August 8, 2008
Couldn’t happen to a more annoying PITA:
No Alimony Payments for McGreevey
A judge ruled on Friday that former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, who resigned from office after admitting that he had an affair with a male aide, will not have to pay alimony to his former wife.
The ruling by State Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy granting Mr. McGreevey and his wife, Dina Matos, a divorce ended a frayed eight eight-year marriage that came apart when the governor stunned the state by announcing on national television that he was “a gay American.”
“No alimony — that’s what I’m talking about,” Mr. McGreevey’s lawer, Stephen Haller, said moments after the decision was read in court, the Star-Ledger of Newark reported on its Web site.
In addition to ruling out the payment of $2,500-a-month in alimony for four months that Ms. Matos was seeking, Judge Cassidy ordered Mr. McGreevey to pay $1,075 a month in child support for their daughter rather than the $1,7450 [sic] she wanted. …
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
May 29, 2008
From AP, via Gay.com:
Mrs. McGreevey: I paid for the wedding
The estranged wife of New Jersey’s gay ex-governor says she agreed to live in the governor’s mansion to please her new husband, even though their condo was an hour closer to her job.
Dina Matos McGreevey says Gov. James McGreevey wanted a working spouse to “enhance his image.”
She portrayed herself as a dutiful spouse and dedicated political ally who went so far as to pay for their $30,000 wedding and to add his political cronies to the guest list. …
Matos McGreevey, 41, wants compensation for losing out on the perks of his job — state police transportation and a 24/7 security detail, a household staff and use of two beach houses — because he resigned 13 months shy of completing his first term.
McGreevey maintains that perks of the governor’s office are not a marital asset. …
Matos McGreevey said she paid for her own car, insurance and clothes out of her salary as a hospital executive, estimated at $55,000 a year. She said being on the arm of a politician sometimes required three changes of clothes a day.
Matos McGreevey’s accountant, Kalman Barson, placed the value of their so-called gubernatorial lifestyle at $51,000 a month… McGreevey’s accountant puts the value of maintaining that lifestyle at a far more modest $16,000 a month. …
Besides finances, the other unresolved issue is whether McGreevey committed fraud by marrying Matos McGreevey.
She claims she was duped into marrying a gay man who needed the cover of a wife to advance his political career. He said she knew their union was “a contrivance on both our parts.”
And via the New York Daily News:
No personal chef! Tough times for Dina Matos McGreevey, she protests at trial
New Jersey’s former first lady says she lives frugally since leaving the governor’s mansion four years ago.
Dina Matos ended direct examination by her lawyer saying she can no longer afford expensive clothes or vacations.
Like her husband, Matos testified about a lifestyle funded by taxpayers, contributors, lobbyists and other benefactors.
She says she and daughter now make due in her $430,000 home without a personal chef, state car or state police security — all perks of the governor’s office.
Our hearts bleed. 
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
March 21, 2008
AP reminds us of Reason #8,492 We’re Glad We Never Hated Our Big Ol’ Homo Selves Enough to Hide Behind A Loveless Marriage to a MOTOS:
Gay ex-gov wins round in divorce court
Former Gov. Jim McGreevey didn’t plan to torment his wife while they were married, a judge in their divorce case ruled Thursday, while allowing her to continue with a claim of marriage fraud.
The judge dismissed Dina Matos McGreevey’s claim of emotional distress against her estranged gay husband.
“Mr. McGreevey was not out to destroy her emotionally,” Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy said.
Cassidy said she would permit the fraud claim to continue for now, but warned, “That does not guarantee the defendant will be successful in trying her claim.”
Matos McGreevey claims she was duped into marrying a gay man who sought the cover of a wife to hide his homosexuality and further his political ambitions. He claims he provided companionship and a child, thus fulfilling his part of the marriage contract.
The pretrial hearing came less than a week after McGreevey, 50, said claims that he and his wife engaged in threesomes with a male aide were true; Matos McGreevey, 41, denied they happened.
Arriving with her attorney Thursday, Matos McGreevey said only “no comment” as she entered the courthouse. …
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Down-Low/MSM, Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
March 17, 2008
We toldja the latest turn in the endless Jim and Dina Matos McGreevey saga would get dicey.
Take 1: Theodore Pedersen says he and the McGreeveys enjoyed weekly three-way sexual romps while the McGreeveys were married.
