"It's part of the game. If you're going to be a romantic idol and try to get every teenage girl to love you, then you'd be an ass to come out and say you're gay."—Joan Rivers 

In her Advocate interview—in which she says many, many positive things about gay people, some of them quite personal, including tidbits about the history of the Hollywood closet—is the above nugget of unhelpfulness.

It's unhelpful because it's not true. I can respect if someone wants to assess the situation in Hollywood and state, "If someone hopes to be a leading man or a teen idol, it would be very hard for him to be openly gay." That's cold, hard reality, free from politics; it would be hard.

But to say someone would have to be an ass to do it implies it's stupid and an unworthy thing to try. That is political, and that is the kind of talk used by managers and publicists to keep people in the closet. Tell it like it is, Joan, but don't tell it like it doesn't have to be.