Jaws Drop Over Bizarre Essay About Pete Buttigieg

And it gets pulled pretty fast
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 13, 2019 10:25 AM CDT
Bizarre Essay on Buttigieg Gets Pulled Amid Outcry
Democratic presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg campaigns at the Revolution Taproom & Grill, Friday, July 12, 2019, in Rochester, NH.   (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A shocking essay about Pete Buttigieg got yanked from the New Republic's website after a reporter noticed it was there, Mediaite reports. The post, by novelist and critic Dale Peck, scorns the presidential candidate for coming out as gay only four years ago and apparently marrying his first boyfriend. "And we all know what happens when gay people don't get a real adolescence because they spent theirs in the closet: they go through it after they come out," writes Peck, who is also gay. Peck likens Buttigieg, 39, to "a gay teenager" in a Chicago bus station wondering if he should go home with a 50-year-old man and "finally understand what he is"—a hormonal explosion Peck claims could strike any time. "I want a man whose mind is on his job, not what could have been—or what he thinks he can still get away with," adds Peck.

And that's not all: He also calls Buttigieg "Mary Pete" (in other words, a gay Uncle Tom) and gets into whether the South Bend mayor should shave his chest and try different sexual positions. "These are rites of passage for a lot of gay men, and it fuels many aspects of gay culture," adds Peck, who doesn't "want it in the White House." When CNN media writer Brian Stelter sought an explanation, New Republic editor Chris Lehmann said it "was largely intended as satire." That sparked a Twitter explosion ("The only thing it could possibly be read as satire of is the Dale Peck oeuvre," per one tweet) and led to the essay being pulled. The post "has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece's inappropriate and invasive content," reads the page where it once resided. "We regret its publication." (More Pete Buttigieg stories.)

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