Frank Bruni, the NYT's newish all-gay-all-the-time op-ed columnist, tugs at the heart strings:
THE way Kevin McClatchy figured it, he had to choose. He could indulge his dream of presiding over a big-time professional sports team, or he could be open about his sexuality. The two paths didn’t dovetail.
He went with sports, and in February 1996, at the age of 33, became the youngest owner in major league baseball when he led a group of investors who bought the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I presume that McClatchy is the scion of the McClatchy newspaper chain dynasty.
For the next 11 years, he was the team’s managing general partner and chief executive officer, not to mention its public face.
By the way, the Pirates were pretty awful under McClatchy's ownership.
And for all of that time, he took pains not to let his players, the owners of other teams or anyone beyond a tiny circle of family and close friends learn that he was gay.
According to some commenters from Pittsburgh, it was common knowledge in Pittsburgh, anyway.
He stepped away from the Pirates in 2007, but it took five years for him to reach the point where he felt even remotely comfortable sitting down with a journalist, as he did with me recently at his home here, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, to talk about his private life.
Stop the presses! Rich guy who was part owner of a bad baseball team five years ago wants to talk about his private life.
I sense that some upscale WASPs are starting to figure out that this whole gay thing is a ticket to ride in a 21st Century America where it increasingly helps to belong to a recognized, respectable identity politics group.
Gays have always formed a quasi-covert Old Boys Network in many fields, discriminating in favor of their own and, inevitably, discriminating against females and males who won't play ball with them. But now they can become a public identity politics group as well and focus all attention on discrimination against them, which makes it practically impossible for the modern mind to notice that gays discriminate in the workplace, too.
I sense that some upscale WASPs are starting to figure out that this whole gay thing is a ticket to ride in a 21st Century America where it increasingly helps to belong to a recognized, respectable identity politics group.
Gays have always formed a quasi-covert Old Boys Network in many fields, discriminating in favor of their own and, inevitably, discriminating against females and males who won't play ball with them. But now they can become a public identity politics group as well and focus all attention on discrimination against them, which makes it practically impossible for the modern mind to notice that gays discriminate in the workplace, too.
How many times do we have to hear this same story? Why is it supposed to be interesting? All gay, all the time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I love the old saw that so and so hid the fact from all but his closest friends and family when we all know that most gay men are not hard to identify, especially if one is around them frequently.
ReplyDeleteYeah, yeah, yeah. They're out there trying to tell us they're just as masculine acting as the next guy. My lying eyes and ears and so on and so forth.....
I wonder: does anyone think that a percentage of the gay community has actually managed to convince itself that heteros think the trait of homosexuality is a positive trait, you know, one they'd like to have, like height, say.
ReplyDeleteOr do they understand society has just become more civil regarding their, uh, "atypicality"?
It seems a stupid question but listening to some of them, I sometimes think they've actually started to think straights envy them.
I wonder what it is that sexual attraction does that causes it to be selected for reproduction in the animal kingdom. I guess it has no biological function, or at least we're not supposed to think about it.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, the part about him being "so brave" is missing. Or I just glossed over it, whatever.
ReplyDeleteI always find it hilarious when they trot out the "so brave" bit. Yeah, because it takes such courage to come out knowing you are going to be praised by every media outlet under the sun for your incredible, selfless, courageous and noble deed of letting the world know you like getting a dick in your ass.
Examples of the "quasi-covert Old Boys Network?"
ReplyDeleteSteroids, hgh, players whoring around, racialized theme nights (I'm looking at you, ny mets: Dominican night, Jewish night, etc), dirtbag owners (friends of lowlife Howard spira or Bernie madoff), perjurers, sleazy enabling managers like tony Larussa, parasitic teams and their taxpayer funded stadiums, and now a gay owner. Who watches baseball anymore? What a crappy sport.
ReplyDeleteBtw, was mcclatchy a pitcher or a catcher?.....#buttpirate!!!!
ReplyDeletewhich makes it practically impossible for the modern mind to notice that gays discriminate, too.
Oh no! Tell me they don't.
You have destroyed my world view and my self esteem!
OT, except tangential to the victimization.