Take 2: Naturally, Dina says Teddy’s claims of “a routine ‘hard-core consensual sex orgy’” are “completely false,” and are the result of the publicity she’s received since Eliot Spitzer resigned.
Take 3: Jim says that “published reports by former campaign aide Teddy Pedersen are true.”
Uh-oh!
We think this is, like, so not over!
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Down-Low/MSM, Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
March 16, 2008
While Dina Matos McGreevey makes the rounds of the talk-show circuit — to “express sympathy” for Mrs. Elliot Spitzer (Hey, Dina, if it’s such “a very personal matter,” as you told Matt Lauer, then why are you airing every last sordid little detail all over the airwaves?), while ever-so-conveniently plugging her book, Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage — out comes one Theodore Pedersen, ex-aide to the down-low governor, to blow away Matos’ insistent claim that she was completely ignorant of Hubby Jim’s homosexuality:
McGreevey aide says he had sexual trysts with ex-governor, wife
A former aide to James E. McGreevey said today that he had three-way sexual trysts with the former governor and his wife before he took office, challenging Dina Matos McGreevey’s assertion that she was naive about her husband’s sexual exploits.
The aide, Theodore Pedersen, said he and the couple even had a nickname for the weekly romps, from 1999 to 2001, that typically began with dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s and ended with a threesome at McGreevey’s condo in Woodbridge.
They called them “Friday Night Specials,” according to Pedersen.
Pedersen described the encounters during an interview with The Star-Ledger. He said he wanted to refute the innocent image that Matos McGreevey has projected — both during the couple’s ongoing divorce battle and in interviews she gave after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned last week in a sex scandal. He said he was also incensed by her portrayal of herself as an unsuspecting wife in her book: “Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage.”
“I wanted to get this out now because it was so offensive to me that she goes on television playing the victim,” Pedersen said. “She’s trying to make this a payday for herself. She should have told the truth about the three of us.”
Pedersen did not say if he was gay or bisexual and only described having contact with Matos McGreevey during the trysts. He also said he never knew for sure if McGreevey was gay. …
. . .
Pedersen, 29, served as a driver and traveling aide for McGreevey during his gubernatorial campaign and after he won office in 2001. McGreevey attended Pedersen’s graduation from Rutgers University in 2003 and Pedersen accompanied the governor and others in a trip to China last year. ..
Stay tuned — this should get… well, if not good, at least dicey. (And, LittleLordFauntleroy knows, we could use some good, old-fashioned, tabloid-style sleaze around here!)
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Down-Low/MSM, Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
March 11, 2008
We’re royally pissed off at Elliot Spitzer — not because he was patronizing a prostitute (or ten, or a hundred), but because by letting his little head do his thinking, he’s really screwed over gay and lesbian Americans.
Elliot Spitzer was one of the best friends American LGBTs could ask for. He’s been a longtime advocate for marriage equality, and last April introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the New York legislature — the first governor in the country to do so. Although the GOP-dominated state senate killed the bill, we were hopeful that New York would be one of the next states (competing with Rhode Island and California) to offer full, equal marriage, à la Massachusetts.
Spitzer had also promised to sign the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA).
Now it looks like we’re going to lose our best friend in the Empire State. And even if Spitzer doesn’t resign (and, really, he has to; he violated the Mann Act), his power is effectively neutered.
We don’t care a whit if Elliot Spitzer wants to pay for sex, and whatever damage he’s done to his marriage (and his relationship with his children) is his own concern. What a person does sexually, in private, is nobody’s business — unless his behavior puts a crimp in somebody else’s freedom. That includes conservatives trying to force the rest of us to live by their “moral values,” or, in Spitzer’s case, a single individual setting back the march toward LGBT equality by way of a really stupid choice he made for his own selfish pleasure. In short, Elliot Spitzer traded our freedom for the promise of a lousy orgasm.
A lousy, expensive orgasm. It’s difficult to imagine what you get for $4,300 — the price Spitzer was going to pay for a call girl named “Kristen” — but we imagine it wasn’t seven minutes in the missionary position.
Whatever Spitzer was going to get for his money, he didn’t get it. We were the ones who got screwed — without, as my dear departed father used to say, so much as a kiss.
