New York Times political guru, who is famous for using statistics in his 538 column to predict the outcome of elections, has come ou
t of the closet as a gay man. (Not that he was ever closeted in the traditional sense, it’s just that his sexual orientation wasn’t widely known) We certainly welcome the smartest political mind in Washington and give a big, hearty hello!
According to a profile in the Guardian:
For weeks and months, the election had been “too close to call”. Pundit after pundit declared that the election could “go either way”. That it was “neck and neck”. Only it wasn’t. In the end, it turned out not to be neck and neck at all. Or precisely what Nate Silver had been saying for months. On election day, he predicted Obama had a 90.9% chance of winning a majority in the electoral votes and by crunching polling data he successfully predicted the correct result in 50 out of 50 states.
“You know who won the election tonight?” asked the MSNBC TV news anchor, Rachel Maddow. “Nate Silver.”
In the weeks before the election, Silver’s critics (largely on the right, angry that he was predicting an Obama win) attacked not just his methodology, but also him. Dean Chambers of UnSkewedPolls.com railed against his “voodoo statistics“, claimed he’d been “smoking the wacky weed” and finally pronounced him a “thin and effeminate” man “of small stature” with a “soft-sounding voice”.
There was more than a touch of homophobia to the criticism (Silver is gay), not to mention an aversion to scientific rationalism that has come to characterise certain segments of the conservative right. (Gawker compared the attack to “something like a jock slapping a math book out of a kid’s hands and saying, ‘NICE NUMBERS, FAG.’”)
Silver not only serves as a role model for gay kids, but stands for the triumph of geeks over idiots who push them around in schoolyards. This election cycle has been astounding. Not only did the LGBT community elect openly gay candidates — the dude who accurately predicted the election is out. This is truly a new day for the LGBT world, where our youth know that they can go as far as their grit, drive, determination, and abilities take them.
WAY TO GO, NATE!! You are a real hero and wonderful role model.
Welcome Nate, to this side of the public closet. As our “brain trust” gathers here, look out Fox educated nonthinkers. Small thin effeminate Geeks might just take over the world. I will be a better place.
Another reason for the wingnuts to hate him. Of course they hate him for being right (about every state!), shoot the messenger ya know.
Most people evidently didn’t know it, since it’s only with this election that Nate Silver reached the level of fame to where people began to care about his personal life, but he’s already been out. I could swear he said something himself on his blog back in ’08, and after he correctly called the 2010 midterms he was listed on that year’s Out 100.
In any case, as a nerd, I’m thrilled to see another nerd become a pop culture phenomenon.
The most important question this straight man has to ask is did anyone ask Dean Chambers at the time how any of his insults directed at Nate Silver were relevant to his analysis? I really wish when people make asinine comments designed to hurt that people would ostracize them immediately. Mr. Silver’s ultimate F.U. to Mr. Chambers was being correct. Congratulations Mr. Silver on a perfect score.
This is the third website I’ve read today that is making it seem like Nate Silver just came out of the closet with this Guardian profile. As mentioned above, he was listed in the Out100 in 2010 and was interviewed by Queerty in 2008. Its was also mentioned in several online stories released before the election about the UnskewedPolls attack. Its amusing to see people celebrate this as groundbreaking news considering its been on his Wikipedia page for months.
Bravo to Nate for coming out publicly. It is people like him and straight people like Chris Kluwe, plus many others, who make the anti-gay nitwits look more ridiculous all the time.