Spreading Santorum

Folks, it's Braffy time again. So far, we've nominated two very special, very horrible people for the First Annual Worst Person Alive Award, presented in part by Crushed by Inertia, Pepsi, Taco Bell, Chevron and Deluxe Post-Production Services of Burbank, California. Let me tell you...this ceremony is going to be something else. Cedric the Entertainer's gonna be hosting, Rod Stewart and Insane Clown Posse are gonna rock out, and I've even got Debbie Allen working on an interpretive dance number. It's really gonna be a special night.

But you can't have a big, glitzy, possibly fictitious awards ceremony without nominees, right? So who's joining Antonio Esfandiari and Tana Goertz in the finals? You guessed it...Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Here's a photo of him laughing at a rabbi.



At first, I considered not permitting any politicians into the contest. I just assume they're all horrible people, particularly those on the right-wing side of the aisle, so why even bother highlighting their specific horribleness? I mean, I could go through the voting records of every person in the Senate right now, Democrat and Republican, and find something loathsome.

But Little Ricky Santorum takes it so much further than voting incorrectly on every major issue. He's possibly the most outspoken ignoramus in America. No one who knows less feels the need to pontificate publicly more than the Indistinguished Gentleman from Pennsylvania.

There's far, far, far too much idiocy in Santorum's background to deal with in this brief nomination column. Most people tell me my blog posts are too long anyway. So I'll just stick to a few key statements by Rick that lets you know where he's coming from.

First, let's deal with the headline of this post. I'll begin at the beginning, with Texas' ridiculous sodomy law. So, the Supreme Court was hearing the case of Lawrence v. Texas, which questioned the constitutionality of a law against the private, consensual practice of sodomy. (As has been noted by approximately 100 billion other blogs, the dictionary definition of sodomy includes a lot of activities that law-abiding straight people engage in regularly, like blowjobs and donkey-punching.)

And even though he's just a Senator, with no real say on the matter, Santorum felt the need to express his support for the Texas law banning private, consensual mouth-to-genital or mouth-to-anus contact.

Here's Santorum talking to the Associated Press back in 2003:

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.

Nice. Obviously, there's no difference between having consensual oral sex and having incestuous sex, or sex wtih a dog. Clearly. Also, isn't it weird that he has the "right to adultery" in there? Because it kind of undermines his point. I mean, adultery is legal still, right? You can't go to jail for cheating on your wife, unless she's pregnant and after you cheat on her, you kill her and dump her body and the body of her unborn child off your fishing boat in the middle of the night while pretending that she's been kidnapped.

But anyway...Here's where it goes from typical ignorant Senator crap to Braffy-nomination-worthy ranting:

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.

Even the AP reporter at this point kind of freaks out. I mean, this guy is a US Senator who has now equated two adult guys having sex to a guy having sex with an animal. Maybe he misunderstood their usage of the term "bear." I mean, what other explanation could there be? This guy isn't really going public with his case against blowjobs, is he?

Beyond that level of stupidity, the guy's argument just makes no rational sense at all. It doesn't stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. We allow infertile couples to marry. And couples who are too old to have children. We allow couples to marry and then have sex outside the marriage (unless swinging has suddenly become illegal and no one remembered to tell Sting). And if a young, fertile couple gets married and then decides not to have kids, we don't judge them harshly, as if they have done something wrong. And, of course, many gay couples whom we haven't allowed to legally marry already co-habitate and raise children.

In response to such lunacy, columnist and noted sodomite Dan Savage set up a website called Spreading Santorum, with the intent of creating an alternate definition for the word "santorum." Instead of simply being the name of a US Senator, it now also means "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

Okay, so Santorum is an anti-gay bigot who wants the government to be able to dictate appropriate boudoir behavior to each and every American. Look at him in that picture up there...The guy is a total nerd. You want him telling you how to fuck? He wants to uphold a law against wet, sloppy hummers!

But is he the worst person alive, you're probably asking...I mean, he's up against Antonio "Rocks and Rings" Esfandiari...that's some heavy competition, man.

Let me direct your attention to something a bit more recent. Say, this week. Santorum's presenting a bill to limit the capacity of the National Weather Service. He says that it's meant to streamline the Service to provide emergency information faster and more efficiently. But in reality, he's trying to get the governmental agency to stop moving in on the turf of a private company, AccuWeather Inc.

And the CEO of AccuWeather Inc. has just donated $2000 extra to Senator Rick this past week. Hmmm....that's weird. Some people might almost call it a coincidence.

"I don't think there's any coincidence between the two," Santorum said. "It's just that I happened to have a fundraiser in the town he was in."

Actually, Rick, you're arguing that there is a coincidence between the two. I happened to have a fundraiser in the same town as this guy who wanted to donate $2000 to me, but the two circumstances were unrelated. Coincidence! What Rick means is that there's no deeper meaning behind this action, and that it is only a coincidence. But Rick is...what's the word again...oh yeah, a liar!

Combined, Joel Myers and his brother, Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.

Yeah, nothing fishy there. He just pockets $11K from a company and then immediately (and I mean immediately!) turns around and rules against a public organization that does the exact same thing. Just remember what Rick says...it's not a coincidence.

I'll close with this delightful tidbit, courtesy of Daily Kos. Some quick background: On March 1, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) made a reference to Hitler in a speech about the nuclear option.

Here's Ricky Santorum's response to Sen. Byrd:

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., asked Byrd to retract his comments, stating they "lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate."

Okay, fair enough. Now here's a quote from Santorum just two weeks ago on the floor of the Senate discussing the Democratic Senators intent to fillibuster GWB's judicial nominations:

It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 "I'm in Paris. how dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine." This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster.

Why, it's almost like he took a strongly worded position publicly and then specifically violated that position, also publicly, less than 2 months later, when discussing the exact same issue. Now I'm not calling Santorum a hypocrite. Well, okay, I am...but the larger point here is that he's a total fucking moron. I mean, who would do something like that. It would be like me logging on to Crushed by Inertia tomorrow morning and writing a fluff piece about the greatness of Zach Braff, or about the amazing legacy George Bush will leave behind him in the White House, or about how poop jokes aren't funny. Your first thought wouldn't be, "Hey, Lons is kind of a hypocrite." It would be "What an ass!"

Or, in this case, perhaps, "Wow, this guy is just about the worst person alive."

Will it be Rick Santorum? Only time will tell. I can't help but notice that there hasn't been a single nomination yet from anyone other than myself, which I suppose is discouraging. But the Braffys (Braffies?) must go on! Look for more nominations in the coming days as we get ready for the big show!