When Hypocrisy Reigns

Let's rewind back to those late and unlamented days of the Clinton impeachment. One of the big voices in condemning The Big Dog for his sexual misadventures was a bright and upcoming star of the Religious Right, a guy named David Vitter, newly elected to congress from Louisiana.

Family-values Vitter was also a strong backer of the so-called Marriage Protection Ammendment, which would define marriage as a sanctified-by-god union between and a man and a woman. He also called for abstinence-only sex education and made various claims that it was a sin to have sex, either before or after marriage, with anyone except your legally and spiritually bound spouse.

Too bad he wasn't listening to his own counsel.

On Monday Vitter was outed as a client of the DC Madam. After all that, it turns out that Vitter was using the services of DC Madam Debra Jean Palfrey. While he was mouthing all those sanctimonious homilies about "sex is bad". He issued a prepared statement (strangely reminiscent of fellow-Louisianan Jimmy Swaggart's crocodile-tear-drenched "I have offended thee o lord" mea culpa) in which he admitted his "serious sin" and said that both god and his wife have forgiven him. (I guess god talks to him, too -- but remember the old saying, if you talk to god, it's praying; if god talks to you it's insanity)

But this is the wife, by the way, that said something to the effect that if her husband ever ran around on her, her reaction would be less Hillary Clinton and more Lorena Bobbitt. I wonder if Vitter has taken to wearing chainmail underwear and sleeping on his stomach these days.

Oh, and do I really need to add that Vitter is ... wait for it ... a Republican? And do I really need to add that back in 2004, when the rumors first surfaced that Vitter was potentially a client of a New Orleans "escort service", he denied it publicly, calling the allegation "absolutely and completely untrue"?

So what does the right wing do with all of this? They circle the wagons and deny that it's hypocrisy. I heard Tucker "I-am-an-idiot-and-I-play-one-on-tv" Carlson actually defend the guy on one of the talking head shows last night, trying to make what had to be the weakest possible case for Vitter not being a hypocrite.

Sorry, if you are preaching a stern morality for others while choosing not to follow it yourself, then that is the very definition of hypocrisy. But once again, the truth doesn't seem to matter to these fuckers.

Carlson even said, essentially, that it's inherent in situations where the husband is separated from the wife by being in Washington DC while she stays home to raise the kids and keep the house. "Men are just like that," Carlson said. "That's what men do." Essentially we're the victims here, enslaved by our testosterone or something like that.

I don't know if Carlson is married (and the constant sporting of bow-ties, at least up until sometime last year, would militate against it -- what woman would want to marry a guy who wears bow ties all the time?), but if he is, I'll bet the Little Woman is not going to be letting the fucker go out of town for any length of time. Like an hour.

Oh, and one more thing on Vitter: He's the head of the Southern Strategy for none other than Rudy "No-lips" Giuliani, who doesn't really seem to be a very good judge of character, what with the whole Bernie Kerik thing and Thomas Ravenel, his South Carolina coordinator, calling black people "retarded" and then getting busted for running a cocaine ring.

Poor Rudy. It hasn't been a good time for him. I almost feel sorry for him.

Not!