Music for Boys

It's fascinating how the pompous, moral majority right-wingers in our country are so quick to blame liberals/Democrats for all our ills (see Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on gays, pagans, the ACLU, liberals, secularists, pro-choicers, etc.), especially in light of the Foley scandal, which of course, is the Democrats' fault (even though it is becoming quite clear that the GOP and House leadership have known about Congressman Foley's sexual harassment of/predatory behavior toward underage House pages for years and didn't do a damn thing about it). Let's see, the GOP controls the White House, both houses of Congress, and has purged our Federal agencies of people not loyal to Bush, but somehow the right wing Republicans are still the underdogs, fighting against the godless pagans who threaten their very existence by teaching the theory of evolution in schools (we're related to the damn dirty apes!), recognizing that the separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution, believing in global warming (c'mon, the environment isn't going to matter after WWIII/the Rapture -- the good people will be living in heaven, and the pagan zombies will be eating each other's brains on the burned-out remnants of Earth), and by the mere suggestion that imposing government regulation on businesses might be a good way to protect the well-being of the average Joe and Jane American.

Paul Krugman has an interesting take on the rampant conspiracy-theory paranoia that pervades the GOP and people living in the reality-challenged, parallel universe Red State America:

"Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," he said, "are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."

Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert's claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn't his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from."

Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust," say behind closed doors.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style in American politics."

I thought the right wingers were trying to keep their anti-Semitism in check, since Israel supposedly is playing its part in bringing about Armageddon. You'd think they'd try to shut-up in public at least until the Rapture, when Jesus will come back and slaughter all the Jews, pagans, non-believers, etc., and embrace all of the Christian evangelicals to his bosom as he swoops them up for eternal bliss in heaven (this ain't too far from the whole 77 virgins at your beck and call in Paradise that the Islamic fundamentalists are peddling to would-be suicide bombers, is it? Though the Muslim vision seems a bit more on the fun side of eternity...). Isn't God's plan really great? And, as usual, the Republicans use everyone else as a means to their own ends!

The New York Times reports today that "Evangelicals Blame Foley, Not Republican Party." Of course, since they see homosexuality as a sin (and many are convinced that gay men are pedophiles who "recruit" boys to this type of sexual orientation), it's quite easy for them to focus on this non-scandalous aspect of the scandal, that Mark Foley is gay. Though, for the life of me, why would any gay person be a member of the Republican party? The GOP hates gays (along with black people, Jewish people, people of color, liberal people, immigrant people, French people, Muslim people, etc.)

Foley's attempts at excusing his own inexcusable behavior -- his alcoholism, his alleged sexual abuse by a priest -- are outrageous. Shouldn't he be atoning for his sins and asking for forgiveness instead of playing the so-called blame game? WWJD, indeed!

Two of my favorite things to come out of Foleygate:

1) How do you separate the boys from the men? Mid-term elections!

2) Fox "News" identified GOP Congressman Foley as a Democrat several times during the Bill O'Reilly show! (And I'm paranoid enough to believe that they did this on purpose to trick their viewers into believing that this was another Democratic sex scandal a la Bubba-Monica.)

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"Music for Boys" is from The Suburbs' "Credit in Heaven" album.