Today's L.A. Times contains a commentary titled "Susan
Sontag and a Case of Curious Silence," which notes:
It seems that editors at what are, arguably, the nation's most respected (and liberal) newspapers believe that one personal detail cannot be mentioned in even the most complete biographies - being a lesbian....
The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times found ample room to discuss Sontag's cancer and subsequent mastectomy, which were not seen as lurid details but as necessary information in understanding the work of the author of "Illness as Metaphor." ... However, her relationships with women and how they shaped her thoughts on gay culture and the larger world of outsiders and outlaws (a Sontag fascination) were omitted.
Meanwhile, the conservative Frontpagemagzine.com characterizes Sontag as "a doyenne of radical chic." Yet as a leading light of the intellectual left, her decision to remain closeted raises questions in need of answers.
And aside from Sontag's own motives, why would the liberal media
choose to aid in her cover-up? Among the commentators (and
tormentors) on yesterday's blog item, "Pillar" offers
this:
If a public figure such as Sontag (as opposed to a nebbish congressional staffer who is not a public figure) wanted the liberal media to keep quiet about her being a lesbian, that's worth noting and asking why she didn't want to be identified as gay. Did she think it would have impeded here being taken seriously as a leading anti-American polemicist? If so, doesn't that tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged homophobia (just as quotas tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged racism)?
That's about as good a guess as any I can come up with right now.
Update:
Andrew Sullivan weighs in on the brouhaha, writing:
Sontag understood that her lesbianism might limit her appeal in a homophobic culture - even on the extreme left, where she comfortably lived for decades. That was her prerogative. But that's no reason for the media to perpetuate untruths after her death.
Occasionally forthcoming about her relationships, Sontag would
then retreat into denial. But in covering public figures
in this day and age, the media shouldn't treat being gay as
something so "sensitive" it can only be mentioned with the figure's
expressed authorization (which is moot, in any event, when that
figure is deceased).
--Stephen H. Miller