ReplyDeleteSteve, how'd you miss Plashcke getting all righteous about UCLA's black quarterback? Brett Huntley I think is his name. Never mind that UCLA had a black quarterback when Jackie Robinson attended the school (yup, it was Robinson). Never mind that the LA Rams had a black quarterback with Harrison way back in the 1970s. Never mind that some of the most hyped quarterbacks in the last decade have been black. There is still a 'stereotype that blacks can't play quarterback'. The proof -- only one winning quarterback in 46 superbowls!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're out there trying to tell us they're just as masculine acting as the next guy. My lying eyes and ears and so on and so forth.....
ReplyDeleteYou have a bit of confirmation bias going on there. Yes, some of them are dreadfully obvious, even when they think they're in the closet.
But some aren't. You think you can pick out the gay guys because the guys who can pass for straight have you fooled.
USC had a black quarterback in the late 1960s. Jimmy Jones? Wasn't a very accurate passer, as I recall, but then few were back then.The Rams had a black quarterback in 1973?, James Harris. The simplest model is that blacks are, on the whole, not bad at quarterback, but not particularly good, either. Their comparative advantage is at other positions, so they tend to specialize there.
ReplyDeleteOff topic but related to some iSteve themes: short sleepers who may also be hypomaniacs.
ReplyDelete"But some aren't. You think you can pick out the gay guys because the guys who can pass for straight have you fooled."
ReplyDeleteMost guys who "can pass for straight" are actively trying to not give themselves away, and they are careful to keep up the facade as best as they can, but when you work with them each day, you see little things that don't escape the eye of a heterosexual woman.
A gay guy, no matter how unfem you might think he is, doesn't react to women the way a straight guy does, even if he tries to fake an interest.
It isn't hard for a woman to tell.
A little off-topic [although not all that much off-topic], but the Daily Mail has a photo spread of Chelsea Clinton at her Dad's big shindig today, and the poor girl looks just terrible.
ReplyDeleteIn real life, she's 32, but in this photo, in wouldn't be too much of a stretch to call her 45.
So that's the Clinton family tree - their only child locked in a childless marriage, with a husband of dubious sexuality [and dubious commitment to the marriage].
By contrast, this is what the Romney family tree looks like.
I'm telling you: These Blue State SWPLs are on the express train to extinction.
In another 20 or 30 years, Bill Clinton will no longer even amount to much of a memory in anyone's mind anymore, whereas a guy like Mitt Romney will have had his seed spread all over the entire nation.
It's just simple mathematics, people - the SWPLs are not long for this world.
"Gays have always formed a quasi-covert Old Boys Network in many fields . . ."
ReplyDeleteBingo. I've long assumed that the ban against gays in the military was designed precisely to get rid of the sort of secret societies that will arise within organizations such as the military. Sadly, as in so many facets of life, the wisdom of our grandfathers has been done away with by the sacred principal of non-discrimination.
despite this, the lie will remain in place that professional sports are about winning, winning, and nothing but winning. that winning is by far the number 1 priority, and that all teams try to win all the time, and all teams only put the best players on the field, and all teams are run by managers and executives who only think about winning games and little else.
ReplyDeleteany pittsburgh pirates fan over the last 20 YEARS can attest to this not being true in the slightest possible way.
couple this with the fiasco in the NFL now, which again, puts to rest the idea that the league is putting the best product possible on the field, every time, and you can now forget the ideas about every player always being selected based on merit. there's other factors and they come into play routinely.
the NFL won't even pay out an extra 2 or 3 million a year to REFS, and would rather put THIS CLOWN SHOW on television instead.
Anthills, anthills, anthills. Everywhere those anthills. Where do the anthills end, and where does that ever-elusive level playing field begin?
ReplyDeleteMichael Vick set two franchises back 5-10 years thinking he could play the position. As will Cam Newton, Josh Freeman and possibly rg3.
ReplyDeleteWhen you feel pressure to make the black QB a success is when it becomes detrimental.
"He could indulge in his dream of presiding over a big-time professional sports team." Or choose not to, or choose to and have it be complicated. Unlike pretty much everyone else.
ReplyDeleteIn the annals of lame complaints, that has to be a new outlier. What a pussy.
