Dirty Rotten Crooked and Lying Politician (who happens to be a sodomite) of the Day.

May God have mercy on James McGreevey's black, bloody soul.

The New York Sun: Predestined For Duplicity

Autobiography is often an exercise in absolution — and never more so than when it is titled "The Confession" (Regan, 370 pages, $26.95). James McGreevey, former altar boy and New Jersey governor, invokes church fathers (St. Thomas Aquinas, for example), in his quest to come clean. But the genre he has chosen is not the appropriate form of apologia, since by its very nature it is also an exercise in exculpation. Even more so when the subject has a collaborator — in this case, David France, who possesses, in Mr. McGreevey's words, "the gift of language."

To put it another way, Mr. McGreevey is still a politician, and his book has to be regarded as a political act. Why should Mr. France, who gets only one sentence in the acknowledgments, be regarded as other than a kind of speechwriter and damage control expert?

The back of Mr. McGreevey's book jacket features his proclamation: "History books will all say I resigned in disgrace. That misses the point entirely. Resigning was the single most important thing I have ever done. I'd rejected a political solution to my troubles and took the more painful route: penance and atonement, the way to grace." But resigning was a political solution. When Mr. McGreevey announced he was leaving office because he was gay, I joined my South Jersey neighbors in wondering what was really behind the governor's resignation. That he was gay was no surprise to many of us, since tales about his cavorting in Cape May were common.

What bothered his constituents (Democrats and Republicans) — at least the ones I talked to — was his duplicity. Evidence of corruption in his administration was mounting, and the gay tiein only mattered in so far as he appointed Golan Cipel, his lover, to a position in homeland security that, in Mr. McGreevey's words, reflected a "spectacular lapse of judgment."

You can say that again. Mr. Cipel's appointment, remember, was an outrage not merely because the governor was in love with him (Mr. Cipel claims he was sexually harassed but never had consensual sex with Mr. McGreevey), but because Mr. Cipel had no qualifications for the sensitive role he occupied. This was no minor office but one that involved overseeing the safety of New Jersey citizens.

Writing an autobiography — especially one that eschews any detailed exploration (naming names) of "pay to play" (the phrase now used for awarding government positions and contracts to major campaign contributors) obfuscates what had to be the more complicated and compromising circumstances under which Mr. McGreevey resigned. His personal story is riveting (kudos to Mr. France), but Mr. McGreevey's former constituents and historians deserve much more.

Perhaps legal reasons restrain Mr. McGreevey, as well as a desire not to embarrass his political mentors and allies. Just so. That is why autobiography — at least at this stage — is problematic. Even on the personal level, though, Mr. McGreevey cannot convey the full story of his gay sensibility.He has to disguise the names of former lovers going all the way back to early adolescence, and mount a fierce defense of his parents, rejecting the clichés about the familial and environmental factors that shape a gay sensibility. Mr. McGreevey is squarely in the biological camp, believing that nature, not nurture, produces homosexuals. Consequently, he never forthrightly analyzes the nexus between his Roman Catholic upbringing and his sexual orientation.

The worse kind of mortal sin is the one you magically transform into normal behavior because it is more important to you than The Truth.

Kiddies, repeat after me Fyodor's Rule # 7: There is no such thing as "born as". (Corollary A: Our destinies are not determined.)

When referring to his closeted life, Mr. McGreevey makes the point that all politicians are in the closet, hiding from public view the deals they make to get elected and to stay in power. Like Mr. McGreevey, all politicians, in other words, are duplicitous. No wonder Governor Corzine and Co. are squirming over "The Confession" and are in full retreat from their former colleague.

Mr. McGreevey does not seem to realize that there are many aspects of his troubling life that amount to more than he can say — even with the best of intentions. What is needed here, of course, is biography, not autobiography. What is required is an independent biographer with access to Mr. McGreevey but also an unflinching dedication to flushing out the sources that Mr. McGreevey would just as well hide. In other words, what is essential is a writer whose first loyalty is to the truth and not to concerns about hurting others. It is understandable that Mr. McGreevey wants to protect friends and former lovers, but that is exactly why he should not be the one in control of the story.

I can only hope that there is already a biographer on the case, investigating not only Mr. McGreevey's life but also the New Jersey political machine that makes McGreeveys possible. Now that would be an edifying tale!

Amen to that, Brother.