Finally: I've found what Republican Officials are Good for!

I've always wondered what Republican elected officials were good for, aside from raiding the treasury. Now I know: they are prolific smut writers: (article courtesy of http://www.smirkingchimp.com)


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=23605&mode=nested&order=0
David Rossie: 'The purple prose of Scooter: What is it with Republicans and smut?
'Posted on Sunday, November 13 @ 08:41:59
David Rossie, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

What is it with Republicans and smut? What is it that prompts the self-proclaimed paragons of moral values to commit prose that is at once prurient and putrid?
Consider the GOP gallery of purple prose purveyors:
William Safire, Newt Gingrich, Lynne Cheney, G. Gordon Liddy, William Buckley and Kenneth Starr. And let's not forget Bill O'Reilly, whose unwanted phone sex messages to a female colleague cost him a bundle in an out-of-court settlement.
Some might argue that it is unfair to include Starr in that crowd, but not if they read the pious pornographer's report of his investigation of the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater and Just Plain Bill's sordid romp with Monica Lewinsky and sundry others. According to Lauren Collins, writing in The New Yorker, in 1998 the Starr Report was nominated for consideration in the bad fictional sex writing contest that Britain's Literary Review holds each year.

Republicans might argue that they are content to write about such carnal matters, while Democrats indulge in them. They might, that is, if they think we don't remember the adventures of Henry Hyde and Dan Burton, those two moralizing hypocrites who were among Clinton's most vociferous assailants.
Collins' piece in the Nov. 7 New Yorker contains examples of the aforementioned authors, with the exception of Gingrich, which is merciful. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, none of the excerpts can be repeated here, this being what we like to call a family newspaper.
Let me just say that if your teenage son or daughter wrote anything that raunchy and hackneyed in a term paper, you would be getting a note home from the English teacher, if not the school psychologist.
Having said that, let me add that in comparison to the latest entry in the field of GOP porn, the lot of them could qualify for jobs at Hallmark.
Meet I. Lewis Libby, aka Scooter, late right-hand man for Dick Voldemort Cheney, and now unemployed. Maybe. Libby, it turns out, was an experienced hand at producing fiction even before he came up against Patrick Fitzgerald.
In 1996, the Scooter produced a novel called The Apprentice. It is not about a young man learning to be an electrician. I can't really tell you what it is about, again, without running afoul of the family newspaper code.
Suffice to say there is a lot of what you might, for want of a better term, call animal husbandry involved. But not the kind they teach at your 4-H Club. At least I hope not.
Permissible (I hope) sample: "At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons." There are other hi jinks involving a deer.

Unfortunately, they don't appear to be good at it.

One thing I should point out though: note that those who have written smut (with the exception of Ken Starr, whose stuff might be able to be excused) are firmly in the pro-corporate America part of the Republican Party and not so much in the religious social conservative part. Yes, Bill Buckley talks about Christianity, but socially, he is more of a libertarian than a social conservative.

But I will make this pledge: blueollie will be smut-free (ok, we call "smut": "erotica" and I won't have that either). I might print an off-color Daily Kos rant from time to time; perhaps repeat a Dick Cheney comment, a post concerning middle-aged women "realigning themselves with their vaginas" and I might even have a rare "Page 3" photo of a bikini clad female professional beach volleyball player or a spandex or bun-hugger wearing female athlete. But that will be about it. Unless, of course, I can find a photo which causes political embarrassment to a Republican elected official or non-grass roots candidate.