Gays peaked in 1993 when Tom Hanks played a gay martyr in Philadelphia. Excitement, interest and sympathy has waned ever since. The child molester antipathy that has gripped the culture ever since has hurt gays too, though they will never admit it. A disproportionate number of pedophiles are men, the regular people know it and gays know it. Wake up guys - the women who run elementary schools always do their best to keep men away from the prepubescent boys - how can you not notice that? You are being discriminated against by liberal mothers.
ReplyDeleteThis is all very funny since it's much more difficult for a CEO who opposes 'gay marriage' to come out of the 'homophobic' closet. Look what happened to Chick Fil A for... opposing the ridiculous 'gay marriage'.
ReplyDeleteBeing gay is a plus in elite circles, but Big Media--owned by Jews and gays--tell us that rich gays are the ones who fear coming out or being outed. This is all wink wink BS. Elites know all about gay power and privilege in high circles. This news story is to sway mass opinion.
It's the gay version of the racial violence racket. Though most racial violence is black on white, we still make believe that blacks are under attack by whites. So, black parents have 'the talk', but if the Derb has a talk, he is eeeeeeevil though most racial violence is black on white.
And though Jena Six beat up a white kid nearly to death, they were the poor victims of white hatred according to the elite media.
It's the Christianization of morality. Ever since the rise of Christianity, it became noble to be a victim. Before Christianity, it was shameful to have lost, and so peoples highlighted their triumphs/victories while suppressing or forgetting memories of their losses/defeats/victimization.
But with the rise of Christian morality, it was noble to be a victim. The negative result of this was that EVEN WHEN A PEOPLE WERE NO LONGER VICTIMS AND AMASSED GREAT POWER AND WERE OPPRESSING OTHERS, THEY STILL ACTED THE VICTIM.
Christians were initially victims, but they gained great power, indeed ultimate power in Europe. But even after they burned pagans at the stake and destroyed pagan temples, they still maintained the cult of Christian victimhood. So, even though Christians burned witches for over a 1000 yrs, they retold the story of being fed to lions endlessly.
Same thing with Jews, blacks, and gays. No matter how rich they become, how privileged,and how many people they victimize, they'll always find new ways to play the victim card.
This news story is bogus. The whole thing sounds orchestrated and manufactured. It's a rich gay guy and rich Jewish guys in media working together to concoct a fake controversy to milk sympathy for gays.
But no mention in elite media about all the victims of black crime. Oh, those are not black crime but 'teen' crime.
And who can forget the thing with Bernie Madoff. Though Madoff and many Jews pulled off dirty tricks and ripped off so many people, the spin was 'poor Jews hurt by Madoff'. So, even when Jews do wrong, the story is spun as 'poor poor Jews'.
This is why leftism is a joke. It cares more about billionaire gays than working Americans hurt by globalism.
ReplyDeleteBy the way...
ReplyDeleteLigonier, Pa., home of our brave hero according to the byline, is 99.76% white according to Wikipedia.
Shouldn't he be somehow penalized for not living up to the diversity ideal?
Perhaps it would be more consistent with the Diversity Ideal for him to live in one of Pittsburgh's charming neighborhoods such as Terrace Village or Crawford-Roberts.
"It seems a stupid question but listening to some of them, I sometimes think they've actually started to think straights envy them."
ReplyDeleteI do envy the certain freedom they have to get away with interests (like theatre) and types of (non-sexual) behavior that straight men are often not allowed to get away with. Some subset of brutish, uncultured straight men want to narrow the boundaries of masculinity to a ridiculously stifling degree.
"Gay" is one of the few ways whites can get in on the racial spoils game. Three blacks jump a white gay and it isn't a hate crime. BUT IF THE WHITE GUY IS "GAY" then it becomes one. See? Who Knows? Maybe gays will get on the A.A. gravy train? I'd say I was "gay" if it meant a nice cozy, government job, with pension and benefits.
ReplyDeleteMy father was gay and he always said that gays were a kind of freemasonry. He said they could tell each other apart and tried to get me to wear certain types of clothing for job interviews that would make me friends among potential gay interviewers without making me look gay to straights.
ReplyDeleteHe said they were shameless in favouring their own even back in the 1950's.
