Have you ever heard of someone powerful in the Third World going to jail for financial misdeeds and criminal conduct alone?
How would Shakespeare have said it, I wonder, watching the Governor of New Jersey admit to an extra-marital affair, and that too with a man!
Looking the part of Hamlet, our prince of paleness came out of the closet to disentangle himself from the temptation of evil passion that had wreaked injustice on his wife, and to do what he must do for the sake of his august office.... “My truth is that I am a gay American.”
From that dilemma of wrong sexual feelings and right actions, he ultimately emerged, by blurting out his gayness.
But in truth, James McGreevey, 47, had his back against the wall. His former flame, suddenly turned grasping and threatened him with a sexual harassment lawsuit if he didn’t pay him $5 million. Imagine his chutzpah playing the ‘gotcha’ game of extortion!
Golan Cipel, 35, the Israeli, (aptly named after Golan Heights) streaked across McGreevey’s gamic radar in 2000 at a tryst organized by Ariel Sharon in Tel Aviv.
He had to be had, so McGreevey after becoming the governor, started two-timing: simultaneously courting Dina and marrying her and together producing daughter Jacqueline, while aggressively pursuing the Jew.
A job was swiftly carved out for the Israeli in America and a sponsor set up to swear to the Immigration authorities that no one but Cipel had the credentials and the expertise for that particular post. Armed with a truckload of arrogance and an H-1B work visa, he showed up on Jersey shores, to start an affair with the governor of that state.
Hired by the Governor as his special adviser to the state office of Homeland Security at a salary of $110,000, McGreevey broke all the rules in the book of immigration that prohibit an alien, otherwise known as a Green Card holder, from security-sensitive service.
Finding the alien a home near Governor’s Mansion, cutting out the commute, for convenience sake was next. The realtor who showed the house to Cipel was startled to see governor McGreevey at the walk through, as Americans call it, when it’s a done deal.
As the homosexual affair heated up, so did the grist to the gossip mills around New Jersey. When a reporter asked the governor about such rumours, “don’t be ridiculous” was the snub he suffered in return. But eight months into his job, Cipel resigned only to go through three more employers in the course of one year. The “governor’s boyfriend” as he was known around New Jersey, was said to be “a lazy lout with an attitude” by those with a close encounter with him.
And what about the governor’s wife?
Picture the scene of his mea culpa: McGreevey arrives holding his wife Dina Matos’ hand; she’s stoically smiling at the cameras and not wanting to let go of his hand as he slips out a statement to read; his aging parents are a few steps behind the couple, McGreevey Sr. motions to misses to go stand behind Dina while he covers his son’s back; they have no expression on their faces, except old age.
Presto, six minutes and everything is over! The world is wiser after a tour de force on the secret life of McGreevey: “I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused”, he opens up, peeling layer after layer of his persona. The twice married and a father of two, he says “I am here today because, shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable.”
“How can his pretty blond wife, stand there, smiling beside her man? What had she known and when had she known it?” ask most. Darn, it’s unthinkable that Dina, daughter of Portuguese immigrants, was clueless while Jersey was tut-tutting about her husband and Cipel.
McGreevey’s name is mud. Last month, his contributor-in-chief, Charles Kushner — the man who sponsored Golan Cipel — was charged with trying to silence two witnesses for cooperating with a federal probe into Kushner’s finances, one of them being is brother-in-law William Schulder.
The wealthy real estate developer, whose name is koshered in stone in New Jersey’s Jewish religious, educational and charitable edifices, despite being sheltered by the governor — who got $1.5 million as campaign donations from him — hit the headlines with worms crawling out of the can.
Last December a woman approached Schulder as he left a diner saying her car had broken down. She asked for a ride to a nearby motel, and invited him in for a drink. He declined but returned the following day, and the two allegedly had sex, which was videotaped by Kushner’s men in the next room.
A second prostitute allegedly tried to seduce Yontef the accountant, but he didn’t fall for the trap. Months later, Kushner, 50, mailed the video tape and still photos of the act to his sister Esther, as the Schulders were preparing to host an engagement party for their son. Esther received the tape and contacted the FBI.
That a prominent member of the Orthodox Jewish community stooped to such sleaze resembles an X-rated family drama- dripping with dirt, extortion and shakedown — is conduct unbecoming of a man of Charles Kushner’s stature. To honour his parents, survivors of the Holocaust, the billionaire founded the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy on a hill with the American and Israeli flags flying high. Last week he confessed in court to paying $25,000 to a New York callgirl who seduced his sister’s husband and is said to serve a two-year jail term. His parents must surely turn in their graves with revulsion at the joust of the family of Jews.
The endgame: James McGreevey steps down as governor on November 15, thereby killing his political dream; Charles Kushner goes to jail on November 29 to serve a two-year term; Golan Cipel has returned home to Israel to be with family at this time of “distress” and wash yet more dirty linen in the Jewish press on his former lover.
There is something rotten in the state of New Jersey. Not so, shouts the local head of the FBI: “This is a victory for all law-abiding Americans.” And I heartily agree, not even a billionaire and a best friend of the governor, can escape the long arm of the law, unlike Pakistan.
Oh by the way, did I mention that in America there are nearly two million “straight spouses” who after years of marriage have been told by their husbands and wives that they are gay or lesbians?
It’s not one’s sexual orientation that bothers the man on the street, it’s the corruption in high places that America is unforgiving of. This fact alone makes it a great country. Have you ever heard of a powerhouse in the Third World going to jail on financial misdeeds and criminal conduct alone? Not me!
Have you ever heard of someone powerful in the Third World going to jail for financial misdeeds and criminal conduct alone? 