Then, of course, there is the damage Spitzer has done to the Democratic Party, the extent of which remains to be seen. We already have a hint about the extent of the damage he’s done to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; within minutes of the story breaking on the newswires, Barack Obama supporters on the Message Forum That Shall Remain Nameless were using the Spitzer scandal to smear Clinton. First, they somehow rationalized (if you can call this line of thought “rational”) that Clinton was tainted merely by her association with Spitzer, one of her most high-profile supporters; furthermore, they decided that this association by default cancels out Obama’s relationships with Donnie McClurkin, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and the rest of the homophobic bigots from whom Obama refuses to distance himself.
As if.
Second — and this is very real damage — the widely-circulated image of Spitzer’s wife, the silent, suffering Silda, standing by her man…
…brought the image of Hillary standing by Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal back into razor-sharp focus.
Literally. This is the image ABC decide to run to illustrate a piece called “Why Women Stand by Their Men“:
Counter-clockwise from upper left: Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Craig, Mr. and (now ex-) Mrs. Jim McGreevey, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.
What’s wrong with this picture? For starters, three of the four disgraced politicians are Democrats. Having researched political pecadilloes for years, I can tell you that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the cheating department. Granted, represented are four of the most infamous sex scandals in recent memory (although it’s a stretch to call the Lewinsky scandal “recent”), but if ABC had asked for my input, I could have given them dozens of examples of humiliated wives standing by their men — from the other side of the aisle.
In any case, Clinton (Hillary, not Bill) is screwed no matter whether Spitzer resigns or not. As Peter Baker wrote in WaPo:
Spitzer has been a bad-luck charm for Hillary Clinton to this point. His illegal immigrant driver’s license proposal arguably became the first time she was thrown off her stride in this campaign. … That led to a bad patch for her that lasted all the way through the Iowa caucuses. …
Now Spitzer may throw her off stride again at a moment she needs to keep her momentum going. And on top of that, even if he does spare her by resigning soon, that has a cost too — one fewer superdelegate for her at the convention.
It’s not lost on us, by the way, that this scandal comes at the most inopportune time for Democrats — and at a very convenient time indeed for Republicans. (You’ve already forgotten all about Vicki Iseman, haven’t you?)
And it’s not lost on us that Spitzer was nailed by a federal wiretap — you know, that part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the feds to listen in on your phone calls for any half-assed reason they want (or no reason at all). It was the Bush Machine that turned the U.S. into “one nation, under surveillance” — and we knew Big Brother wasn’t going to confine wiretapping to terrorism suspects.
OK, OK, so the Spitzer hooker bust was a by-product of a “routine tax inquiry” by the IRS, and prostitution was said to be “the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators” looking into the suspicious movement of funds through Spitzer’s hands. But the timing of the emergence of a “confidential informant, a young woman who had worked previously as a prostitute for the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., the escort service that Mr. Spitzer was believed to be using” who enabled the investigators “to get a judge to approve wiretaps on the cellphones of some of those suspected of involvement in the escort service” seems awfully convenient. To the Republican Party, that is.
But, all speculation aside, what’s done is done — and what’s been done is irreversible.
As for how badly Spitzer has hurt the Democratic Party, hurt Hillary Clinton, and hurt us LGBTs — who saw in Elliot Spitzer the closest thing we had to a savior — only time will tell.
But it’s gonna hurt every last one of us.
And all because Elliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his penis in his pants.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Corruption, Crime, Democrats, Donnie McClurkin, Election 2008, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Insecurity, Jim McGreevey, Marriage, New York, Republican Sexcapades, Republicans
September 22, 2007
USA Today brings us up to date on the War of the McGreeveys:
Former Gov. James E. McGreevey was ordered Friday to more than double the amount of support he pays to his estranged wife.
The nation’s first openly gay governor should pay Dina Matos McGreevey $2,500 a month, Superior Court Judge Karen M. Cassidy ruled. Matos McGreevey had been receiving $1,129 a month, but maintained that was insufficient to meet the needs of herself and the couple’s 5-year-old daughter.
Cassidy rejected Matos McGreevey’s request for $4,000 a month, noting that Matos McGreevey said she needed to spend $2,200 a month on clothing. “It seemed a little high,” the judge said.
A lawyer for the former governor, Matthew D. Piermatti, argued that his client’s income was decreasing now that he’d entered an Episcopal seminary. They had offered to increase support to $1,691 a month.
. . .
Matos McGreevey earns $82,000 at Columbus Hospital in Newark. The former governor has earned an average of about $155,000 a year for the past five years.
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Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Jim McGreevey, New Jersey
