The outing by the media actually preceded the self-outing, and came from an entirely different direction: it was a stupid (and later excused) indiscretion of the leader of the Berlin SPD's gay-lesbian wing towards gay-lesbian media, from which the Frankfurter Rundschau picked up the news and printed it one Saturday. However, that same article also claimed that the SPD suspected the CDU plans a negative campaign over Wowi's homosexuality.

Now the fun thing is that while the Springer media are the same jackals as in Dutschke's time (more recently, they used the beat-up in the Munich subway for some anti-Turkish-immigrants sedition), they made money out of Wowereit's coming-out by being sympathetic.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}