You Think His Dog Was Named Rod?

I am all about the follow up these days... and while I promised Jennifer no more Ann Coulter, I do feel a need to say a little more about Matt Sanchez (a/k/a Rod Majors - subtle, eh?).

As I mentioned previously, Sanchez,  a Marine who did some military recruiting at Columbia, has been lauded by the right for bravely putting up, apparently, with being called names ("baby-killer"). He's been on Hannity & Colmes, and O'Reilly (which speaks more to the paucity of red meat in the right wing machine if you ask me, but it's still a proof of hotness).

You apparently couldn't go wrong with his combination of good looks, confidence and interesting story.  Which if you think about it, probably explains his career in gay porn, too.

Okay, well, maybe two out of three - nobody's watching porn for the stories.

Since the story broke, one conspicuous detail was Sanchez's silence.  How would he explain his past?  Is he gay?  What's the deal?

Well Sanchez has spoken - to a blogger who's been following the story closely (more than me, anyway), and in a piece for Salon.  Does he answer the pertinent questions?  Not really.  He complains about being outed (naturally), blames the left (naturally), and plays coy about a number of details.

I wouldn't care (much), but I think two things are worth pondering here - one is that for all his complaints about bashing from the left, there's really not much of it to speak of; there's surely a group that enjoys the schadenfreude of it all, that likes seeing conservatives squirm, but hypocrisy is like that.  And at the heart of this is plenty of hypocrisy.

And that's the other thing about this story - reading Sanchez's response, I couldn't help marevling out the way he managed to make this all about... well, him.  How he's suffered, how mean people have been to him.  It takes a certain self confidence, and a self absorption, to bare all in porn.  It's not that the rest of us don't enjoy sex or think we're not good at it, but really, do we feel a need to perform it for an audience?  Not really; for that you've kind of got to want to be watched.

Sanchez tries hard, but his excuses don't entirely wash; this is not some Bambi in the woods who didn't know what he was getting himself into, which could be the impression left by his post. Sanchez is not the first Marine - and surely not the last - to face a gay porn scandal, but it's not like the Marines came first for him, and porn second: it's the other way round.  Even a cursory dig found that "Rod Majors" was a pretty big deal with plenty of films to his credit.  And what he doesn't want to say - whether or not he's gay now (his answer, obliquely, suggests he was, sort of, in the past) - is precisely the point.  An openly gay Marine is not something the Military makes its poster boy. And if he's "ex-gay" that'll be even more red meat. Because some details from his past make that seem unlikely.

As I said elsewhere, everyone loves a reformed sinner. Just ask Ted Haggard - if he can keep up the act long enough. Sanchez isn't feeling a backlash - yet - from conservatives because he hasn't really cleared anything up. And let it be said that conservatives are not a monolith - Sanchez coming out would be heartening, probably to Log Cabin Republicans and other conscientious right wingers who also find the anti-gay right appalling. It would be a shame if he lost his military career - as so many others have - by being found out as gay.  But that's the world we live in, and it's the way antigay conservatives want it to be.  It's why Ann Coulter can feel comfortable enough to cry "faggot" in a crowded room of conservatives. At the end of this, I'd guess, Sanchez will not have what he once had, but it doesn't mean his life is over.  And I'd bet the one group to accept him, flaws and all, will probably not be the one that gave him the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom.  Just a hunch.