Friday, September 14, 2007

Condi's "Closest Female Friend"

Michelangelo Signorile has an interesting post on his blog (http://signorile2003.blogspot.com/2007/09/condis-best-friends-yesterday-on-show-i.html) about Condi Rice and her friendships that include gays and co-ownership of property with a woman. This news might well drive the fundies crazy (always a worthwhile endeavor in my view):


Yesterday on the show I had an interesting conversation with Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, whose new book is The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy.There have long been questions about Rice's sexual orientation and her personal life in general. As Kessler notes, "She has built a wall of privacy around her that is never breached." But Kessler had access to Rice's closest friends and to Rice herself, and he reveals some eyebrow-raising information that hasn't been out there before.

Rice's "closest male friend" is openly gay, a man by the name of Coit D. Blacker, a Stanford professor (Rice served as the provost as Stanford in the late 1990s for six years) and a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration. Blacker, whose partner is also mentioned, advised Al Gore's campaign in 2000, while his close friend Rice served as a chief confidante for a president who has tried to make gays into second class citizens in the U.S. Constitution.

But wait, it gets better. Rice's "closest female friend" is a woman named Randy Bean (pictured here), who is unmarried and whose sexual orientation is not stated. She is described as a "liberal progressive;" she's a documentary filmmaker who works at Standford University and once worked for Bill Moyers. She and Rice and Blacker (again, who has a partner) are discussed as a "second family," a term Bean uses, also saying that, "on friends, [Rice] goes narrow and deep."


According to newly revealed information in the book (which Kessler found through real estate records), the two women, Rice and Bean (yes, hilarious), own a home together and have a line of credit together.


Even if Rice is heterosexual, however, it is fascinating and mind-boggling that this woman whose best male friend is an openly gay liberal and whose best female "friend" is a "liberal progressive," would work for a president who has opposed every gay rights initiative and tried to enshrine religious hatred in the Constitution.

I can only wonder if this information will give Daddy Dobson, Tony Perkins and Rev. Wildmon the vapors.

1 comment:

Michelle said...

Madeleine Albright's father (Josef Korbel) was one of her teachers at college and she was one of his favourite students.

In Madam Secretary Albright expresses her surprise that Rice became a Republican.

For a taste of Korbel, have a read of Ma this.