ABSTRACT
It ranks, hands down, as the single most public exit from the closet in gay history. The Los Angeles Times published sixty articles about this particular coming out, the New York Times devoted its lead editorial to the event, and ABC’s 20/20 magazine show used its network connections to nab the first TV interview with the woman of the hour. These and other journalistic behemoths raced to report-Time magazine called it a “national obsession”—that a thirty-nine-year-old comedian with glistening blond hair was a unique species of humanity that most media outlets had previously ignored: a lesbian.1
