Gannonother Thing...

As the Bulldogyssey continues, I thought I should bring up two things to keep in mind before we get too totally carried away with gaydenfreude and glee:

1) If the blogosphere or (snicker) mainstream media cannot breach the walls of deniability, this will remain a tawdry but minor scandal, a tempest in a teabag. Unless and until someone finds a financial and/or sexual (please let it be "and") link between James Garvin, Male Prostitute and someone big, the administration will successfully spin this as merely an embarrassing lapse of security, something along the lines of "Well, our buddy Eberle vouched for him so we thought he was okay," and those who want to believe in BushCo's pious Christian virtue will cheerfully continue to do so. We need something inescapable and unspinnable, like photos, videotapes, stains, or receipts, so please, for the love of all that is good and holy, keep digging.

2) Assuming that we do breach the walls of deniability, we must also remember that Bulldog is merely the narrow end of the bullhorn. The Democrats must do everything they can to use this to start spreading the message that for all their talk of family values, the Republicans are sleazy, immoral hypocrites. Monicagate was arguably the largest single contributor to the fall of the Democratic party, for even though the Republicans lost the impeachment battle, they won the electoral war by successfully using it to paint all Democrats as amoral, hedonistic sleazehounds.

And that image has stuck, even as we have run two of the most squeaky-clean, bolt-upright presidential candidates imaginable against a sneering, mean-spirited fratboy. It is not enough to be satisfied with smearing some Gannon dirt on Bush's shining armor, we must use it to paint the entire Republican elite (yes, elite - let's start using that word for what it really means) as something out of Eyes Wide Shut, a secretive, decadent cabal that preaches virtue and self-reliance, but practices vice and opportunistic, back-scratching greed. Hammer home that this is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a whole narrative of divorce, adultery, corporate malfeasance, class warfare, lies, dirty tricks, fraud, torture, and murder.

Also, when referring to this scandal, we need to keep the emphasis on "prostitute" rather than "gay". Prostitution is sleazy and illegal, homosexuality is not. And those who do think gayness is evil will not need any reminders, nor do those who cynically use this opportunity to accuse us of homophobia need any help.