Video: Bill Maher outs Ken Mehlman on CNN

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein at 1:50 PM on November 9, 2006.

Last night at nine o'clock Bill Maher outed RNC chair Ken Mehlman on Larry King Live. Maher told King that Mehlman's is one of many powerful Republican insiders who are widely known to be gay. The Huffington Post reports that CNN censored Maher's revelation when the show was rebroadcast later that night.

I bet CNN cut out that footage to protect Larry King, not Ken Mehlman. During the interview Larry King told an obvious lie: When Maher said that everyone in Washington had known about Mehlman's sexuality for years, King claimed that he'd never heard that rumor. There's no way Larry King hasn't heard those rumors.

The outing of Mehlman, after all these years, is proof of the institutional implosion of the Republican Party. Nobody wants to cover for a closeted gaybasher, and Mehlman is no longer powerful enough to command complicity.

[Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars]

Tagged as: gay, larry king, ken mehlman, bill maher

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.