Letters to the Editor
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the difference between liberals and conservatives
In a nutshell:
Conservatives compulsively take illegal drugs (Rush), gamble (Bennett), extort (the Dukester), shoot their friends (Dick), bend over for bucks (Jeff Gannon), divorce their hospitalized wives (Newt), defraud Native Americans (Jack Who?), launder money (Hammer DeLay), molest women (Ahnold), chase women through hotels in foreign countries (Bolton), make obscene phone sex calls to their female employees (O'Really), shop for expensive shoes (Condi), start wars (most of the above), plunder the treasury (most of the above), torture (Gonzalez), give no bid contracts to their friends, play guitar while New Orleans drowns, desecrate the environment, steal from Target, and sanctimoniously claim a unique hold on morality and virtue that makes them the arbiters of everyone else's private lives - and yes, they even demand the right to spy on you in your own home to make sure you are living up their code.
Liberals, on the other hand, compulsively believe that each person should take responsibility for their own actions, that government should exist to assist in that goal, that there is no national interest in crying over a little spilled semen between two consenting adults, and that the public morality of the governmental policy a person advocates is much more important to the public than their private moral choices to cheat on their spouses, shoot their friends, or steal from Target.
Also, liberals tend to compulsively refresh War Room. Go figure.
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small correction
Jim Hunt was the governor of North Carolina before running against Helms, not Virginia.
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Factual errors mar Goldberg's piece
A few quick corrections to Michelle Goldberg's piece on the disgraced Claude Allen:
1) Allen was not Jesse Helms' only African American aide. James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, AKA Ole Miss, also worked for Helms. I didn't understand why Meredith worked for Helms then; I still don't understand why now. But then, I don't get Clarence Thomas, either. Why not just let Antonin Scalia vote twice?
2) Jesse Helms was from North Carolina, not Virginia, and so it was North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., that Helms and his aides smeared in what was, in 1984, the most expensive (and possibly the most vicious) Senate campaign in U. S. history. Helms' mud machine tarred Hunt as a closeted homosexual -- a group Helms particularly despised. It was an underhanded, sub-rosa, political hack job that presaged George W. Bush's success in derailing John McCain's 2000 GOP bid in the South Carolina primary by having "unrelated" political affiliates spread rumors that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock.
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Copycat crime from GARDEN STATE?
This is kind of like the scene in GARDEN STATE where one of the characters does something similar: he takes an item off the shelf and up to the refund counter, tells the clerk that he lost the receipt and gets a "refund" for it. I don't think that would work in real life; he might just get a replacement and haul it away. Wonder if he got the idea from that?
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Jim Hunt's state
One small technical correction to this otherwise fine article: Jim Hunt was governor of North Carolina, not of Virginia.
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More cheap shots
I don't understand the message that Michelle Goldberg is leaving with us based on her piece on the chronic shoplifter, who also happened to be a White House advisor to Bush. Are we suppose to reconsider some of our family values because of this headline, courtesy of the left-wing dominated media? Next Christmas, I will remember to include condoms in my kids stockings. Am I suppose to now "feel the pain" of Bill Clinton because he got caught "boinking" the unpaid help in the White House?
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Dear rtf100
Thank you for telling us you were making cheap shots with your subject line. I hope you consider to be so considerate in the future. If you honestly can't tell what's wrong with the behavior of the administration in general or with someone who has a compulsive stealing problem telling people to resist temptation specifically, then I suggest you have bigger problems than what you're putting in your kids stockings.
Joan Opyr,
The piece said he was the First African American aid to Jesse Helms, not the Only one.
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What We Are Supposed to Do...
"Are we suppose to reconsider some of our family values because of this headline, courtesy of the left-wing dominated media?" asks a letter writer upthread.
No, we are supposed to at least have some degree of curiosity regarding those who would wish to impose their own "values" on others, while NOT feeling obligated to follow these values for themselves. Like irony, hypocrisy seems like a tough concept for rightwingers to grasp, even as they mouth pat phrases like "condoms in Xmas stockings" and reinforce myths about the "left" (today's left is to the right of Richard Nixon, and it certainly isn't dominating much of anybody these days)dominated media.
All during Allen's professional life, he has caused undue pain by imposing religious doctrine on government function. He has proven to be just another hypocrite who clearly illustrates what kind of cynical hypocrites the "family values" crowd truly are.
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Schadenfreude!
Yet another pious conservative moralist is exposed as a liar, thief and hypocrite. And a petty thief at that! (At least Duke Cunningham stole with style.) Perhaps Claude Allen took a cue from his boss and believed that he was above the law.
I'm not sure how shoplifting from Target can possibly be equated with putting condoms in your kids' Christmas stockings (WTF??), but that's conservative logic for you. Apparently the 10 Commandments don't apply to holier-than-thou Bush Administration flunkies.
Also, in case conservatives hadn't noticed, Clinton has been out of office for six years now. The statute of limitations has long expired for blaming him for the malfeasance and misconduct of the Bush Administration.
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What shoplifting has to do with teenage sex
One couldn't make this stuff up.
Claud Allen's lack of impulse control is the concrete manifestation of the fundie/conservative mindset. These people can't control themselves, and that terrifies and shames them. They simply assume--perhaps to make themselves feel better--that because THEY can't keep it in their pants, or stop viewing pornography/drinking/cheating on their spouses/whatever, that the REST OF US must not have any control either.
Look at so-called "covenant marriages." Why do you need a covenant? Marriage IS the covenant! What did you think it was, an opportunity to play "queen for a day" if you're a girl, or a chance for some socially-sanctioned nookie if you're a boy? (For me, personally, yoking myself to Mr. Trench for life was all about the cake.)
I'll bet that goes double for abortion, that long-reigning Depravity Du Jour. I mean, whatever you think about the morality of abortion, who in their right mind, really, would use abortion as a form of birth control? Can you just imagine what the number of repeated surgical assaults on a uterus they seem to be envisioning would do to it? And, at at least $400 a pop, it's kind of expensive. But, you know, pay the girl and her family enough money, and you can forget how your drunken fratboy son and heir fucked up. Wish that fetus away into the cornfield. Then make sure no one else can do the same.
And don't even get me started on the similarities to extreme fundamentalist Muslim attitudes toward women, who must be punished for simply being temptations and hidden from view. And apologies if I'm belaboring what appears to be an obvious point, but it needs to be repeated over and over again: We are being forced to give up our right to make adult decisions, judgments, and occasional mistakes simply because certain middle-aged men and women in positions of power have less moral intelligence and self-discipline than most six-year-olds.