That is the great 1990s phrase made famous on Seinfeld when all the major characters spent an episode denying that George and Jerry were Gay. "Not that there’s anything wrong with that" is the phrase missing from the White House’s outrage at CBS and Ben Domenech for claiming potential SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan was openly gay, or closeted, or something.

Here’s Howie Kurtz describing how the silliness started:

The White House ripped CBS News on Thursday for publishing an online column by a blogger who made assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court.

Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would "please" much of his base by picking the "first openly gay justice." An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.

And this is when someone from the White House needed to add "not that there’s anything wrong with that."

Here’s how New York Magazine described the White House contacts with CBS:

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt reached out to the network and said that Kagan was not gay, and asked for the post to be taken down. When CBS initially resisted, the White House upped the ante. Former White House communications guru Anita Dunn, who is consulting on the Supreme Court choice, said nastily, "The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010."

According to the Washington Post, LaBolt said he reached out to CBS because the blog post had "made false charges." Charges? Like they claimed Kagan committed a crime?

Well, if you "charge" that someone is openly gay and they are not, is that a "lie?" Perhaps. But someone from the White House needed to think twice before calling the statement that Elena Kagan was openly gay a "false charge." And the White House clearly neglected to add to the accusation of a "false charge" this:

"Not that there’s anything wrong with that."

See, it’s 2010, fully seventeen years since the Seinfeld episode first aired. The phrase is part of American culture now, and being gay is neither a ‘charge’ nor a ‘lie’ about which the White House needed to get upset. Or, if they were upset, or if Elena Kagan was, someone needed to leaven their upset by adding, "not that there’s anything wrong with that."

And this forced error by the White House has left them in a precarious position regarding the woman many presume to be Obama’s first choice for the Court:

This looks bad. As we pointed out earlier, the "There’s Something Gay About Elena Kagan" story line is going to be part of any nomination process involving her. The White House isn’t going to be able to stop the press from writing about it, so they shouldn’t try. They’re putting themselves in a bad position by giving this story line credit, and making their denials that she’s gay a story in itself. If Kagan isn’t gay, people will say she is anyway, but no one will be able to prove it. Republicans won’t have the guts to get up and call her gay in nominations hearings if it’s just a rumor. They’ll just go after her record and say she supports gay rights, which isn’t particularly worse than what they alleged about Sonia Sotomayor’s positions.

There’s very little more ludicrous than Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist — except possibly fellow GOP Judiciary Committee member Lindsay Graham asking Elena Kagan if she’s gay. It simply isn’t going to happen.

But now the White House has called the "charge" a "lie" and got CBS to withdraw the Ben Domenech blog post. You can bet the little kerning specialists and font-studiers and not-pimp-dressers who fancy themselves right-wing journalists are swarming over Cambridge, Massachusetts. If there’s gay in them there hills, someone will find it.

Domenech guaranteed that with his email before CBS withdrew his post from their site:

"I offer my sincere apologies to Ms. Kagan if she is offended at all by my repetition of a Harvard rumor in a speculative blog post," Domenech said. CBS initially added that statement to an editor’s note that also reported the White House denial.

In his e-mail, Domenech said that the naming of an openly gay justice would show "how far we’ve come as a society" and that this "will be an issue of political discussion, whether we like it or not."

And then what will the White House do?

It’s a little late to say "not that there’s anything wrong with that."

Isn’t it?

If she is gay, and a news outlet finds proof, the White House has basically disqualified her for the Supreme Court by making a lie part of her fundamental story (and by making it seem like being gay would somehow make her unfit for the role). The reason this is a rumor in the first place is that many members of the Harvard community who knew Kagan while she was the dean of the law school there really do believe Kagan to be gay, and to have a partner. Because of that, this story isn’t going away.

If the story isn’t going away, why did the White House blow it up into a major blog-event going into the weekend? Espcially if, as Glenn Greenwald discusses, progressive voices were already urged to pipe up this week to "dismiss" his own well-reasoned objections to Elena Kagan on civil libertarian and executive authority grounds.

This is not the kind of pushback sought for someone who isn’t a favorite on the short-list. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

LGBT Americans have every right to be concerned about the Obama White House’s response to the ‘charge’ that Elena Kagan is ‘openly gay.’ In 2010 America, that’s not a ‘charge.’ It’s neither immoral nor illegal nowadays to be openly gay. If the modification to Domenech’s post wasn’t satisfactory ("I have to correct my text here to say that Kagan is apparently still closeted — odd, because her female partner is rather well known in Harvard circles.") then it’s pretty clear we have a problem.

One of two fact patterns pertains: either Elena Kagan is gay, or she is not. If she is not, it is not a ‘charge’ to say she’s gay, but an error. If she is gay, but not openly gay, it is perhaps a ‘lie’ to say she’s openly gay, but then not a ‘lie’ to correct that statement to read that she is ‘apparently still closeted.’

Whichever fact pattern prevails in the case of Elena Kagan — either she’s gay or she’s not — someone at the White House needs to understand that in 2010 America (just like in 1993 Seinfeld NYC) this fact pattern always pertains: Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That.

Unless the Obama White House thinks otherwise?