In unversities, the gay victim group are now the biggest crooks of all. You would not believe the things I have seen in my time as a lecturer, and with my background, I'm not easy to shock
You have a bit of confirmation bias going on there. Yes, some of them are dreadfully obvious, even when they think they're in the closet.
ReplyDeleteApparently it's not difficult to identify gays just by looking at their eyes.
"My father was gay and he always said that gays were a kind of freemasonry"
ReplyDeleteLodge members with benefits.
"BUT IF THE WHITE GUY IS "GAY" then it becomes one."
ReplyDeleteLet's all be straight gays.
ps. Shouldn't gays be called 'bents' or 'crookeds' as opposite of straights?
But some aren't. You think you can pick out the gay guys because the guys who can pass for straight have you fooled.
ReplyDeleteThis may be true, but I can say that for the guys I knew who "came out of the close", it never was a huge surprise.
This was true even a couple of decades ago when everything wasn't all gay 24/7 where people are always wondering about someone's sexuality.
Generally, my reaction to these debuts (and other people's reactions, for the most part) was "yeah, it figures" rather than, "no, I never would have guessed that about Joe...".
I've long assumed that the ban against gays in the military was designed precisely to get rid of the sort of secret societies that will arise within organizations such as the military.
ReplyDeleteMy military experience was before "don't ask, don't tell". I don't know if I would go so far as "secret societies", more along the lines of "good order and discipline".
But it is a related concept in that sexual attraction empowers the holder of it, so it skews lines of authority. This is true of women on ships - this was starting when I was in the Navy and, although we didn't have to deal w/it in subs, all my friends on surface ships had nothing positive to say about the development.
It may have been good for the Navy politically to concede on gays/women, but there is no doubt that it degrades performance in a crew.
That being said, I had been in a couple of situations where there was someone who everyone, from the captain on down, more or less knew was gay but nobody took any action because they were a good sailor and there was no hint of impropriety.
However, in other situations, where somebody propositioned somebody, action was swift and decisive.
This actually was how the military used to operate in the 50's and before when there weren't such things as "homosexuals", just homosexual acts. Homosexual acts were proscribed.
I think w/regards to homosexuality, the antis lost big by accepting the notion that there is such a thing as homosexuals rather than people who engage in homosexual activity (in varying degrees).
In the first case, when someone is a "homosexual" and it is innate and part of their identity, you have to be fair and not discriminate against the class. In the second case, you just proscribe the activity, not the person.
Of course, things are way too far gone to ever roll this back.
ReplyDeleteSo that's the Clinton family tree
She looks an awful lot like Webb Hubble.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/14/home/hubbell.jpg
Just saying.
Next on his sports team aquisition list: The Texas [] Rangers and the Green Bay [] Packers.
ReplyDelete"males who won't play ball with them"....bit of unfortunate terminology, Steve.
ReplyDelete"Shouldn't gays be called 'bents' or 'crookeds' as opposite of straights?"
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised this hasn't been banned in Britain.
Every valley shall be exalted &tc
Every mountain and hill made low
The crooked straight...
the crooked straight...
the crooked straight,
and the rough places plain.
The concept of "discrimination in the workplace" leaves me cold.
ReplyDeleteEmployers should be able to hire as they please.
One of the reasons employers aren't hiring now is that they can't decide on their own who they want to hire. The Fed, the states and the media want to tell them who they can hire.
Let employers decide who they want to hire without the outside interference and you'll see the job market flourish.
"I do envy the certain freedom they have to get away with interests (like theatre) and types of (non-sexual) behavior that straight men are often not allowed to get away with. Some subset of brutish, uncultured straight men want to narrow the boundaries of masculinity to a ridiculously stifling degree."
ReplyDeleteWhat was the line from Idiocracy, "You talk faggy."?
"the antis lost big by accepting the notion that there is such a thing as homosexuals rather than people who engage in homosexual activity (in varying degrees). "
ReplyDeleteThey were trying to be charitable, first by calling it a mental illness then declaring it an innate characteristic.
Anyway, I believe you're right and that the great marriage wars are over the guys in the middle who are capable of engaging in straight or gay sex depending on mood or circumstance. The straights want them for marriage and the gays want to convince them they're hopelessly, irreversibly gay so it's no use even trying to be straight.
