Former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey filed for divorce from Dina Matos McGreevey. Married for over six years, Matos McGreevey stood beside her husband as he made his infamous announcement two years ago that he is a “gay America” amidst a scandal involving his extramarital affair with the man he appointed his homeland security advisor.

Former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey filed for divorce from Dina Matos McGreevey. Married for over six years, Matos McGreevey stood beside her husband as he made his infamous announcement two years ago that he is a “gay America” amidst a scandal involving his extramarital affair with the man he appointed his homeland security advisor.

Separated since that time, McGreevey filed for divorce in Union County on February 5, 2007. It is not known at this time what, if any, arrangements have been agreed upon regarding custody or child support of the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Jacqueline.

Despite the former governor’s assertion that a divorce settlement agreement was entered into on January 12, a statement from Dina McGreevey, through her attorney, suggests sufficient differences for the divorce to enter litigation. This apparently includes what their daughter is subjected to in the home environment, possibly alluding to McGreevey’s male partner.

McGreevey currently lives with and plans to enter into a civil union with his partner, Australian-born financier, Mark O’Donnell. This will be McGreevey’s second divorce. He has a daughter with his first wife as well.

OutOnTheNet.com provided a review of the McGreevey’s book back in November. Below is a brief recap in case you missed it.

A Book Review of: The Confession

The informal tone of The Confession, former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey’s telling memoir, instantly makes for an easy read. One gets the sense of sitting down to have a casual conversation with McGreevey about his life and his entering and eventually leaving politics. But the more he tells, the more difficult finishing the book becomes.

At first, McGreevey’s story is the stuff of the American Dream, a second-generation American in a working class Irish Catholic family who worked his way into politics in hopes of making a difference. But before long, the constant juxtaposition of his active childhood involvement in his church with learning the inner workings of the New Jersey patronage system all around him starts to send a message.

Perhaps it is because his resignation, amidst the threat of a sexual harassment scandal, is too recent for true impartiality, but there is a sense of more than just biographical information being delivered. You can imagine McGreevey whispering in the back of your mind, “Look, I started out pious and moral, but this political machine corrupted me with its culture of favors, lies and secrecy.”

From there, McGreevey finds no shortage of places to lay blame: his “addiction” to public life, a term now tied to everything including Internet usage and video games; New Jersey’s political “bosses” who forced local politicians to play by their rules; lax campaign finance reform laws for his having to make promises to special interests in return for campaign donations; and of course, the Church for forcing “me into a posture of dishonesty from the time I was in eighth grade.”

On more than one occasion in the book, McGreevey tells how leading the double life of a closeted man prepared him for separating his true self from the morally objectionable things he had to do as a politician.

This splitting himself in two leads to another common theme in The Confession. McGreevey constantly refers to “memory problems.” These lapses in recollection generally coincide with topics that would continue to show the former governor or his administration in a negative light.

Actions, either his or those done in his name, that he found “morally repugnant,” were quickly “forced from my mind.” This appears to be yet another convenient way to disavow himself from any responsibility for his actions. It is one thing to make the argument you did not do something that you obviously did. Rather than make denials, which can be exposed as lies, McGreevey seeks sympathy by invoking a selective amnesia born from having to deny his true self.

This isn’t the only time McGreevey appears to use his sexuality as a “way out.” After the now-well-publicized threat of a sexual harassment suit by former employee Golan Cipel, McGreevey is advised to announce his sexual orientation before Cipel can because “suddenly the tawdry affair with your political appointee makes sense. You were a man in the closet, and now you are free.”

This ignores the fact that he still had a sexual relationship with a political appointee, an appointee that McGreevey created a six-figure salary job for because he didn’t know where else to put him.

James McGreevey’s The Confession is an extremely well written book about a young Irish kid who wanted to be liked. It is a heart-wrenching tale of a gay man torn between his love for politics and the truth in his heart. And it is an intriguing look into the inner workings of state government when many Americans would be hard pressed to name a single member of their State Legislature.

But most of all, it is McGreevey passing the buck. For every time he claims full responsibility for his actions, there are three where he is pointing out how he was a victim of circumstances. For James McGreevey, The Confession may have been an exercise in therapy. For the American people, it is one more straw on the camel’s back. And before long, Americans will tire of politicians who can find blame in everyone but themselves.

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