since he's living in a $1.4 million home in Plainfield.

I'm talking about Jim McGreevey, of course, who rather than hang out in nice gay bars used to look for sex in truck stops, who was making out with his alleged lover in the home he shared with his wife while she was in the hospital recovering from a Caesarean section, allegedly pouncing on the "other man" on his marital bed (bragging that "we made love like I'd always dreamed: a boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine kind of love", but couldn't the boastful whispering wait until she was out of the hospital?), who, a few weeks after 9/11/2001 gave his unqualified and unsuitable-for-the-job lover the job of state homeland security adviser when the mailbox where the anthrax letters were mailed from five years ago today was less than a mile away from the governor's mansion.

Two years ago I predicted that McGreevey would be doing a comeback tour -- clearly advised by focus groups and consultants -- to reposition himself politically in a new wash-and-wear persona as a gay activist. Right on schedule, here it is: The Comeback Mountain Tour.

We are looking at The Great Gay American red herring, for sure.

By all accounts Dina Matos McGreevey was a loyal and faithful wife even when she was, at least according to her soon-to-be-ex, in a marriage without intimacy. After the absurd and embarassing scene at the "I am a gay American" press conference two years ago, and the present strain of the unfinalized divorce (she declined to join her not-yet-ex at Oprah's), she's going to have more than enough to deal with when their daughter's grown up and reading that book.

I only hope Ms Matos and her daughter are able to leave the country on an extended holiday as guests of someone (Oprah, do you know anyone?) who has more decency than the consumate politician she married. That way she'll be spared the shameful spectacle and media circus.

No one deserves the humiliation he's putting her through.

(Please vote for this article at Real Clear Politics)

Update A friend emailed the link to New York mag's article by the former governor. Not a word about Machiavelli.

Follow-up post What Oprah didn't ask McGreevey

(technorati tags Jim McGreevey, New Jersey, Oprah, Politics)