What
I admire about the Republican Party is their adeptness at "spin." They've got
the talent down to a science. I'm not saying I like it, just that I am always in
awe of those who excel. It's important to be really good at
something, and for the GOP, this seems to be
it.
When I heard that one reason being given for why the
House leadership covered up Mark Foley's penchant for young interns was that
they didn't want to appear to be homophobic or politically
incorrect, I almost choked on my anti-gay ballot
initiative.
Is this the same leadership that just months ago
wanted to amend the U.S. Constitution (I
always have to underline that) to ban gay marriage? The same leadership that has
made an art of using gays as a wedge issue in every election of recent memory?
Nah, nothing homophobic or politically incorrect about that.
The excuse is blatantly stupid -- and in fact, is another
way to get a dig in at gays, to make the gay community the fall guy. It's
damning in a circuitous sort of way. Brilliant.
The Mark
Foley scandal has absolutely nothing to do with gay rights. Nothing. At its
core, it's an issue having to do with child protection and inappropriate
behavior at work -- an HR issue, really. And a big fat cover-up. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with protecting Mark Foley as a way of respecting gays.
This is also a story about the closet, and covering. David
Link in the Boston Globe yesterday names the current dilemma "the revenge of don't ask, don't
tell," and draws a parallel between the GOP and the
Catholic church:
"If this has a familiar ring, look in the Catholic Church for the bell. Republican leadership was acting like the Catholic hierarchy, which played shell games with men accused of sexually abusing children. And there's a good reason for the similarity. The inability to deal straight forwardly with gay people leads to other kinds of truth-avoidance when things go south. But that's what comes from not wanting to know something, and going out of your way to remain ignorant.
We've come a long way since homosexuals had two basic options: the closet or jail. But a good portion of the electorate, most of them Republican, still seems to long for the good old days when we didn't have to think about 'those people.' Both Libertarians and, generally, the Democratic Party have withdrawn their official support for the closet over time. States, too, are seeing what a losing battle this is, and allowing homosexuals to live their lives in conformity with, rather than opposition to, the law.
But that leaves Republicans and the religious right trying to live a 1950s lie in the new millennium. As Foley prepared in 2003 to run for the Senate, newspapers in Florida and elsewhere published stories about his homosexuality. But you'd never hear any of his colleagues saying such a thing. And Foley himself refused to discuss the issue, until his lawyer acknowledged Wednesday that the former congressman is indeed gay."
The L.A. Times writes today about the secrecy of gay Republicans, and the lengths to which they and the people around them will go to walk that fine line between maintaining a public persona, partying at the gay bar on weekends, and the wink and nod that happens among all the people who know about it. Even their fellow Republicans.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't loving watching the Republican leaders, press secretaries and talking heads spin an increasingly damning web around themselves. It's downright theatrical.
Fox News, in typical scare-tactic overdramatization, says the GOP will lose as many as 50 HOUSE SEATS!!! because of Mark Foley (whom Fox spun as a Democrat). OMG! QUICK -- GET IN LINE NOW TO VOTE, GOPers!
On Nov. 8, when we see how many GOP seats have been lost -- and there will be some -- who will be to blame? Hastert? Reynolds? Foley himself?
No. The gays. But, shhhh ... That's a secret.
7 comments:
A little more objectivity and a little less hypocrisy in your future commentaries please.
If you show such utter intolerance toward people who don't think exactly like you, what makes you think that you're entitled to be tolerated by those who think differently than yourself. You project exactly what you seem to fear. Who you hate is a confession of who you are. Maybe the extreme right irks you so much, because you may be just as self-righteous and intolerant as they are.
mcemail, you chose to come to this site. it's HIS blog, full of HIS opionions, not necessarily objectivity.
How funny that mcemail would make this about tolerance of the right. That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Thanks for the laugh. When you can't address the facts just shoot the messenger. Good one mcemail.
Spin Masters????? The Admiral - General etc of SPIN IS/WAS Bill Clinton..... and he was a democrat. I can still see him pounding the lectern saying "I did NOT have sex with that woman." How soon we forget history when it is convenient for our cause.
Special thanks to mcemail and the aptly named dingaling for so perfectly demonstrating what gayesteditorever set out to describe. mcemail spins the OP-ED--shouted for the cheap seats--piece as an example of liberal hypocrisy that attacks the poor, defenseless and downtrodden GOP. Not to be outdone, mi6dingaling apparently takes the editorial as a How-To and follows the instructions to the letter, throwing Clinton into the limelight and dancing a little bait-and-switch sidestep to change the subject. Thanks again to both for the fine demonstration!
do we really need a seperate gay and lesbian news forum? does the news need to be filtered in a gay way? does it really change what has happened in the news?
foley is a deviant. what he did was wrong. how can homosexuals comdemn this and think homosexuality is ok? isn't this hypocritical?
Being gay is a psychologically learned behavior that develops from the ages of 3 to 10 years of age. It can be learned, and many people have changed...go see www.peoplecan change.com.
That being said, the unfortunate condition has nothing to do with being republican or democrat, it just seems that way because the right tries to preserve the traditional family and the left let's anything go. Crimes are crimes, and if someone believed that they can in fact become straight rather than remain gay, they would become straight in a heartbeat because our biological bodies are made to function in a straight way. The problem is that it is not in the interest of the persistent gay agenda to promote an attempt of change by means of therapy, because even a single person changing from gay to straight will crumble their entire theory.
RMNY
Post a Comment