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But the Administration seems to be having a bit of
trouble finding both credible spokesmen and arguments
that can be made with a straight face. Of course,
to get this gig, it helps to have a Monty Python-level
facility with deadpan absurdity. (Hmm. John Cleese
does training videos aimed at the business world –
maybe Bush can get him, and call it the Dead Parrot
plan.)
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows
how dishonest the Administration’s basic argument
is. So the perfect spokesman for this bait and switch
will have to be both smart enough to dance around
the obvious, and so comfortable with cognitive dissonance
that the awareness of the manifest dishonesty of his
words will never show on his face.
The very definition of a modern politician, you say.
But we all have limits, and your average flack simply
isn’t capable of the level of dissociation the
task requires. The Democrats are armed with logic
and reason, which are meager weapons in this vacuous
age, but they may be enough when the target is so
popular and the attack so venal. So the President
needs a very special messenger this time. Fortunately
for him, it turns out that the party of Moral Values
has become the perfect Petri dish for the kind of
uber-compartmentalizer required for such a task.
Meet David Dreier.
As regular readers of Raw Story are well aware, Mr.
Dreier is the gay-bashing Congressman from a puritan
inland southern California district who also happens
to be gay. He has been outed by this site, by blogActive,
by LA Weekly, and even by Hustler.
He appears to have carried his partner on the government
payroll as his highly compensated chief of staff.
Yet he has steadfastly refused to acknowledge or respond
to being called the very thing he and his family values
buddies most revile. It seems to me that severing
the personal from the political like that must be
the ideal training for a position as spokesman for
Bush policymaking.
Dreier had been a highly public front man for the
far right for several years, but when Dreier’s
sexuality was in the news a few months before the
election, his profile was dramatically lowered. It
now appears his posting in Siberia has concluded,
and he is on the hustings for the President’s
privatization plan.
In the irony-free environment of “Late Edition”
on TV a few nights ago, Dreier appeared in split screen
with Congressman Charles Rangel of New York in a discussion
of Social Security. My own transcription
of the money quote from the gentleman from Rancho
Cucamonga on the benefits of privatization:
“African Americans are .. would be the greatest
beneficiaries of this as they would be able with
a shortened life span, they would be able to pass
this on to future generations….”
I’m not sure it is fair to castigate Dreier
for simply pointing out the ugly fact that life expectancy
for blacks
is lower than for whites. (It is absolutely fair
to tear him a new one for his role in perpetuating
policies that set that fact in stone, but let’s
leave that discussion for another time.) And encouraging
black folks to join the big dogs in gaming the system
seems pretty sporting of him, unless of course you
look past his current largesse to the big con the
Republicans are running while they offer to let working-class
blacks win a few hands of 3-card Monte.
But the thing that struck me was that Dreier was
not trotting out his biggest gun. As godhead Ronald
Reagan showed, references to the personal are incredibly
effective. Why not talk about how your party thinks
the policy will affect you, Congressman?
When the right rails against the “gay lifestyle,”
one of their shibboleths is the assertion that gay
men seldom
live past their 40s. So why not talk about all
that you, your apparent squeeze Brad Smith, and your
other gay friends would be gaining? The self-loathing
gay vote would be an easy pickup for the cause, right?
As a 52-year old gay member of the increasingly homophobic
Republican Party, Dreier could be seen as living on
borrowed time in more ways than one. But his path
to redemption might be close at hand. It turns out
there is place where the religious right just can’t
get enough of gays – that heartwarming gay minstrel
show, Will
& Grace. Mr. Dreier could be sure of a warm
reception from the heartland if he chose to come out
in a cameo in prime time. With a little luck, he might
even find himself rehabilitated enough to become the
gay Bojangles to President Bush’s Shirley Temple
as they team up to bury compassion once and for all.
John Steinberg bloviates regularly at www.bluememe.blogspot.com.
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