Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Now Malkin is furious at fellow Fox commentator Alan Colmes for daring to mention the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter.  The stalwart supporter of the impeachment and removal of office of William Jefferson Clinton for lying about an extra-marital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky finds it deplorable that Colmes or anyone else in the media would even mention the Palin daughter's pregnancy.

While the Republican delegates assembled in Minnesota, led by the evangelical right, seek to bury the incident while praising McCain for his selection of a good old right wing fundamentalist for the VP slot, they dodge the important question relating to this incident.

Nobody dodges quite so often or self-righteously as the moral hypocrites of the Republican right.  The issue that needs to be thoroughly digested is that Sarah Palin along with other Republican self-proclaimed moralists oppose any instruction whatsoever regarding sexual matters, including high school students that, according to numerous confirmed scientific studies, are at or near their peak of repeated sexual excitation.

This period occurs when they are not nearly as mature as these students will be when they pass from their teens into adulthood.  

Those individuals who have pointed out these important factors are scorned and ridiculed by those who proclaim that total abstinence is the only answer when the scientific record shows that, given a period of such acute overheat, sexual activities will and have commenced.

What would have happened had young Ms. Palin and her partner received sexual instruction?  What about the scores of other high school students or those even younger who are unknown to us and have encountered identical or similar situations?

The predecessors of the current Republican moralists scorned with bilious hatred in the twentieth century Margaret Sanger, founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation.  The smug self-righteous of that era considered Sanger one of the most heinous witches of the western world.

Those now telling us to stop talking or thinking about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter had President Clinton perpetually in their hunting sights, and what a telling metaphor that is considering that Palin was photographed standing pridefully behind a dead and bloodied caribou that she killed.  

She has been a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association.  Some of the NRA's most vocal members simultaneously shriek in opposition to any abortion rights as immoral while gunning down four-legged creatures such as deer as great sport.

On the subject of sport, how endearing it was to seek Clinton's removal from office for lying about an extra-marital affair on an affidavit in a civil law proceeding.  The hypocritical trio of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and Henry Hyde went after Clinton hammer and tong, knowing fully well the gross hypocrisy underlying their actions.

Then Speaker of the House Gingrich from Georgia had previously ended the marriage to his first wife by informing her of his torrid affair and that he was leaving her.  The news was delivered while she was recovering in the hospital from a cancer operation.  This same Gingrich later admitted that, at the very time he served as designated national moral guardian, he was cheating on his then current wife.

After Gingrich was removed from the Speakership by his own party, his successor, Congressman Bob Livingston from New Orleans, resigned in disgrace.  This occurred after Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine, sickened by Republican hypocrisy toward Clinton, outed the Speaker from Louisiana by publicizing his extra-marital affair.

Henry Hyde, who served the suburban Chicago district where young Hillary Rodham grew up on her way to becoming First Lady, presented himself as a symbol of moral rectitude who emphatically opposed abortion rights.  

The public ultimately learned that the doggedly self-righteous Hyde, inveterate supporter of Clinton impeachment proceedings, not only had engaged in an extra-marital affair.  Unlike the brief episode involving Clinton and Lewinsky, Hyde's affair was extended and heated enough to destroy the marriage of the woman involved and break up her family.

Then, pious Republicans engaging in sanctimonious Minnesota convention proceedings, three other examples surface as well, but certainly do not include all the sexual hypocrisy existing in your ranks.  

There was Senator David Vetter of Louisiana and his frequent use of call girls.  In a comparable vein there was Congressman Mark Foley of Florida and his persistent pursuit of congressional page boys.  

Then there was the incident of Senator Larry Craig of Idaho in the men's room at  Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.  How many of you family values Republican delegates thought about that as you were flying into that same airport for your latest sanctimonious convention exercise?

How many sanctimonious Republicans actually practice that Christian precept of "Let he who be without sin cast the first stone"?