Out Personalities: September 2006 Archives

After meeting Kate Clinton earlier this week and falling in love with her brilliant sense of humor, you'll probably be seeing a lot more about her on this blog. She is currently on her 25th anniversary tour "It's Come to This" but found the time to talk to PlanetOut and play "Who would you rather sleep with?"
Here are her answers:

Angelina Jolie or Jodie Foster?
Is there a Jodie Jolie? If not, my Angelina all the way. Or I could just watch her and Brad.

Bill Clinton or Brad Pitt?
Brad Pitt, because at least he supports gay marriage.

Arianna Huffington or Nancy Pelosi?
Arianna, if she'd wear the green taffeta number she wore once when I met her at a correspondents' dinner.

Jim McGreevey or Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Jim -- there's nothing dirtier than Catholic guilt, and Arnold has worn that poor Maria down to a nub.

Condoleezza Rice or Golda Meir?
Golda Meir, but only if she were played by Tovah Feldshuh.

Margaret Thatcher or Camilla Parker Bowles?
Camilla, why the long face? And who knows what else. So, Margaret -- she's slowed down a bit.

Ann Coulter or Osama Bin Laden?
Was it something I said?

Madonna or Melissa Etheridge?
Melissa. Mostly because we would just watch football together and laugh.

Eleanor Roosevelt or Amelia Earhart?
I think we're all butches, but OK -- Amelia. And then I'd ask her how she would do airport security.

Katherine Harris or Ann Coulter?
They deserve each other and I would not watch.

Remember Miss Cleo? She's the former infomercial psychic with the thick Jamaican accent who was a staple of late-night television from the late 90s through 2002. She decided to come out publicly as a lesbian in the Oct. 10 issue of The Advocate. And lucky me, the magazine assigned me to interview her for the story. I urge everyone to go out and buy a newstand copy of the magazine (Ex-New Jersey Guv Jim McGreevey and his new love are on the cover) or check out an excerpt at: http://www.advocate.com/ (Click onto "Current newstand issue")

But for readers of "Out in Hollywood," here are some selected quotes from my piece:

She was inspired to finally come out publicly by a teenaged godson:
"He and I started talking when he was concerned about coming out. He was 16. When he made the decision, I told him I’d be there to support him 100 percent, and he embraced (coming out) wholeheartedly. It’s a different vibe than when I was his age, being raised Catholic in an all-girl boarding school. But he was afraid of nothing and I thought, ‘I can’t be a hypocrite.’ This boy is going to force me to put my money where my mouth is."

While she is sure it will be quite liberating, she is coming out publicly with some trepidation:
"The reason it’s scary is because in my personal experience, black cultures throughout the world have a more difficult time accepting homosexuality in their family. I have family members who will be shocked, they don’t know. I have some family members who are very, very close to me and they do know. But I’ve been afraid of the wrath,
of the exiling. When I came out to a number of friends in the late 80s, I had a number of friends who turned their back on me and walked away. That was really intense. I really believed they were my friends."

Her first girlfriend was in high school:
"She had blonde hair and blue eyes and was on the swim team. I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread. In the last months of our senior year, we were found out by her father and she was sent to a college out of state. I was heartbroken."

Now 44 and a single mother of two daughters, she wonders about public reaction to her coming out. She still gets a great deal of affection from fans who remember her from the infomercials:
"If I'm standing in line somewhere and I'm talking, someone will whip their head their head around and look at me. People give me mad love sweetheart. They’ll say, "Do you see anything? Where do we find you? When are you coming back? We miss you!’ I get a lot of love."

Before actor Tony Tripoli got cast as a gay clothing designer who works for Bo Derek on the new nightly soap "Fashion House," he was best known for being one of comic Kathy Griffin's "best gays." He and best friend, writer Dennis Hensley, often appeared on Griffin's Bravo reality show "My Life on the D-List" last year.

That was then.

