Stipe Revisited (with Celebrity Cameo)

My post on former Oklahoma State Senator Gene Stipe's perpetual legal troubles mentioned a 1979 profile of Stipe in the New Yorker by Mark Singer. And who should drop by the comments section but Mark Singer? I'll just post the whole thing here, with my comments in bold:

It happens that I wrote the 1979 Reporter-at-Large piece in The New Yorker titled “Prince” (not “Prince of Darkness”). Stipe was indeed nicknamed the “P.O.D.”, but the actual title of my article was more concise. Rather than a formal profile of Stipe, it was an account of the 1978 U.S. Senate race that focused primarily on Stipe because he was, by a longshot, the most interesting character in the race.

As for the gay-bashing, there has never been any evidence that Stipe had anything to do with it. It was almost certainly the brainchild of George Miskovsky, a contemptible egomaniac whose subsequent litigious assaults upon The Tulsa Tribune and The Oklahoman only discredited him further. (Arousing sympathy for The Daily Oklahoman — now there’s a remarkable accomplishment. . . ) [Miskovsky had the bad taste to sue the Oklahoman for libel for, as far as I can tell, having the temerity to report accurately the accusations Miskovsky made against Boren. The family has issues--George's sons haven't turned out well.] I always assumed that “Anthony Points,” whoever he was, was a shill for Miskovsky. Some of the cognoscenti also suspected that David Boren’s former father-in-law, a Little Dixie racist (and, one can only infer, homophobe) named Ruell Little, must have been involved. [I do think your article left the impression that you thought Stipe was behind it. You spent a lot of time detailing the dirty tricks Stipe was capable of, and then cap off the story with the revelation of a king dirty trick in the form of Points' deception.]

Whatever sympathy I felt for Boren at the time, I have to say, evaporated when he capitulated and swore on a white (!) Bible that, yes, he knew what homosexuals were and, no, he wasn’t one. Evidently, Boren’s desire to get elected to the Senate considerably exceeded his willingness to defend the rights and dignity of gay people. Otherwise, why pander to bigots? (In retrospect, I chalk that up to callowness and overweaning ambition; in the long run, after his political career ended, Boren proved to be a superbly deft and imaginative president of the University of Oklahoma.) [In some other discussion of this incident someone else drew attention to the white bible. I don't think it's that unusual; my maternal grandmother's bible was white dated to the late sixties or so, and I saw a few like it. It may have been the only bible they could find for the press conference. An authoritative black bible would have been a better choice, but Oklahoma's current governor was sworn in on an heirloom white bible.

As for Boren's denial, I don't think he had much of a choice. He had a family to consider and a rumor like that needed to be confronted and answered. I don't think squelching an untrue and damaging rumor is "pandering", though his enemies are still doing their best to keep it alive.

And I agree he's been very good for OU.]

Finally, it’s true that the article is unavailable online. And I’ve refrained from reprinting it in any of my books. It can be obtained, however, by anyone willing to invest in “The Complete New Yorker,” 80+ years of the magazine, availabe in a set of DVDs or an external hard drive. The price is $199, but in the bargain you get a whole lot more than my portrait of Stipe. You can probably buy it at a discount on Amazon.com. Or full-price through www.newyorker.com. [The article has been obtained through the JYB International Bureau, and makes for quite an enjoyable read. It has been passed along to some Okie friends, one of whom is OCRing it. I may put up a short excerpt under fair use.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by.

P.S. The Beastmaster ? Outstanding; love the ferrets.]