HAROLD FORD, MARK FOLEY, JIM KOLBE, TONY SNOW, MEHLMAN, HASTERT... WHAT A ZOO!

Earlier today I had something to say about Harold Ford's political opportunism and his willingness-- eagerness to shove gay men and women under the bus for the sake of his smarmy career. Not all my friends agree with me. Well, actually all my friends do agree with me; they just think progressives need to overlook it and get him elected so he helps form a Democratic majority in the Senate. I voiced my doubts and concerns about that strategy already. But I do want to bring up a Ford-related point from the always amusing Dan Savage (which I suspect was written before Ford was on Imus exposing his homophobia and protesting a bit too loudly):

Harold Ford should film a response to the GOP’s racist attack ad. He should look into the camera and say this:

The Republicans have accused me of being a heterosexual man. They're implying that I have an interest in women. It would seem that today's Republican Party is more comfortable with elected officials-- male elected officials-- who take an interest in teenage boys. Mark Foley is acceptable to Ken Mehlman's GOP. Heterosexual men, it seems, are not.

Is it gay baiting? Yes it is, but so fucking what? African Americans in the GOP turn a blind eye to the race-bating that their party indulges in. Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and Ken Blackwell haven't had much to say about this ad, huh? Because they don't care what their party says or does so long as it keeps 'em in power.

If a little gay-baiting helps the Dems seize power, shit, gay bait away, Harold. Make that ad, Harold, and this fag will send you a big, fat, fucking gay check.

Savage is a big Casey supporter too. What a Democratic Party member he is!

But speaking of the GOP's problem with closeted members molesting teenage boys, a week or two ago I mentioned that Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) had announced his little camping trip with underage male pages in order to get it out before it landed on him like a ton of bricks. The bricks have finally started to fall. (One wonders when they'll start falling on other closeted gay Republican hypocrites, like Hastert, McCrery and the senator from Kentucky... the one who didn't pass away.)

Hastert's gay House Clerk, Jeff Trandahl admitted under questioning-- though he didn't get the waterboarding treatment Cheney is so fond of-- that, like Foley, "Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) was one of a small number of 'problem members' of Congress who page program supervisors complained spent too much time socializing with pages, taking them to dinner or sporting events outside of official duties."

Kolbe, well-known in Tucson gay circles for his fondness for teenage boys of the "smooth" variety, refused to comment, only saying he is "cooperating fully with all the inquiries" (except, apparently, the ones from the press.

Trandahl didn't say whether or not Hastert covered up the Kolbe "problems" with the teenaged pages -- the way he did in the Foley case-- but the big shock in all this is how the mass media is cooperating with the GOP to never say that the gay Republican congressmen actually sucked and fucked these boys. They have done all they could to make it sound like-- in Tony Snow's words-- "just naughty e-mails." It wasn't just naughty e-mails. Boys have already said that they have had sex with Foley. Funny it never gets on the 6 o'clock news.