GROSS
07.17.159:50
PM ET
Gawker’s Homophobic, Years-Long Crusade to Out James Franco
On Thursday evening, the
media website Gawker ran a clickbait “scoop” about an executive at a major magazine
company who had enlisted the services of a gay porn star/escort, arranging to
pay him $2,500 for a weekend tryst. The john was married to a woman with two
young children, and his brother once served as a senior official within the
Obama administration.
Once the prostitute
caught wind of the john’s powerful ties, he proceeded to blackmail the CFO by
threatening to expose the arrangement unless he helped the escort with a housing
discrimination case against a former landlord—one that he’d allegedly brought to
the attention of his local politician, presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Gawker, as is its wont, published all the text messages between the
two—effectively outing and shaming the exec—while protecting the identity of the
blackmailer, who turned out to be a complete nutjob.
The media then began
(rightfully) policing Gawker for the despicable post, which only seemed to
embolden its editor-in-chief, Max Read, who tweeted out a defense of the
piece:
The problems with the
story, as laid out astutely by The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, were that the man was not a public official, the post
did not serve the public interest, and that Gawker may have even abetted a
blackmail plot by serving as a bargaining chip. The post was taken down Friday
evening at the behest of Gawker’s management board, and Gawker founder Nick
Denton later released a mea
culpa, claiming he’s experienced what alcoholics refer to
as a “moment of clarity.”
Perhaps the vilest thing
about the piece is how laced with homophobia it was, as its main, hateful
“mission” seemed to be outing a man, as if being gay was something to be ashamed
of in 2015, mere weeks after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in
all fifty states.
But Gawker Media has long
harbored a creepy obsession with outing closeted men. Back in 2007, one of its
first controversial stories involved its sister site Valleywag publishing a
piece outing Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel in a post titled,
“Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” In the comment section of the piece,
Denton wrote that he was confused why Thiel would keep “his personal life a
secret from journalists…” as if he was entitled to this information from a
non-public figure. And then there was the unfortunate outing of Fox News anchor
Shepard Smith in 2013, a nasty gay fright piece that was eviscerated in a columnby the late, great New
York Times media critic David
Carr.
But no one has been on
the receiving end of more harassment by Gawker than Oscar-nominated actor James Franco.
“Yeah, and then they got a little pissy because I said it was ‘homophobic,’ and yeah it is,” said Franco.
The repugnant hit pieces
began around 2008, as Franco was mid-transition from wandering himbo to serious
actor, with standout performances in the stoner comedy Pineapple
Express and as the gay lover to
Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk in Milk.
Historically, there has been a troubling tendency by the movie-going public and
tabloid media to question an actor’s sexuality once he’s convincingly played a
gay character onscreen. Gawker, however, took it one step further: they accused
Franco of being a gay rapist.
On August 18, 2008,
the New
York Post ran a gossip blind item that read: “Which hunk in a summer movie is
a violent, closeted homosexual? The heartthrob snuck into his ex's apartment a
few months ago and raped him so violently, the ex ended up in the hospital - and
the actor paid him $500,000 to keep his mouth shut.”
Back before Denton’s
“change of heart," Gawker had a tendency to blindly speculate about gossip blind
items—which, for all we know, could be completely made up. But they took
particular interest in this one, with then-Gawker writer Richard Lawson
penning a follow-up post guessing that the gay rapist might be either
Will Smith, Christian Bale, or James Franco, based purely (or rather, impurely)
on Internet rumors.
“And then there's the
compelling case of James Franco,” Lawson wrote. “Basically the rumor is that
Franco dated the guy about two years ago, and still had a key to his house. Guy
goes to an Oscars party, comes back and Franco is waiting for him and then
awfulness goes down. He's rumored to have been abusive towards an old
girlfriend, also an actor, some five years ago. This makes me sad because James
Franco is dreamy and oh if he were gay we'd surely be married next spring, but
if he's a raper then I don't want anything to do with him and he should be in
jail.”
Days later, Lawson penned
a follow-up post titled:
All it did was tally up
commenters’ feelings, who voted that among the three baseless candidates, Franco
was their choice as likeliest perp. Again, this is all a guessing game, and all
of these pieces still live online. The following month, Lawson wrote another Gawker post titled:
The piece was pegged to
Franco’s role as Penn’s character’s gay lover in Milk—and
a subsequent interview with Out magazine—and, based on no evidence
whatsoever, the Gawker article insinuated that Franco was a gay rapist,
mentioning “the ominous rumor that he once raped his gay lover.” It also
questioned Franco’s sexuality based on his playing two gay roles in
films.
