Illustration by Dale Stephanos

It was a watershed moment in popular culture. A case of the tail of social progress wagging the dog of media hype, for a change. Rosie O'Donnell's much-ballyhooed coming-out interview with Diane Sawyer on Prime Time Live in March was groundbreaking not so much for her revelation -- no one was surprised to learn that the TV talk-show star is a lesbian -- but for the way O'Donnell had orchestrated and controlled the bona fide TV event. This was no old-fashioned outing or sweeps-week confessional. No Billie Jean King squirming next to her husband as Barbara Walters asks whether King's former lover was blackmailing the tennis star. No Rock Hudson deathbed exposé. This wasn't even Ellen DeGeneres, whose similar interview with Sawyer two years earlier now seems painfully weepy, uncomfortable, and reactive next to O'Donnell's heartfelt but well-oiled public announcement. So in the wake of such signs of acceptance, why did the mere hint of a rumor that Mets star catcher Mike Piazza might be gay lead to such a media feeding frenzy?

O'Donnell's celebrated coming-out on Prime Time clearly was part of a deal. It was delivered in exchange for the hourlong show's focus on the cause of gay adoptions, a cause to which O'Donnell can easily lay claim, with three adopted children of her own. (Rosie's far more typical celebrity confession several weeks later -- again with Diane Sawyer on Prime Time -- which included the now seemingly requisite revelations of childhood abuse, may have also been part of this deal.) But the first Prime Time Live exclusive felt, thankfully, less like exposé and more like advocacy. It was obvious who had the proverbial dog by the tail.

Public reaction to O'Donnell's declaration was largely favorable and sympathetic; not surprisingly, perhaps, considering that Rosie's loyal fans are overwhelmingly women. Only the most hard-core anti-gay zealot, among the Reverend Fred Phelps contingent of loony tunes, could possibly take issue with a woman who advocates so tirelessly for kids and charity and who uses the podium of her daily talk show to promote generosity, goodwill, and all-around good vibes. From her excessive gift-giving to members of her audiences to her eBay auctions for charitable causes -- hell, she even awarded SUVs to every Survivor: Marquesas loser -- Mama Rosie is a mass-culture Santa Claus.

The careful manner in which O'Donnell came out -- she had already announced that she was quitting her popular talk show after six years on the air -- and the media and public response to it may have led many to conclude that America's collective jaw no longer drops at coming-out declarations by celebrities. But the recent brouhaha over Piazza's sexual orientation stands in marked contrast to the way Rosie craftily spun her coming-out into a nonevent. The Piazza contretemps -- played out smack in the fragile center of the world of male ego and notions of masculinity, with all their psychosexual drama -- shows that acceptance and understanding of gay public figures, and by extension gays and lesbians in general, goes only so far. First of all, there's Piazza's place in the upper echelon of major-league baseball. Mike, with his hunky build, his goatee, and his thick, dark shock of hair, is a name-brand enterprise estimated to be worth $100 million in endorsements. Heck, he's one of just 10 major leaguers, along with Sammy Sosa and Pedro Martinez, whose likeness has been fashioned into a bobble-head doll available in specially marked boxes of Post cereals. Piazza also earned points with sportswriters and fans for being the nice-guy, scrappy player that schoolyard bully Roger Clemens famously beaned two years ago, causing an interleague uproar. But when gossip columnist Neal Travis ran an anonymous rumor in the New York Post May 20 hinting that one of the Mets is gay, the blinding spotlight of innuendo somehow fell on Piazza. (Coincidentally, Ellen DeGeneres's public outing started with a blind New York magazine item that put her -- incorrectly, DeGeneres still maintains -- in a lesbian bar nuzzling a "short-haired fan.")

For reasons owing mostly to the New York tabloid press's mentality, the Piazza item was treated like the second coming of Chandra Levy. The ensuing fallout even prompted Piazza to call a press conference to declare his heterosexuality. To his credit, he did so with decorum and avoided allowing homophobia to rule the affair. But the fact that he felt he needed to issue a denial at all (for business reasons alone, he would have been foolish not to do so) points to how schizophrenic and hypocritical our culture is when it comes to matters of sexuality -- male sexuality in particular, which, for many, is the only one that really counts.

In the insular world of sports reporting, the Travis item caused a firestorm. New York Post sports columnist Wallace Matthews wrote a scathing piece criticizing Travis for publicizing the rumor. When Post editors killed the column, Matthews published it online with this introduction: "The following is a column I wrote concerning the Piazza-Is-Gay rumors that the Post refused to run because it was critical of Neil Travis's deplorable journalism in Monday's paper.
I always knew the paper had no integrity. Now we know it has no balls, either." Not surprisingly, Matthews was subsequently fired.

Since it was Mets manager Bobby Valentine's remark to Details magazine that he thought pro baseball was probably ready for an openly gay player that likely unleashed the tempest, commentators were quick to denigrate Details. "I've never heard so many nervous giggles and too-hearty guffaws," wrote John Powers in the current issue of LA Weekly, of the reaction in radio and TV land. "ESPN Radio's suave Dan Patrick broke for a commercial by saying, `Don't read Details magazine' -- a quip that had his flunkies rupturing themselves with laughter. Meanwhile, Fox Sports' late-night idiots couldn't stop sniggering about the very notion of gays in the locker room."

