Whenever these eruptions occur, sanctimonious tabloid types get on some bullshit show like Nancy Grace and scoff at celebrities who insist on some degree of privacy, especially for their children. On November 14, in the wake of a verdict in the stalking case, the swarm of bees got close again. I yelled for them to get away from my wife, our car, our lives. And as I turned away, you can hear everything I say quite clearly, every word up until I say “cocksucking . . .” something. In a moment such as that, I don’t jump into a car and write down the dialogue. On subsequent broadcasts of the videotape of the event, viewers also can hear every single word I say—except that word. Harvey Levin, of course, wanted to make sure you didn’t miss a thing. So, on his broadcast, he put a title across the screen, which was the word “faggot.” That was on a Thursday. By Monday, I was fired by MSNBC.
In the wake of that, I wasn’t attacked only by the likes of a CBS affiliate legal correspondent or some screechy hen like Nancy Grace. On CNN, Anderson Cooper, joined by blogger Andrew Sullivan, sounded off about the need for me to be “vilified.” I was condemned by GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro. The response from every corner of the gay community was one of either judgment, condemnation, or a good deal of free psychoanalysis. Over time, I have come to understand the role certain people play inside of the gay community. There is no larger platform and no wider audience for their pontifications than when a famous person is “outed” as a homophobe. It’s the form of outing that they love, the outing that’s right and necessary. The rest of the time, Cooper and Sullivan make due with relatively modest audiences. Unless, in Cooper’s case, it’s New Year’s Eve. Ferraro, no doubt, is on a vigilant watch for the next homophobic outburst that GLAAD can raise money on. And if you’re wondering if I’ve ever used the word “faggot,” I call my gay friends that all the time.
In subsequent litigation (contractually stipulated mediation, actually, which I am prevented from getting into too great a detail about), MSNBC’s lawyers opened up with the TMZ video. I had assumed that a news organization such as NBC would have enlisted an “acoustician” (a word I picked up while at these meetings) to provide incontrovertible evidence that I had said the offending word. That didn’t happen. Their lead attorney, poured into his conservative suit like melted wax and resembling Jabba the Hutt, smirked and sighed at my every utterance. Those years in divorce court with Kim, however, had paid off. Not even this guy’s douchebaggery could distract me. My lawyer Ed Hernstadt was sharp and helpful. Typical exchanges went like this:
HERNSTADT: “Did you fire my client because he said ‘faggot’?”
JABBA: “‘Cocksucker’ is a homophobic slur as well.”
HERNSTADT: “Just to be clear, which word is he being fired for?”
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NBC has a “human resources” problem. When it came time to dismiss or ease into retirement names like Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Ann Curry, David Gregory, and, eventually, Brian Williams and Billy Bush, NBC’s owners, during the GE and Comcast eras, did not view their stars as people who required or deserved any special treatment as they were being fired. Perhaps especially as they were being fired. They were employees, like in any of their other businesses. MSNBC eventually settled on a portion of the unpaid balance of my contract. I believe they did that because they could not prove I said the offending word. The reason they couldn’t prove that is because I didn’t say it.
(When I subsequently offered, online, the word “fathead,” I was joking. Ineffectively.) So long as I know, that is all I have to hold on to. Such battles with the press, tabloid or otherwise, can have lasting and toxifying results. When you lose all perspective, you run the risk of getting in touch with your inner Nixon, a condition marked by a romanticized paranoia, teeming resentments, and a limitless appetite for settling scores.
On an episode of the PBS television program American Masters devoted to the life and career of Woody Allen, the subject of Allen’s personal tribulations and tabloid scandals is touched on. Allen responds with an aplomb I only wish I had, saying: “Everybody had an opinion about my private life, which I felt they were all free to have. And free to respond in any way that made them happy. They could sympathize with me, not sympathize with me. They could dislike me, they could like me. It could have no effect on whether they saw my films. They could never see my films again. None of that mattered to me.”
I wasn’t that self-possessed.
That same year, a photographer from the New York Post, accompanying a Post reporter who attempted to interview me outside my apartment, later told the paper that I had called him a “coon.” Aside from the fact that I wasn’t in the habit of using such racist language, let alone words more commonly found in the Deep South in the 1950s, I thought “Where’s the proof?” The Post is published and edited by people who don’t let the truth stand in the way of a successful smear campaign. But, if the photographer is like every other one I encounter, his camera records video as well as shoots digital pictures. Where was the recording?
Walking down East 9th Street near 5th Avenue one evening, within days of the claims of the Post (whose photographer turned out to be an ex–police officer) I passed by an older couple, a black man and woman. He was dressed in a suit and tie and camel overcoat. This distinguished man looked up at me and, unmistakably, recognized who I was. His face completely changed as he shook his head slightly from side to side. “Et tu, Alec?” was the message I picked up from him. How I wanted to appeal to him, right then and there. “I went to Florida in ’96 to do voter registration work in black communities!” “You don’t believe what you read in the Post, do you?” Whatever work I had done on behalf of progressive causes over the past thirty years was washed away in one act of the nullification that News Corp outlets and their operatives crave. My heart broke.
The memory of that man’s expression was tattooed on me right up until I visited the Hate Crimes office of the Manhattan District Attorney. In the interview they conducted, I asked, point blank, “Is there a video?” The woman running the interview with four others from her staff paused and stared at me, as if to indicate that she was hoping I might incriminate myself in spite of the existence of the video. “There is a video,” she replied, after a long pause. “Let’s play it,” I said. On the video, at no time whatsoever do I use the word “coon” or any other racial epithet. As the photographer rejoins the young reporter, she asks, “What did he say?” He replies, “I think he called me a coon or something.” Of course, that claim, with no substantiation, is enough for the Post.
That day on East 9th Street, as the elegant man in the camel coat came closer and made out who I was, I could have sworn I heard a disgusted “Mmmm” emanate from him, that low sound coming from a shock or disappointment you didn’t see coming.