Team Bush Can Call Scott McClellan Every Name In The Book-- Except One

Earlier today we were talking about the pre-Stonewall-- if not 19th Century-- reluctance of the corporate media to mention that someone is g-a-y. Charlie Crist is a "bachelor." Condoleeza Rice is "hard to get to know." Mark Foley is a fun-loving e-mail prankster. Lindsey Graham is a little "light in the loafers." David Dreier is a frequent flyer.

Today the press and the White House and the right wing echo chamber are all in a giant kerfuffle over Scott McClellan's "expose" about the Bush Regime. From Rush Limbaugh to the craziest of the right-wing propaganda bloggers, they're throwing everything they have at poor Scotty. Well... almost everything. He may be a traitor to the Empire but no one wants to call him a homo.

The "revelations" aren't all that revelatory.

In excerpts from the book, set to be published next week, Mr. McClellan writes that President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends. He calls the decision to invade Iraq a “serious strategic blunder,” and says that the biggest mistake the Bush White House made was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”

But Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, had harsh words for Mr. McClellan, calling the situation “sad” and suggesting that he mischaracterized his years in the West Wing to sell books.

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.”

Dana is the first to accuse him of having his brain eaten by the bodysnatchers, although watch Rove and Hannity and Townsend tearing him apart on TV today-- politics of destruction, a hallmark of Bushism:



All that hatred going poor Scotty's way, but no one is calling him a homo. Even if it's just about people who live in glass houses on Rove's part-- after all Scott knows exactly who male prostitute Guckert/Gannon was visiting in the White House on those long overnight stays. But most of the Republican professional smear artists on his case today aren't gay. Is it still the word that dare not speak its name to these crazy reactionaries. Is it really that terrible? In 2008? I think most people, especially people under 50, are moving towards acceptance of gays as just another part of the crazy quilt that makes up the country we owe so much to. Just today a poll shows that a majority of registered Californian voters oppose changing the constitution of the most populous U.S. state to bar gays from marrying. Even an old reactionary like McCain (on Hardball) said he approves of gay marriage-- "I think gay marriage should be allowed if there's a ceremony kind of thing if you want to call it that. I don't have any problem with that." (After an aide explained to him that they even have cable TV in the Bible Belt these days and that that kind of "straight talk" wouldn't go over well, so he tried to take it back.)