ASIDE FROM ridiculous denials about the presence of lesbians in the LPGA, recent years have not seen that kind of backlash against female celebrities who have come out: DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, kd lang, Chastity Bono, the aforementioned King, Martina Navratilova, and a host of lesser-knowns have collectively raised far fewer hackles than has one rumor about a hunky, masculine jock. Show biz's gay male contingent is small and unthreatening. There's Elton John, carrying the Liberace mantle; and singer George Michael, not to be confused with Boy George, long-time gender-bender from the pop world. On TV, there's funny but mincing Sean Hayes, Will & Grace's Stepin Fetchit; Bruce Vilanch, the cuddly naughty boy of Hollywood Squares who routinely channels the ghost of Paul Lynde; and stage star Nathan Lane -- who hosted the Tony Awards with O'Donnell a couple of years ago, and offered quips dipped in more double meanings that an Oscar Wilde play. Each of these outings registered hardly a blip on the cultural/social landscape. Show biz is supposed to be full of flamboyant sissies. Who else would dance and sing show tunes?

But a "real" man? A sports star? Hold the presses.

Unlike Hollywood and TV celebrities, a male sports star operates in a testosterone-soaked hothouse. Coaches, owners, sportswriters, announcers, fans -- from Little League up it's a world where women have insignificant presence or effect. Name three openly gay male sports stars. Yes, they're all figure skaters: Olympic medalists Brian Boitano and Brian Orser, and US champion Rudy Galindo. And figure skating is the one big-money sport that consistently wins with women in the TV ratings.

As big-time sports, with its lucrative contracts and endorsements, has graduated to the level of entertainment, with all the attendant gossip mongering, it was only a matter of time before the gay card got played with a major star athlete. Just as Wade Boggs's admitted extramarital dalliance caused a huge stir 15 years ago. (Remember Boggs's tearful appearance with his wife by his side on Barbara Walters's 20/20?) Just as Jim Bouton's tell-all book Ball Four nearly 30 years ago sent the myth of the noble jock through the roof. (In the years since, stories of cocaine and steroid abuse, athletes attacking their wives with guns and knives, and Pete Rose gambling on ball games now make Bouton's randy tales seem relatively tame).

What's at issue isn't the players themselves, who undoubtedly know gay men on their teams, on the sports beat, and in their own families -- just like everyone else. At the very least, most of today's ballplayers seem sophisticated enough not to fly into homosexual panic at the thought of a gay teammate. (Of course, there will always be a John Rocker, who was ridiculed in most quarters for his racist and homophobic remarks to Sports Illustrated in December 1999.) Openly gay teens such as Corey Johnson of Massachusetts, who became a role model for coming out to his high-school football team without negative incident, as well as the ever-increasing presence of girls in sports at all levels, have in recent years paved the way for shaking sports culture from the bottom up.

No, the trouble seems to lie with another group: the lower-level sports pundits and legions of male sports nuts -- the kind who nod their heads at Budweiser "Wussup" ads. These guys represent the other side of the sexual coin. Among these men, notions of acceptable masculinity have progressed at an alarmingly slow snail's pace.

Last summer, talk radio was full of hot-air chatter after an Out magazine editor revealed that he'd had a romantic fling with an unnamed infielder who played for an East Coast ball club. Rumors flew about every unmarried (as if that even makes a difference) East Coast player, including our own Nomar as well as the Yankees' Derek Jeter. It wasn't the players who were mouthing off to reporters; it was the reporters and fans themselves who kept this story alive, just as it was most often TV and print reporters and radio gabbers who recoiled and fussed over the gender-bending antics of basketball star Dennis Rodman. It's the fans and the talkmeisters who, metaphorically speaking, grab their equipment and make a mad dash for the plate at the whiff of any form of male sexuality that isn't stereotypically masculine. I spent one afternoon last summer stuck in traffic for a couple of hours and tuned in to some of the conversation. A man who identified himself as gay called into WEEI, and was greeted by lukewarm sympathy from the sports-talk-show host. That is, until the bowled-over-by-such-sensitivity gay guy proclaimed that he and the sports announcer were no different from one another. "Hey, wait a minute! There's a big difference!" the offended host shot back, proceeding to laugh at the caller's ignorance in matters so basic.

One would hope that Mike Piazza can avoid the years of gay rumors endured by Tom Cruise and Richard Gere, who resorted to buying full-page ads proclaiming their heterosexuality -- something Piazza said he also felt compelled to do at his press conference. To be sure, getting "outed" is a lousy, coercive business, undoubtedly more so if the claim isn't even true. But let's not forget that it still has an honored place in our cultural politics, precisely because gay stuff still has the power to shock and repel. Whether or not a celebrity is gay is his or her business, and it should be a matter of personal choice if and how and why that information is made public. But there's a big difference between an athlete or an actor maintaining privacy on this issue, and a congressman or senator who tries to do the same while making policy that affects the rest of us. Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe, for instance, was outed after he voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which most would agree was a case of reporters uncovering hypocrisy, rather than feeding the public appetite for gossip.

If the Piazza contretemps has taught us anything, it's that sexuality, and what public figures have which kind, remains a Very Big Deal. As for the ho-hum reaction to Rosie's coming-out? Well, it helps if the celebrity in question is female, an adoptive mother, and a cozy, non-threatening talk-show host. And in order to come out with soul, sanity, livelihood, and maybe a few endorsements intact, it helps if the celebrity is the one to wag the dog. If it bites, it hurts less that way.

Loren King can be reached at lking86958@aol.com.

Issue Date: June 7 - 13, 2002