Personally, I know women who admit they hate sex who would have loved to marry a gay guy, just for the company at plays, concerts etc. It was a big loss when those guys all went over to the dark side.
I wish there were blogs about this but I realize guys don't want to get too close to it, or they will be accused and so forth.
Does this mean that, in Pittsburgh, on "Talk like a Pirate Day" every body spoke with a lisp?
ReplyDeleteA gay guy, no matter how unfem you might think he is, doesn't react to women the way a straight guy does, even if he tries to fake an interest
ReplyDeleteSo, how does a straight guy react?
Theses days every straight guy in any office needs to know how to avoid them to avoid false sexual harassment claims.
It's just simple mathematics, people - the SWPLs are not long for this world.
ReplyDeleteSWPLs are just as much made as they are born. The media and school systems create them in droves from nice normal white and Asian kids (and higher intelligence blacks and Hispanics are even more easily converted). Any hopeful idea that they will self-exterminate is not going to happen.
It's in the Bible in the Book of Volvo: "And verily, the SWPLs you shall always have with you."
"Gays have always formed a quasi-covert old boys network..."
ReplyDeleteAs someone who was recently in a Catholic seminary, brother I could tell you stories. Fr. Andrew Greeley, no prudish reactionary he, has written extensively on the "Lavender Mafia" that's dominated the American Church for about forty or fifty years. Straight guys who don't want to play ball are quickly identified and either marginalized or dismissed.
I'm telling you: These Blue State SWPLs are on the express train to extinction... It's just simple mathematics, people - the SWPLs are not long for this world.
ReplyDeleteJust wait until this study starts making the rounds in SWPLdom - they'll all be racing off to their urologists for this surgery:
Men without testicles might live longer, study suggests
By Jon Bardin
September 24, 2012
latimes.com
Want to live to 100? A new study suggests that, for men, your testicles might be holding you back.
Korean eunuchs - men who had their testicles removed - outlived their contemporaries by as many as 14 to 19 years, suggesting that male sex hormones somehow act to shorten the male human lifespan, according to a new historical study of records spanning from the 14th century through the early 19th century.
The finding, reported Monday in the journal Current Biology, argues for something called the "disposable soma theory." The idea is that since animals have limited access to energy, there is a natural trade-off between reproduction and the maintenance of the body's cells...
A pedophile priest doesn't get in trouble for sodomizing children, because his boss and his boss's boss (bishops?) are doing the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThis is why the Catholic Church has had so many problems and within a generation will have all of its churches turned into museums.
ANd this is why the Bible is so "homophobic." They knew back then that homosexuals could do serious damage to an institution.
Shouldn't gays be called 'bents' or 'crookeds' as opposite of straights?
ReplyDeleteIn British usage gays are 'benders' or sometimes 'bent'. Though bent also serves as meaning criminal, corrupt etc as in American usage.
Some subset of brutish, uncultured straight men want to narrow the boundaries of masculinity to a ridiculously stifling degree.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much that is itself an unthinking reaction to the whole all-gay-all-the time process in popular culture.
Sailer, I hope you're working on a piece about Elizabeth Warren: this would seem a teachable moment about race.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I don't have perfect gaydar but there is a kid in my son's boy scout troop that sets off my gaydar instantly. I am a woman and I wonder if straight guys and straight women have equally sensitive gaydar. What do you think?
ReplyDeletePlashcke getting all righteous
ReplyDeleteIn the Bay Area, Plaschke's counterpart is a Chronicle writer named Bruce Jenkins (who grew up in L.A, nextdoor to Jim Murray). These sportswriters suffer from a terrible inferiority complex, in that real journalists never took them seriously in the first place, and of course lately their industry is disappearing out from under them. So they need add-on credentials, and they've rightly discerned that there's an endless appetite for posing as a stalwart fighter against the rising tide of segregation. Almost invariably, when one of these guys appears on radio, he takes a dig at the right.
"Gays have always formed a quasi-covert Old Boys Network in many fields . . ."
