Family Values (tf)
I don’t mind Republicans until they start talking. Then they get on my nerves. I hate these elections because we have to go through this “family values” nonsense all the time. We have to watch these people shamelessly play to the Goober Jesus vote by touting how squeaky clean they are, even though it’s well documented that just about all of them have the moral compass of the boll weevil.
The old adage is “you break it, you bought it”. So….if you’re gonna spout this gibberish, you gotta be prepared when your mistresses and page-boys start selling their stories to the rags. And let’s face it. What else is there to write about? Mitt Romney’s foreign policy? Rick Santorum’s proposed ban on rubbers?
American’s on the whole are pretty live-and-let-live sort of people. Aside from the Fox lunatic fringe (do not confuse volume with numbers), nobody really gives a fiddler’s fart what you do in your private life. But what irks is the sanctimonious blowharding from the pulpit, as if a detestable toad like Newt Gingrich has somehow earned the right to preach about the joys of husbands and wives and the missionary position….and the hellfire that awaits us if we don’t stop being perverts. This despite the fact that Newt is currently on wife number 3, having cheated on number 1 with number 2, and number 3 with number 2. He asked number 1 for a divorce while she was in the hospital with cancer…and then promptly married number 2….suggesting that their marriage remain “open”. This didn’t go over too well and led to number 3….who is apparently way more liberal….and 23 years younger than her man….which helps I suppose. She also has a disturbing look about her….a peroxided “blond” with bulging eyes that look like somebody is keeping them open with toothpicks. She totally creeps me out.
All of this concerns me not a whit. I’ve got more pressing things to worry about than the cornucopia of Newt’s squaws. However, I do recall that when Bill Clinton was President and made the mistake of being orally serviced by an ugly intern, it was Newt leading the charge to have the President impeached for not being “moral” enough for the oval office. Fair enough. Politics is hard ball and Clinton just grooved one right down the middle. If the roles were reversed things might have played out the same.
But there’s that glass house thing. And rocks. Politics is so distasteful mostly because politicians are so damn dumb. What Clinton did was stupid, but when Republicans reacted like the man invented the extra-marital blow-job, everybody’s eyes kinda rolled, and political assassins like James Carville gleefully sharpened their knives.
It wasn’t pretty. Soon prominent Republicans were being outed like clock-work….as Carville and his gang managed to paint them as the party of God-fearing sex maniacs. Eventually, Speaker of the House Newt was forced to resign. Nobody thought the guy had hubris enough to be seen anywhere near DC again.
For a while Newt busied himself writing un-intentionally hilarious “historical” novels about the Civil war, one of which contains a scene in which slaveholder Robert E. Lee is conveniently converted to the anti-slavery cause by a Baltimore rabbi. So there you go. It’s all peaches and cream really.
I guess it became clear that the legacy of Michael Shaara was safe…so Newt got back into politics, spewing his venom on Fox News, the only organization that could hire him and not have to worry about credibility. It kept Gingrich in the game at least, and he decided to pounce on a wounded Obama in 2012. Newt is lagging behind Romney now, although not because of any political differences. Both are to the right of Attila the Hun. But Newt keeps getting reminded of all them wives, and all that caterwauling in the 90s about Clinton’s lack of “values”. And he’s getting really pissed off…lately blaming CNN for having the unmitigated and unpatriotic gall to ask about any perception of hypocrisy in a recent debate.
And so it goes in the “family values” game. At least Romney doesn’t go on and on about it all the time, mostly I think because he doesn’t want to remind people that he’s a Mormon. He’s having a hard time convincing the Bubba’s that he’s not gonna send an army of teen missionaries down South to constantly interrupt supper. The last thing he wants to do is bring god into things. For Romney it’s all about reminding folks that because he’s way richer and better looking than we are, that means he’s way smarter too. And thus deserves to be President.
In this day and age, Romney’s clueless arrogance is almost praise-worthy.
–Tom Flannery
Riding Both Rails 