Then the Weiner dropped, and I found myself nostalgic for the wholesomeness of the Spitzer scandal. Spitzer had sex. With a professional. And at least tried to do so discreetly. An old-timey, old-fashioned kind of scandal. Weiner, another funny-looking, articulate Democrat, was pathologically and self-destructively devoted to showing strange women his penis via The Twitter, and The Facebook. The whole thing was disconcerting and unpleasant.
And then the Gay Girl from Damascus was both un-gayed and un-girled, and I found myself nostalgic for Weiner. Amina Arraf, who claimed to be Syrian-American, lesbian, and real, turned out to be a Medieval Studies grad student from Georgia named Tom MacMaster. When it was reported that Amina had been kidnapped by the government, people started to look into her and to not be able to find her and MacMaster was unmasked. Even more bizarrely, one of MacMaster's "victims", Paula Brooks, founding editor of lesbian news site Lez Get Real, then turned out to be a male construction worker from Ohio. NPR's headline summarizes the situation admirably: "Another Supposedly Lesbian Blogger Turns Out to Be a Man."
It's the sympathetic teen girls trying to convince other teen girls they meet online to meet for real in deserted parking lots who are supposed to turn out to be older men in disguise, not the lesbian bloggers.
When Weiner weinered, I missed the innocent, straightforward salaciousness of the Spitzer scandal. But when Amina and Paula turned out to be Tom and Bill, I found myself missing the innocent, straightforwardly compulsive, exhibitionist perviness of Weiner. He's dishonest, manipulative, messed-up and free with his privates, but sexual misbehaviour is reassuringly familiar. I am apparently more confounded by men wanting to represent and speak for communities of women who love other women by pretending to be women who love other women than by men who want to show strangers what's inside their pants.
I'm sure something will now happen that will make me yearn for the days when straight men just pretended to be lesbians. Maybe Spitzer and Weiner will turn out to be lesbian bloggers in disguise.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.