Aug. 16 - Last Thursday, my normal afternoon shift at The New York Post began like any other: I walked in and an editor handed me my assignments for the next day's paper. One story centered on a bar owner near Ground Zero who decided that now—not September 12, 2001, mind you, but last Thursday—was the time to beat up a Muslim taxi driver. The other assignment was a simple piece of journalism centering on a homeless man, an 88-year-old grandmother, an asphyxiation and, beguilingly, a cheese sandwich.

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On the whole, it promised to be a good day.

Everything changed, of course, when one of the reporters ran through the newsroom—which is rare (and, while I'm at it, no one yells "Stop the presses!" anymore, either, since our presses are in The Bronx anyway)—to tell the boss that New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey was about to resign.

Because he'd had an affair.

With a member of his staff.

And said member was male.

And I'd thought the strangled granny and the cheese sandwich was a good story!

Of course, none of us believed the gay affair part of the story—that was just too good (from a reporter's standpoint) to be true. How many times had we all gotten similar tips about a stunning story only to have the actual announcement not meet our expectations? In the cynical world of the newsroom—a bunch of people topping each other in a game of "seen it all before"—no one expected that the twice-married governor would actually come out on national television.

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Nonetheless, I quickly banged out the stories already on my plate—the bartender had been drunk and the homeless guy had eaten the cheese sandwich while granny took her last breath—so I could gather with my colleagues around the six, typically muted, television sets at the front of the newsroom to watch the resignation speech (indeed, the television sets had the volume up, which is how I knew I was about to watch history unfold. The only time the volume on a newsroom TV is turned up is when there's a really big story going on or someone is trying to get a Yankees score.)

And then McGreevey began: "Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused..."

And the newsroom went silent. Look, I've been in that room for a long time for some of the most stunning made-for-TV events of the last decade-the O.J. verdict, the Clinton "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" speech, the 9/11 attacks, the start of the war in Iraq—and by the only barometer I have, the McGreevey speech was just as gripping: The newsroom was silent.

Sometimes, even the people who write the first-draft of history have to take their hands off the keyboards.

"I do not believe that God tortures any person simply for its own sake,"  McGreevey continued. "I believe that God enables all things to work for the greater good. And this, the 47th year of my life, is arguably too late to have this discussion. But it is here, and it is now. At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is. And so my truth is that I am a gay American."

And that was the end of the silence. I don't know about anyone else, but I was cheering-partly because as a reporter, I know a great story when I hear one, but also partly because a politician was looking into the camera and telling us the truth. Not the truth, of course, about the real story about his resignation—putting a lover, straight or gay, on the payroll is one of the few remaining capital offenses in politics—but the truth about who he is as a person.

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And that is, perhaps, the most stunning thing about the McGreevey resignation speech (in addition to the fact that he clearly wrote it himself and it was pretty damn eloquent). We sometimes do get honesty in our politics, but we rarely get honest soul searching from our politicians. Every so often, we get a glimpse of it—Ed Muskie cried and his campaign wept, Jimmy Carter admitted that he lusted in his heart and was mocked mercilessly, former U.S. senator Thomas Eagleton admitted to being treated for depression and was replaced as a vice presidential candidate—but the politician who looks inside himself and sees a flawed person rather than a future president is not a politician who usually gets further than City Council. The few who do—think of John Kerry being mocked for the extensive mental calisthenics he undertakes every time he wants to form an opinion—are so universally attacked that they usually end up returning to the safety of the political shell.

Until he came out, McGreevey was just another automaton politician with good hair, false promises of reform and the kind of ambition one usually associates with an unlikable high school nerd. But that nerd was living a lie, which he finally confessed last week.

I'll leave it to others to debate whether this is "good" or "bad" for the gay community that McGreevey professes to now join. But whatever else comes out of Jim McGreevey's closet, this much should earn him our respect: He went on national television and told us who he is.

And in a world of pre-packaged, focus-grouped stump speeches—insert Oregon joke here—that remains the one thing that can silence a newsroom.

Gersh Kuntzman is also co-author of the play, "An Evening of Semi-Autobiographical, Highly Self Indulgent Theater" currently running in The NYC International Fringe Festival. Details at http://gershkuntzman.homestead.com/neoshtick.html.

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