gaydirt -- new word?

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:51 PM -0700 10/1/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Sep 29, 2004, at 10:11 PM, Bill Mullins wrote:
>
>>  From _Philadelphia_ magazine, Oct 2004 issue, "Under the Gaydar:
>>Why the press didn't out James McGreevey" by Jason Fagone.
>>
>>Regarding the search for proof of rumors that McGreevey is gay:
>>" While running Christie Whitman's '97 campaign, Wilson had fielded
>>calls
>>from "great old venerable metropolitan institutions" whose reporters
>>were
>>looking to hit gaydirt. "
>>
>>I had heard gaydar before, but "gaydirt" is a new one on me.  Didn't
>>find it
>>anywhere else:  Google, Google Groups, Proquest, cursory search of
>>Lexis-Nexis, Wash Post, LA Times, SF Chron.
>
>"gaydirt" looks like a creative innovation to me.  "gaydar" (not in
>HDAS, but in Green as from the 1980s) has been around for some time;
>pretty much all lgb people who aren't socially isolated are familiar
>with the word (and the concept).
>
>arnold, who'll check his "gaydar" sources later, when he's where they
>are

We had a thread on "gaydar" some years ago.  I don't recall coming
across "(flying) under the gaydar" for someone not yet outed, though.
Pretty clever, I thought. And then there's the question of the name
of the author of the above piece, although as Gregory Ward points out
to me, it's probably not pronounced as in Bankone...

Larry