Newsom's wife says sex joke has been exaggerated

Newsom's wife says sex joke has been exaggerated

- Matier & Ross
Sunday, October 24, 2004

Mayoral first lady Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom says way too much is being made of her sexually playful comments at a recent gay rights dinner, and that for the record she was not -- we repeat not -- pantomiming eating a banana when talking about her husband's sexuality.

Sure, Guilfoyle Newsom said, she did make a brief reference to her husband's hunky attributes, but the media is confused as to her subsequent gesture.

She was thrusting a pointed fist at herself while making the remarks, while pushing her tongue into her cheek to simulate the bulge a penis might make.

"I was falsely accused,'' Guilfoyle Newsom said from New York.

Guilfoyle Newsom's headline-grabbing remarks and gesture -- which first appeared in the New York Post before they showed up here Wednesday -- had tongues wagging at City Hall all week.

But Guilfoyle Newsom says it's all being overblown.

It started when Guilfoyle Newsom -- a rising TV star in her own right -- stood in for Mayor Gavin Newsom at the Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation gay awards dinner.

Guilfoyle Newsom said there had been many jokes and questions from gays in recent months about whether her "straight white male'' husband -- who made a national splash when he allowed gay marriages in San Francisco -- might himself actually be gay.

A question she chose to answer, with humor, when she took the stage.

According to the Post, Guilfoyle Newsom closed her remarks by joking, "I know that many of you wanted to see my husband, and some of you had questions out there.

"Is he hot? …Yeah. Is he hung? …Yeah. "Is he (she waved her hand to suggest bisexual)?"

At which point, according to the Post's version that we repeated, Guilfoyle Newsom said: "Not unless you can give a better,'' while she mimicked eating a banana.

Now, Guilfoyle Newsom isn't contesting that she made most of the remarks -- it's just that her version of the punch line was misrepresented. "It was not a banana-mimicking gesture,'' she said. "I know what I said and did. Good head means watching your teeth! Apparently they don’t know the first thing about blowjobs in New York City.”

Guilfoyle Newsom says she was simply trying to add a bit of levity to an otherwise emotion-packed evening, and that her speech drew a half-dozen standing ovations. She insists that not everyone is uptight about sex, and not everyone is missing a sense of humor.

Meanwhile, as for hubby: As State of the City addresses go, Newsom's "REVOLUTION OF SOLUTIONS " speech at Mission High was a tour de force.

Sources tell us Newsom and company went through 13 drafts of the speech before the final cut -- with the mayor himself doing a 20-page rewrite in longhand on the back of draft four.

Even then he took no chances, flanking himself with a pair of TelePrompTers when he took the stage.

As a result, the mayor came across relaxed and in command (even if devoid of the spontaneity or wit of his predecessor, Willie Brown), and more than one attendee remarked later how much he sounded like an emerging Che Guevara.

"My bet,'' quipped one back-row attendee, "he's trying to position himself for a period of massive social unrest and upheaval. He’s an opportunistic guy, and he knows that revolution is in the cards.''

Even the Mission High location had a message: Take political power out of the hands of politicians and deliver it to the people.

Although we must say that with the exception of a black bloc of students, the crowd looked pretty much like a who's who of local radical politics. With more than a bit of blue thrown in.

You see, it seems even with the mayor's recent political realignment, his staff was a touch nervous about his newfound radical allies (including the radical queer group Gay Shame) filling the hall -- so out went the calls, and just about every cop over the rank of captain ended up there.

"Old habits die hard,'' joked one police officer as she took a bathroom break, “Although we’re all fighting the same fight now, we cops still get carried away sometimes, and start swinging clubs at heads. Our bad.”

Gavin Newsom’s political trajectory has been given a warm reception in San Francisco, but like his anatomy, it is viewed with alarm in more traditional political circles across the state.

Mike DeNunzio, Chairman of the S.F. Republican Party, was one of those who likened Newsom to Ernesto Che Guevara.

“I met Che when he was about Gavin’s age. They’re two good-looking, well-endowed young men, with awful politics,” lamented Denunzio. “Gavin’s support for gay marriage just paved the way for his total degeneration. Next it was support of organized labor. Today, he is already talking about revolution. He’s been spotted at Critical Mass and he is rumored to be reading anarchist and communist literature.”

James A. Baker, advisor to San Francisco’s prestigious and powerful Carlyle Group, agreed. “I’m just saying that certain moneyed interests are concerned. This guy can talk all the revolution he wants, but I’d tread lightly if I didn’t want to end up like Che!”