Lies, damned lies, and the lies we love to hear

Gossip columnists lie like rugs. They trade in fake news planted by publicists busily creating hetero lives for queer actors. That's part of the game of watching "Entertainment Tonight" -- guessing who's gay. Say Tom Cruise is a big old 'mo. His beard, since dumped, is now "dating" that bongo-drum playing dude, which means... heh heh. It's fun.

But I won't read the memoirs of gossip divas. Tried once -- Hedda Hopper's "The Whole Truth and Nothing But" ("Hedda keeps her promise: the stories behind 50 years of headlines"), a 1962 snorefest that left me cold. It's 40 years later now, and books like Axel Madsen's wonderfully trashy "Forbidden Lovers: Hollywood's Greatest Secret -- Female Stars Who Loved Other Women" have outed every classic-era film dyke on the movie lots. Once you know the real dirt, the so-carefully-crafted homo-protection racket in Hopper's tome becomes repulsive. I prefer not to be confronted by this sort of monstrous example of sickening hypocrisy, and thus ignore big books of faux gossip. That way I can still mindlessly enjoy my daily dose of "ET."

I know of only one out female gossip columnist in the mainstream media: New York's Grande Dame of Dish, Liz Smith. And she does indeed protect the closet cases.

Smith is about 80, and just yesterday published her last column for New Yahk's Newsday. "Liz, who first joined Newsday in March 1991, did not exercise her option to extend her contract, which has expired," reads the internal memo. "We subsequently attempted to negotiate a new arrangement with her but could not come to mutually agreeable terms."

When she finally admitted in her memoirs, "Natural Blonde," (published in 2000) that she'd fallen in love with women, she was profiled in The Advocate. "While it’s true that Smith (and her assistant Denis Ferrara) have occasionally written glowing pieces about various Advocate cover stories over the years, there've also been those less-than-pleasant times when she's objected vehemently to our investigative reporting on the lives of Ricky Martin or the late Barbara Jordan. Why, she wondered, did we have to ask those questions? And yet, as the pre-eminent scoop detector of all time, she knew [all the dirt].... At 77, Liz Smith -- though she would be the first to pooh-pooh it -- is a brave woman. After enduring years of attacks and outings by gay activists (and mean-spirited celebrities), she has managed to find her way through one of the most complicated lives and careers this magazine has ever examined."

A few excerpts from Liz herself: "It’s just not accurate for me to label myself. I don’t care what other people say.... The great fallacy about ever sleeping with a woman is that people think you are attracted to every woman you meet. I hate that. It drives me nuts. I’m not; I’m attracted to very few people....

"I remember going into a lesbian bar that was still quite stereotypical. I didn’t seem to be like most of the women there, and I wasn’t attracted to them either. So I figured I must not be gay, and I went back to dating men."

What about protecting stars? Smith certainly protected herself for many, many years. A while back, la grande dame had been tipped off about Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche splitting up, as was The Advocate, which decided not to run the blind item. "You see," responds Smith, "this is why gossip is so interesting. Because gossip helps you define and redefine every day how far you’ll go. What you'll believe that another person tells you. And you form your own morals and conclusions from it."


ADDENDUM: There *is* dirt! Check out Splitsville for Liz and Newsday and this rival gossip.