latched

You know, people like Michelle Malkin seem to think that progressive writers like me who are reporting on the sordid gay porn past of CPAC's 2007 Hate Camp poster-boy Matt Sanchez are "gleefully" dragging this story out into the light, and you know, for me, that couldn't be further from the truth.  Last night on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann", I got name-checked by Max Blumenthal (Thanks, Max!) as someone who has been following the stories that keep emerging about highly-placed gay Republican operatives, but I can't say that these stories make me happy at all.

In fact, they kind of make me sick.  Seeing, as we do, the evidence that keeps piling up that there's some kind of poisonous network of closeted gays who are the real movers and shakers within the GOP, to me it's like writing about a group of recreational cannibals or people who kill household pets for kicks.  I can only theorize about the level of twisted self-loathing and emotional damage that would drive a gay person to willingly sign on with the party of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, Phelps, and Wildmon.  The mind reels.  Who are these people?

And yet, the doors keep getting blown off what I call Uncle Tom's Closet.  More and more gay GOP collaborators are being forced out into the glare of public scrutiny, although in most cases, Big Media seems more than willing to look the other way and ignore the soul-killing levels of hypocrisy at work in these people's lives.

Take for instance the story of Jeff Gannon.  The former rent-boy ("I don't leave marks, only lasting impressions," claimed his escort ad) from Military Escort M4M managed (somehow) to win himself a seat in the White House Press Corps. From there, he proceeded to lose no opportunity to launch laudatory, softball questions to Scott McClellan until John Aravosis of AmericaBlog exposed him as having not just no credentials, but a deeply sleazy past.  But Gannon's relationship with the White House was, in reality, much cozier than that.  Secret Service records indicate that Gannon was granted entry to the White House late at night on several occasions, and yet there has been absolutely no public discussion of why he was there or who he was visiting.

Somehow I don't think he was there to fix Laura's hair or help her organize her closet. 

Gannon was most recently sighted sitting in the audience at Tony Snow, David Gregory, and Richard Wolffe's WH Press Corps love-in at the National Press Club, lending enough irony to make your head explode to Snow, Gregory, and Wolffe's epic sanctimony as they patted themselves on the back said things like this:

Glenn Greenwald: Wolffe then proceeded to expound on Snow's attacks on bloggers by complaining that blogs are engaged in a "witch hunt" against the poor, besieged White House correspondents, which is terribly unfair because -- and, honestly, this is really an actual quote from Wolffe: "the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general." Wolffe then adopted his most sneering and patronizing tone to observe with bewilderment that there are actually these "blogs duly devoted to media criticisms, which is itself kind of interesting given all the things you could comment on."

Where does smuggling blazingly partisan former hustlers into the Press Corps fall under the "fantastic job" rubric, Mr. Wolffe?  I'm just curious.

And then, of course, there's the other collaborators, Matt Drudge, Andrew Sullivan, and the like.  There's the remaining questions around the gender of those prostitutes at Duke Cunningham's parties at the Watergate.  And the hits keep coming, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Charlie Crist.  I mean, what the hell?

And then we arrive at erstwhile porn star and man-whore Matt Sanchez.  In an effort to show how broad-minded they are, some conservatives are claiming that his past doesn't matter to them (since now he's saying exactly what they want), and Sanchez himself published a painfully narcissistic and self-serving column in Salon.  Guess what, gang?  Not only is it The Left's fault that his sex-for-pay past has come to light, he's not even gay anymore, just like Ted Haggard.  Clearly, Sanchez is at heart neither liberal nor conservative, but a shallow, craven opportunist who doesn't care what he has to say or do for attention as long as everything is All About Matt Sanchez.  This should cast considerable doubt on the veracity of his tale of harassment by Columbia University liberals, as well as his claim that he left porn because it was "too liberal". 

I know.  Huh?  Porn is liberal?  That's a news-flash to me.  In fact, I can't think of anything more conservative in its essence than pornography (except maybe prostitution), where people of both genders are objectified and reduced to one of two groups: the penetrated and the penetrators, with all of the status and control ceded to the latter.  It's a world where physical beauty is everything, dominance is paramount, and in the end, it all comes down to the money.  Only conservatives seem to have that certain knack for breaking everything down to how much it costs and how much you can make by exploiting it, up to and apparently including man-on-man buggery.

But in truth, it shouldn't surprise any of us that this simmering culture of homoerotic exploitation is there just below the surface of everything the Right Wing says and does.  As Glenn Greenwald pointed out when he correctly identified the Right as an Authoritarian Cult, conservative culture is all about domination and submission.  It's all about who has power over whom, whether we're talking about the US and Iraq, Scooter Libby throwing himself on his sword to save Cheney's neck, or high-ranking GOP operatives paying "tops" for hire like Gannon and Sanchez $250 an hour to come over and, uh, dominate them.

Which is partly why, I guess, the gay Republicans hate gay marriage.  It's like I said here back in June: 

And then, suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me.  These people like the lies, the façades, the illicit nature of The Love that Dare Not Speak its Naaaaaame.  They like their homosexuality to be all about sex and nothing more.  Furtive meetings and assignations, sex in public cruising areas, marriages of convenience.  The whole notion of changing diapers, balancing checkbooks, buying a house, keeping a family clothed, educated, and nourished?  Anathema to the Gay Republican.  Why would you want to tutor your child in spelling when you could be doing poppers in a bath house with some anonymous hustler or playing poker with a military escort (*cough*!) at the Watergate?

Gay Republicans want to party like it's 1959.  It reinforces their deep-seated feelings of self-disgust and unworthiness.  And that's just sad.

So, no, Miz Malkin, I am NOT gleeful or happy or pleased that your new pet Marine is a pansexual ex-whore.  It makes me sad.  Sad mostly for our side, that somehow our message isn't able to cut through the Right Wing brainwashing that makes gay Republicans think that when Ann Coulter hurls the word "faggot" as an epithet, that somehow that's okay, that it doesn't affect or apply to them.  They would rather embrace the Right's lifestyle of hate than be true to themselves.  Not only is that really sad, it's deeply sick, and thinking about it too long makes me feel kind of sick, myself.

ADDED: Media Matters has now posted the full list of papers who still carry Coulter.   ATTACK!!  ATTACK!!  ATTAAAAAAACK!!!  (Big thanks to everyone who has already written to their local papers about Coulter's "Macaca Moment" at CPAC.  It's working!!)