Them Republican mens just wants to get jiggly . . . er, to have a good time. (Does this mean the '60s are over?)

UPDATE: READER TO THE RESCUE -- WE'VE
GOT THE RIGHT CLIP NOW!!! (SEE WAY BELOW)


No, this isn't the right clip from The Producers. We want the Lincoln Center fountain scene where Leo, after asking, "Where's my turn? Where's Leo Bloom's turn?," agrees to join Max in in what Max insists on calling Leo's "scheme" ("What scheme? I meant no scheme. I merely posed a little academic accounting theory. It was just a thought"), and the fountain gushes up. But I couldn't find that. This is the scene where Leo, while auditing Broadway-flop producer Max Bialystock's books, comes up with his "little academic accounting theory." While I can't agree with the poster that it's the "best scene of the whole movie," there's no doubt in my mind that it's as fine as any 8:29 that's ever been put on film.

by Ken

If you recall, we left South Carolina Gov. Mark "Cry for Me, Argentina" Sanford pouting (if not actually bawling) in his beer, whining to -- of all people -- the Moonie Times, which reported him "shaken by absence of GOP support." What could those Republicans be thinking?

True, the governor did acknowledge having taken his eye off the ball that one time, and also having had a "moral failing." But he seems to be over it now, and still "absolutely committed to the cause, to what God wanted me to do with my life." He was, in other words, back to his old gubernatorial self, ready to resume the crusade to force all Americans to be as moral as he is. Hiking the Appalachian Trail apparently has miraculous restorative powers.

I think the governor may be a memo or two from GOP Central behind, though. He seems to have heard about the hero's welcome that Sens. David "Diapers" Vitter and John Ensign got when they first returned to the Senate following their public embarrassments, and to have concluded from the contrary arm's-length reception for Larry Craig that you're OK as long as you're diddling members of a different sex. But as more and more humiliating and quite likely illegal information poured out regarding Senator Ensign's entanglement, not to mention the governor's own, plus the whole C Street clubhouse nightmare, the bar for What You Can Get Away With in the Way of a Sex Scandal with your "family-values conservative" supporters has risen.

When I'm not feeling giddy about the whiplash that those fire-and-brimstone right-wing Republican are experiencing as they watch one GOP sex offender after another whiz by, I'm feeling rage at the phony moral superiority those rank-and-file doodyheads are so proud of flaunting at us sinners -- a moral superiority that has no basis in reality, and apparently originates in the depraved minds of their power-hungry, money-grubbing wacko preachers. I can hardly imagine a torture heinous enough to punish them for their largely successful attempts to control the all-too-pliable minds of their worshippers for their own twisted purposes.

All of this is obvious, of course. But it leaves open the question: What's up with all those blow-dried Republican pols who thought they could get away with, well, what until recently they were getting away with? Aren't they answerable to the fire-and-brimstone preachers too?

On one level, the answer is simple: The lust for power is astonishingly often inseparable from the old-fashioned standard-issue kind of lust. A lot of guys -- and I think this does apply significantly more to guys than to gals -- drift into the political racket in expectation of, to put it crudely, a pussy payoff. For many others the free porking is more like a perk of power, a proof of their importance and confirmation of their manhood.

But that applies to regular pols. These pols were, or at least claimed to be, different. These were the prophets of Famly Valyews, the Masters of Morality who were going to drag a sin-besotted country back to God.

We know now that the wizards of C Street actually had this base covered. In their theology, these commanders of the legions for Christ were fulfilling their spiritual obligations by providing that leadership. In their personal behavior, apparently, no rules applied. After all, didn't Jesus say, "Boys will be boys"? They might even be better legionaires if they had a way of dispersing all those nasty hormones that drive men to distraction.

Seriously, though, people like Senator Ensign and Governor Sanford and the others, who probably still represent only the tip of the iceberg of right-wing sexual turpitude, have to have known that their constituents, the people they hornswoggled by perennially singing and dancing their "Famly Valyews" Polka, would never buy that crap. Just think of that image of poor Ensign actually being forced by his C Street confidants to write the letter breaking it off with his mistress, then being dragged to FedEx to dispatch it (if his Village elders thought Johnny Boy couldn't be trusted to mail the thing himself, well, they knew their boy), and then running to the nearest telephone he could find out of earshot of those spoilsports to tell his not-so-secret honey to pay no attention to any crazy letter she might get purporting to be from him.