ReplyDeleteBingo. I've long assumed that the ban against gays in the military was designed precisely to get rid of the sort of secret societies that will arise within organizations such as the military. Sadly, as in so many facets of life, the wisdom of our grandfathers has been done away with by the sacred principal of non-discrimination.
The military has done remarkably well at keeping factions of all kinds down, though I find the closing of bases in blue states, and even in many western states, which results in their increased concentration in the South, to be a bit disturbing. And I'm saying that as a Southerner.
According to some commenters from Pittsburgh, it was common knowledge in Pittsburgh, anyway.
ReplyDeleteSame with Kordell Stewart, I believe.
He said they could tell each other apart and tried to get me to wear certain types of clothing for job interviews that would make me friends among potential gay interviewers without making me look gay to straights.
ReplyDeleteLike a green tie? Or is that amyth?
"They knew back then that homosexuals could do serious damage to an institution."
ReplyDeleteOh boy...and I think it went rotten from the beginning. And I say that as a Catholic. I think our local pastors are okay...of course! They're too fat and bald to be active gays.
"A gay guy, no matter how unfem you might think he is, doesn't react to women the way a straight guy does, even if he tries to fake an interest."
ReplyDelete"So, how does a straight guy react?"
Straight guys wanna undress women. Gay guys wanna dress them.
Everybody should be a victim!
ReplyDeletebehavior that straight men are often not allowed to get away with
ReplyDeleteWhen the definition of str8 was wider:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdSViaW6lUA
ReplyDelete"ANd this is why the Bible is so "homophobic." They knew back then that homosexuals could do serious damage to an institution."
I thought back in Bible times you had to be married to be a priest. Do you have to be married to be an orthodox jewish rabbi?
The bigger story surrounding the Pirates is that they sent some of their top prospects to Navy Seal training, and at least one got hurt. Strange, since it's well-known that that's how Tiger Woods ruined his left knee.
ReplyDeleteThe military has done remarkably well at keeping factions of all kinds down
ReplyDeleteI've long thought that was one of the reasons for moving people around every 2-4 years in changes of duty stations/assignments.
They have to be married to lead a worship service?
ReplyDeletehttp://judaism.about.com/od/jewishbeliefsandlaws/f/rabbis_celibacy.htm
He came out after he sold the Pittsburgh Pirates so he's not gaining from this in baseball. It's a human interest story like weddings, weight loss, plastic surgery, divorce etc.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Pittsburgh and as an avid sports fan, I feel confident telling you this was definitely not common knowledge, at least among the fans. Maybe people who worked for the team knew; I don't know. I'm also not sure what if any relation he is to the McClatchy newspaper folks, either, for the simple fact that he didn't seem to be all that wealthy. He had to cobble together a group of investors to buy the team back in the 90's rather than buyin the team outright, and they routinely had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball throughout his tenure. He eventually sold the team to some guys who for sure are in the newspaper business: Ogden Nutting and his son Bob, who own a chain of small town newspapers based in Charleston, WV, and seem to be a bit more well-heeled than their predecessors, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnd the two of them had sex after the interview.
ReplyDelete"[I]n other situations, where somebody propositioned somebody, action was swift and decisive.
ReplyDelete"This actually was how the military used to operate in the 50's and before when there weren't such things as "homosexuals", just homosexual acts. Homosexual acts were proscribed.
The same thing was true of Catholic seminaries up to the 50s. If you got caught or found out, you were gone. (Even in 1984, a boy who groped another boy in my high school seminary was expelled and gone by the next morning. Too bad they didn't do the same with the teachers.) Theoretically, a young man with homosexual tendencies could make it through the system and be ordained, but only if he was able to keep his urges entirely to himself. If he could do that for several years while living entirely with men, sharing dorm and shower rooms, then he'd probably be able to control himself once he got to a parish or school.
So either way, it wasn't a problem, until the directors started buying into modern psychology. That led first to the idea that homosexuality was a deviancy that could be cured with some therapy (that's what they thought about everything then), and later to thinking there was nothing wrong with it and homosexuals could be celibate just as easily as heteros. Wrong twice over.
So, even though Christians burned witches for over a 1000 yrs, they retold the story of being fed to lions endlessly.
ReplyDeleteProtestantism has not been around for a 1000 years.