Censorship, outing, powerful closeted gay Republicans, legal threats, CNN, YouTube and blogging — not your average night on Larry King Live. But on Nov. 9, political comedian Bill Maher took pretty much everyone by surprise, possibly even himself, when the name “Ken Mehlman” — the current chairman of the Republican National Committee — popped out of his mouth in response to a question about closeted gay members of the Bush administration.

After a discussion of the Mark Foley case, Maher told King, “A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party, are gay.”

King seemed only mildly curious at first and asked Maher to go on. Maher said that he didn't want to name any names, but that he'd do so on his own show on Friday night. At that point, King interrupted him and asked, “You will name them?”

Replied Maher, “Well, I wouldn't be the first. I'd get sued if I was the first. Ken Mehlman. OK, there's one I think people have talked about.”

King professed never to have heard that particular rumor, and Maher replied, “Maybe you don't go to the same bathhouse I do, Larry.”

King laughed, but then asked, “Why would someone who is gay take public anti-gay positions?”

Maher replied, “Because, Larry, hating yourself is the greatest love of all.”

Don't go to CNN to check that against the transcript, though, because the network edited those comments out. In fact, when the show repeated later that evening, the segment had been removed.

Meanwhile over on AMERICAblog, out gay blogger John Aravosis had already recorded the exchange and didn't waste any time uploading the clip, slightly over a minute in length, to his YouTube account — in the same way he and thousands of other bloggers have been uploading news clips from CNN for the Web's equivalent of eternity. Only this time, Aravosis got hit with a little note from YouTube alleging copyright infringement and telling him the clip had been removed.

Aravosis, a writer, political consultant and media commentator based in Washington, D.C., is no stranger to the realities of television news. He's done the spin thing himself on The O'Reilly Factor (FOX) and Hardball With Chris Matthews (MSNBC), and he has appeared on ABC News' World News Tonight, CNN, Court TV and more. He also has a law degree from Georgetown. He told us: “The clip is one minute and 20 seconds long. A minute 20 is a legitimate claim, but it's a bitchy claim.”

He continued: “Progressive bloggers have done an enormous amount to raise CNN's profile, particularly vis à vis Fox News. … I was going to edit it down to a 10-second clip — which is within the guidelines of fair use for news reporting — and re-post it, and post the entire clip on my own servers, but fortunately, it wasn't necessary.” After Aravosis announced on AMERICAblog that the clip had been removed, the Huffington Post immediately put up their own copy of the censored clip, as well as unedited copies of the transcript.

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