WTF is that??? This is a man who thought he could run for president in 2012?

Here is where I'm afraid this post begins to go out of control, just as the conduct of the wingnut Lotharios did.

For some time now I have had an image forming in my head: that what we're seeing with all these "can't keep it in their pants" right-wingers is a delayed reaction to the '60s. I don't think I'm alone in hypothesizing that back then what really split the country apart politically was the suspicion those solid churchgoing folks on the Right had that all those goddamned young punks of the Left -- you know, radicals like JFK and the hippies and Bill Clinton -- were goddammit HAVIN' FUN (as Sarah Palin would say). For those who had the moral courage to rise above euphemism, the charge was that those lefites were HAVIN' SEX, THE FUCKIN' PREVERTS!!!

Now Republicans and conservatives must have had sex on occasion, if only to breed more people like them. But even they seemed to understand that if for some preverted reason you had to, you know, do the nasty, you damn well better not be havin' any FUN, 'cause God just hates that.

Makin' babies is one thing, 'cause after all we always need a new supply of little boys who grow up to beat up on their wimminfolk and chilluns and little girls who'll grow up to let theyselves and the chilluns get beat up on. Just don't you be havin' no fun while you make them babies, you hippie prevert! Only there they was, them lefties, havin' sex and flauntin' it! And the men didn't even marry the wimminfolk to, you know, beat up on them and the children just like in God's plan.

I mean, can you see Everett Dirksen or Charlie Halleck having sex? No, not together, silly! Just with some other living creature (preferably human, but don't be judgmental). How about Phil Gramm? Think of Al Franken doing his immortal Phil Gramm impression:

"I . . . have . . . more . . . guns . . . than . . . I . . . need . . . but . . . less . . . guns . . . than . . . I . . . want.

And now imagine Phil 'n' Wendy soilin' the sheets. If that image doesn't make you want to poke your eyes out, they're probably safe for the duration.

Now you remember how the Republicans learned, oh back in the '70s and '80s I think it was, to produce blow-dried pols who didn't look like no Ev Dirksen or Charlie Halleck no more, but looked like them natty llbruls,or the guys you saw all over the country on the teevee doin' the news now, real purty, and the thought of them havin' sex didn't make you cringe, only it don't seem like they wuz . . . you know, havin' sex, on account of they had to have Famly Valyews. (Course lotta those guys were homosexers anyways, so they didn't hardly mind, since they could have sex if they wanted as long as nob ody talked about THAT disgustin' preversion.)

The thing is, Famly Valyews is important, of course, and it's all well and good, but the thing is, it don't get your willie waxed, if'n you know what I mean, except maybe the homosexers, and we can't talk about THAT! And somewhere along the line, the new race of blow-dries, it started to occur to them that boys just wanna have fun, and now we're back to the whole fun thing.

If you've seen The Producers -- the real one, that is, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder -- and Zero as Max Bialystock is trying to persuade Gene as the mousy accountant to lend his accounting genius to this scheme he's laid out where a producer could make more money with a flop than with a hit, and he takes Leo rowing in Central Park, and by the end of the day they're at Lincoln Center and Leo is sayin' stuff like "Where's my turn? Where's Leo Bloom's turn?" until he finally announces, "I'll do it!" and the fountain behind him gushes up, just like, you know, when you get your willie waxed real good.

Well, I'm thinking that all these blow-dried 21st-century Famly Valyews crew guys -- you know, your Ensign and Sanford and Craig and that former congressman from Louisiana, the one who was actually havin' fun in the C Street clubhouse -- they're the generation that was liberated by poor mousy Leo Bloom. Sure, they got their Famvalyews, that's good for talkin' about, but they know that a boy has got needs and they shouldn't have to wait for no stinkin' turn. It's ALWAYS their turn, 'cause that's the way God wants it.

UPDATE: THE RIGHT CLIP --
"Where's my share? Where's Leo Bloom's share?"

Our readers are the greatest! Thanks to David V. for finding this clip:



You know, the scene in its entirety seems to me even more eerily appropriate to the case of the Republican mens who just wants to have fun than I remembered! Thanks, David!

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