THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A SEX SCANDAL FOR
INSPIRING OVERBLOWN MORAL OUTRAGE

I do my best here at Real Art to completely ignore internet political gossip guy Matt Drudge in the vain hope that it might make him go away. No such luck, of course; I think we're definitely stuck with him for a while, which sucks because he drives me completely batty. It's not that he's conservative, which I can deal with, and besides, relative to other right-wing bloggers and radio hosts, he's not even really off the spectrum in terms of extremism. What gets me about Drudge is that he's a whiney and arrogant little shit who brings out whatever dregs of jock remain within me from years ago. That is, I'd love to beat the shit out of him, and I'm sure I could, even though I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade. The smarmy little fuck has it coming.

Anyway, I have to admit that, even though I've only been to his site once or twice, I do occasionally listen to his radio show, and his reaction to what the left is calling "Predatorgate," the scandal over the coverup of former Florida GOP Congressman Mark Foley's creepy sexual emails sent to underage male Congressional pages, again made me want to give him a swirly. The long and short of it all is that he's doing a complete reversal of his well known moral outrage over Clinton's trysts with Monica Lewinsky, and essentially blaming the boy pages for...what?...entrapping Foley, I guess. I mean, he didn't come right out and say it, but he gave listeners everything they needed to come to the conclusion. And by "listeners," I mean what I assume to be his usual moronic radio fans--he actually doesn't give any reason to blame the kids, but that's how he was structuring his argument, if you want to call such pseudo-intellectual tripe an "argument."

Crooks and Liars has some audio clips of Drudge's bullshit here. It's pretty amazing, especially when factoring in how he was so much a part of the feeding frenzy over Bill and Monica. Like I said, complete reversal.

On the other hand, which is just so typical of both sides in this country, nobody on the left side of the blogosphere is even mentioning the fact that, among all his squirrely spewing, Drudge raised a couple of good points, which makes me want to beat his sniveling ass all the more. Anyway, Mr. Internet Pussy observed that Foley never actually did anything short of sending out some creepy emails. He never touched any of these guys. He never even seriously solicited them. Republican Speaker of the House Hastert was probably right when he described the correspondence as "inappropriate," but, as far as I can tell, there was nothing illegal about it. Drudge even went a step further and declared that the age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16, so, even if Foley did hook up with any of these boys, he broke no law as long as it took place in Washington.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying what Foley did was somehow right or good or that he shouldn't have resigned his seat. What I am saying is that this is very quickly turning into a political witch hunt. Both liberals and conservatives are calling for investigations and want Foley, and anybody who hushed up his sexual utterances, behind bars. That's seriously fucked up. I feel pretty certain that when all the dust settles, nobody's going to jail at all because nobody broke any laws.

The real story here is Republican hypocricy, which is quite a big deal in and of itself. Foley was a gay elected official in an anti-gay party, who has voted multiple times for anti-gay bills, and whose very gay emails to teenaged boys were covered up by anti-gay party leaders in order to keep his seat "safe." In other words, the Republican Party isn't really anti-gay in any philosophical sense: bashing the queers is only something they do in order to get all those fundamentalist and homophobic votes--when push comes to shove, they really don't give a shit who's screwing who; all they care about is power. Do I need to connect the dots? Conservatism is a lie. Conservative leaders just don't care about conservative principles. It's all a facade to get votes.

That's pretty big news, and for the life of me, I just can't figure out why liberals are being so fucking stupid by jumping on the anti-sex hysteria wagon long ago created and still largely controlled by the forces of American Puritanism. Ultimately, it's counterproductive, not to mention anti-liberal. Why isn't the real story good enough?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$