larry craig

So what is the difference between Larry Craig and David Vitter? Did Craig just forget to talk about Jesus enough? Is it actually, all of the Republican/libertarian protestations to the contrary, that the sex he's after is of the homo variety?

My fave piece on this is by Jonah Goldberg, Lucianne's boy, at the NATIONAL REVIEW. Jonah--of course, blaming the uproar on liberals (who else? who else has a problem with anonymous airport restroom sex? Puritans!)

According to Goldberg, "The Left claims to hate “moralizers.” So any failure to live like Jesus while telling others to follow his example is an outrage, even the defining challenge of our lives. (In 2005, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean pledged, “I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.”)"

Okay. Here's the beginning of the straw-man argument: THE LEFT CLAIMS TO HATE HYPOCRITES, AND SINGLES OUT THOSE WHO LOUDLY PROCLAIM CHRISTIAN 'FAMILY VALUES' WHILE ACTUALLY FAILING TO LIVE UP TO THOSE STANDARDS.

Then:

"One solution to the hypocrisy epidemic, of course, is to have no morals at all. You can’t violate your principles if you don’t have any. Another solution: simply define down your principles until they are conveniently consistent with your preferred lifestyle." Goldberg here conveniently, and appealingly, claims a lower standard of morality--he wants "a strict regimen" of sloth, booze, and red meat. Who wouldn't agree?

BUT:
"...the Left has another solution. Under its system, you can still be a moralizer. You can still tell people what to do and how to live. And, best of all, you can still fall short of your ideals personally while guiltlessly trying to use government to impose your moral vision on others. All you have to do is become a liberal moralizer.

Once you become a liberal, you can wax eloquent on the glories of the public schools while sending your kids to private school. You can wax prolix about the greedy rich while making a fortune on the side. You can even use the government to impose your values willy-nilly, from racial quotas and confiscatory tax rates to draconian environmental policies and sex-ed for grade-schoolers — all of which will paid for in part by people who disagree with you."

Ah, yes. Those several Hollywood and Upper West Side lefties whose Escalades and Harvard-Westlake associations should tar all the rest of the left-leaning folks across the nation obviate the silliness of us criticizing Larry Craig. Yes: sometimes, rich liberals call for policies that they don't actually pursue in their own lives. Sometimes, they get haircuts more expensive than most of us could spring for. This, apparently, means that they are just the same as a Senator--one of the hundred most influential legislators in the nation, one of the five hundred or so most powerful people in the country--who HELPS LEGISLATE AGAINST conduct that causes no harm to anyone, even while that particular Senator engages, happily, repeatedly, as a "lifestyle choice" (because he's not GAY, certainly not, he loves his wife, he just likes to have sex with men in public bathrooms). The two are utterly equivalent: morally and practically.

It's great to watch the Right squirm under this one, after Vitter and Foley and that preacher from Colorado, but I'm hoping this puts the final nail in the Christian self-righteousness card. By this point, is there anyone who's not going to see through the first Republican stuffed shirt to claim some kind of a Jesus-inspired purity?