Lawson, who penned all of
the aforementioned Franco posts, took to Twitter last night to admit that his
posts accusing Franco of being a gay rapist were “baseless” and that he wrote
them on the orders of his “boss” (he’s since deleted the tweet), essentially
admitting that he’d based them on unsubstantiated claims:
In a statement to The
Daily Beast, Lawson said, “I deeply regret those posts. Though they don't
really have any upside, maybe they can at least serve as a warning for younger
writers now to use far better judgment than I did back then.” Franco could not
be reached for comment.
Things were left dormant
until, in 2013, Gawker’s then-staff writer (and now editor-in-chief) Max Read
wrote a
post with the
headline, “James Franco Is Gay,” and embedded an Instagram post Franco issued of
him and a man gallivanting about New York City and kissing with the
tongue-in-cheek caption, “#JamesFrancoTV in love????? #gawker.com #gay.” This was clearly Franco trolling
Gawker, yet they ran a definitive clickbait-y headline proclaiming him gay,
without including so much as a question mark.
Franco was, presumably,
responding to the years of harassment he’d received about his sexuality by
Gawker, including a recent post by writer Rich Juzwiak two weeks earlier
following his Comedy Central Celebrity Roast titled, “James Franco’s Friends and
Roasters Agree That He Is Very, Very Gay.” And Juzwiak, who months later would
pen a post with the clickbait headline, “James Franco Bares Ass to Gay
Men”—which solely consisted of Franco flashing his behind for charity at a Broadway
Bares event that ended up raising
$1.3 million for the fight against AIDS—would later whine about being disinvited from a Franco
afterparty.
Gawker escalated their
Franco witch-hunt with a post on August 6, 2014, that read, “James Franco Is
Living With a Man.” The post, penned by J.K. Trotter, suggested that Franco was
in a gay relationship with his frequent co-star Scott Haze solely based on a
line in a recent New York
Times profile of
Franco where the Oscar-nominated actor shared that he and Haze lived in the same
place.
Franco responded to the
Gawker item—which still lives online—with posts on his Instagram and Facebook
pages accusing Gawker of “always getting the cutting edge, homophobic
scoop!”
The following day,
Trotter doubled-down on his baseless Franco “outing” with a post titled, “A
Short History of James Franco and Scott Haze Playing Gay,” which once again
insinuated that Franco was in a gay relationship with Haze based merely on the
closeness of their relationship—the fact that they’d been friends for a decade,
and spent a lot of time together. This post also still lives
online.
About a month after the
two accusatory Gawker posts, I sat down with Franco and Haze at the Venice
Film Festival, where they were on hand to promote their film adaptation of the
Faulkner classic The
Sound and the Fury. During our interview, I asked them about the Gawker posts alleging that they were a gay couple.
“Oh god,” replied Haze, shifting in his seat and showing signs of frustration.
“Oh god,” replied Haze, shifting in his seat and showing signs of frustration.
“Yeah, and then they got
a little pissy because I said it was ‘homophobic,’ and yeah it is,” added
Franco. “And then they said, ‘Oh, well a gay guy wrote it!’ I don’t care if the
press is gay or straight. When did you have to face criticism for having a
roommate? I don’t understand that!”
He paused. “And there
were like… eight people living in that house, so to make a story about that—I
don’t care, but it just shows how petty Gawker is. It’s
ridiculous.”
Towards the end of our
interview, I jokingly asked them when they were going to “hook up” on a new
project again in the future, and they both started cracking
up.
“Hey, no comment!” said
Haze, bowled over in his seat. Franco patted him on the back and, barely
containing his laughter, added, “Here in Venice? Pretty damn
romantic!”
At least he hasn’t lost
his sense of humor about it, though it stands to reason that given Gawker’s
constant stream of harassment, Franco has a pretty strong case against
them.
# # #
FOOTNOTE: READ ON . . .
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/gawker-got-in-bed-with-the-wrong-escort-and-civil-war-ensues.html
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