He and Hensley had a falling out with Griffin, ending more than a decade of friendship. In an exclusive interview Tripoli did with me for the Sept. 26, 2006 issue of Frontiers Magazine, he talked about the bust-up and being an out actor in Hollywood. Here are some excerpts:

The exposure on D-List let to the Fashion House gig which casts him as Hans, a gay fashion designer, who works for Derek’s character, an evil fashion label owner who goes head-to-head with her rival Morgan Fairchild.
"I play an actual gay guy on a show and I’m actually gay! A practicing homosexual who’s not ashamed of it," he says. "It’s huge to think about these gay and questioning youths flipping through the dial and to be able to see themselves in television shows. That’s great and profoundly impactful."

He has never spoken publicly about why he and Hensley fell out with Griffin and says he never planned to. But the tart-tongue comedienne, who made headlines over the summer by saying on Larry King Live that she split from her husband, Matt Moline, because he stole more than $72,000 from her. She also gave the impression, Tripoli says, that he and Hensley had been less than loyal friends..

"There’s no way to talk about it that won’t make her look bad," Tripoli says. " She wasn’t talking about us and I wasn’t talking about her. She’s chosen to start talking and mentioned in the press that Dennis and I dumped her in her hour of need. I think it’s remarkable that after a decade of friendship and loyalty, unparalleled in a town like this, it is incredibly sad and painful that she would say to the press that we abandoned her."

He says the friendship didn’t end over one specific argument. Instead, it was what he calls "a blossoming lack of kindness and gratitude on her part."
"Kathy is the sun in her world and everyone else is planets revolving around her. But she’s a brilliant comedienne. No one is funnier. She has created a niche for herself, the world that she wants to live in, and I applaud that. I want to live in a world that has a little more kindness."

With the Sept. 5 debut of Fashion House, it’s a whole new world for Tripoli whose already completed his work on the show. He filmed 65 one-hour episodes "which meant 62 round-trips from Los Angeles to San Diego. We made like three seasons worth of a regular show."

He says working with Bo Derek was a great experience but before they began working, Tripoli was a little concerned about working with the actress who is a staunch Republican.
"I wondered, ‘Am I going to spend the entire summer with this woman who thinks I’ll burn in hell forever? I was a little nervous. We’re her best friends on the show and I wanted it to ring true. But I’m a little ashamed that I went into it being a little nervous about that, it was really unfair. She was immensely kind and hysterically funny."

As for Fairchild, Tripoli could not have been more impressed.
"It’s criminal, criminal that they would have a gay man on the show and never let him have a scene with Morgan Fairchild! There should be litigation! There should be litigation!"

As for the future, Hensley is looking for his next acting gig and is also dabbling in stand-up, making his debut at the Laugh Factory in late August. "It’s another avenue to explore and honey, I got stories to tell. I just worked with Morgan Fairchild and Bo Derek. I used to sing on cruise ships. There’s enough to fill an act."
But ultimately, he has bigger ambitions.
"I want to be the gay Oprah!"

The once-closeted Lance Bass and reality show winner Reichen have embraced being in the public eye as a couple since Bass came out on the cover of "People" magazine earlier this summer. They gave what is being billed as their "first joint interview" in the new issue of "OK!" magazine which, for some reason, is on sale for only 25 cents this week. The couple was at the US Open last week (probably watching dreamy Rafael Nadal) as well as at the Bridgehampton Polo event sponsored by the magazine.
Here are some of the highlights from the interview:
Since coming out, Bass says "Definitely, I've changed. I'm much happier now. I'm going out and being who I am. It's nice not having to lie anymore. Before, I was having to lie to my friends, having to keep my story stright. It was tough. Now I don't have to do that anymore. I was never the person I should have been. Now, all the doors are open and there's nothing to hide. I'm a better person. I've rekindled a lot of friendships."

Bass tells the magazine that he and his former NSYNC bandmate Joey Fatone will be filming a pilot for The CW in January, a new take on "The Odd Couple" that has them playing roommates. Yes, Bass' character will be gay.

As for Reichen, he has a book set to be released next month called "Here's What We'll Say" which chronicles his coming out at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He calls the military's 'don't ask, don't tell" policy against gays "the last legal human rights abuse the U.S. allows. This book chronicles the secret society we created to survive as gay cadets in the academy...We had to get our lives straight so we wouldn't get caught.
"I am very patriotic and I have great respect for the U.S. Air Force Academy," he adds. "It's just this one thing that needs to be fixed."