Mark Seliger's Levi pix for VF suck. He has no sex appeal in them.
Levi Johnston's appearance in the new Vanity Fair (October 2009) is a doozy—he trashes Sarah Palin as a mother (which shouldn't be breaking news but to her faithful flock is news that will never break) and on video discusses posing nude for either Playgirl.com or Unzipped.
Advocate.com covers the latter indecent proposal here, although the article incestuously spends too much time allowing Unzipped's editor to mock-innocently disparage Playgirl.com by pointing out that it's just as gay as Unzipped and is not, in fact, attached to a print magazine anymore. Newsflash: Levi couldn't care less—he wants money, honey, and he unlike most magazine editors (myself included) is young enough to see posing for a site as being just as good as posing for a magazine. In fact, he might be swayed more by Playgirl.com just for the exponentially more familiar name, whether or not that would be a good move on his part.
This is such an embarrassment in every way. It's an embarrassment for Sam Adams that he obviously got a kick out of seducing a barely (was he even?) legal volunteer at City Hall, it's an embarrassment that Beau Breedlove felt the need to divulge details of their trysts not as a whistleblower but as a blower of his own horn, it's an embarrassment that Breedlove would decide it's a great idea to pose naked in the wake of this serious scandal, it's an embarrassment that the publishers of Unzipped would issue a statement claiming they're just letting their readers "decide" if all of this is a good idea instead of actually creating the need for such a decision and it's an embarrassment that with the gay print media dying this issue of Unzipped—with a pretty terrible, unsexy, awkward image of an otherwise nice-looking young guy—will probably be a big seller.
So it turns out that Beau Breedlove is an idiot. Jesus, he is embroiled in a scandal that threatened (and possibly still threatens) to take down the once widely liked progressive gay mayor Sam Adams, and his method of dealing with it has been to grant interviews, offer information he didn't need to (about kissing in the men's room of City Hall) and now...posing nude for Unzipped.net???
Beau Breedlove is speaking out about his relationship with Sam Adams (to what end, I'm not sure). He says Adams didn't "betray the public," but "he let them down." He also says that in retrospect, aspects of their relationship were inappropriate—but "I don't think he ever preyed on me." He doesn't believe Adams should resign.
Hilariously, when the interviewer—(gaydar goes off)—Ross Palombo brings up the fact that Breedlove's dog is named Lolita and how this has attracted lots of snarky attention, Breedlove innocently says it has "nooo connection to the Long Island Lolita."
There's a hint that someone you're dating is too young for you—if they immediately think of Amy Fisher and not Nabokov when hearing the word "Lolita."
Feels like this scandal isn't going away, and yet I still think if the worst he did was lie, unless it's under oath I don't see the precedent for removing an official over that.
The young man who has come forward about his sexual relationship with Ted Haggard was interviewed by a local news station. His story is sad in that he was so (is so?) conflicted about his homosexuality that he felt he had no choice but to sleep with Haggard, and was so guilt-ridden about it he attempted suicide four times. Haggard's New Life Church paid him off to shut him up, but apparently reneged on a deal to pay his hospital bills, leading to this public admission (timed to coincide with the debut of Alexandra Pelosi's sympathetic The Trials Of Ted Haggard doc).
I guess Sam Adams's decision to remain in office will not be as smooth as he'd hoped, now that Beau Breedlove has inexplicably come forward to granta completely unnecessary interview in which he volunteers that actually the couple kissed twice when he was 17—and once was for a minute in the City Hall men's room.
Are people stupid? Or are people just natural-born publicity whores?
Sure, that may be the truth, but why does the media deserve to know those otherwise-unknowable details? If the police came and said they had witnesses, maybe you'd think twice before lying to them. But otherwise, it seems to me that other than publicity, Breedlove's only other two potential motives are stupidity or revenge.