Or worse

Remember Dov Hikind, who dressed up in blackface for a Purim gathering last week? As I said when I wrote about the incident, the man is famous for opening his mouth and saying terrible things in an ungainly way. He's upped the ante:

“I’m sorry people were offended,” Hikind said at a hastily arranged news conference outside his home. “In hindsight, I should have picked something else,” he said. “It never crossed my mind for a split second that I was doing something wrong.”

Hikind repeated the apology, bizarrely, in a radio interview on Monday night, even as he questioned some of the criticism as “knee-jerk.”

“If I was doing it all over again? I would look at, you know, additional alternatives,” he told Zev Brenner on WSNR, “because my real objective is — it’s not about being a black person or Indian, or maybe I would be a gay person . . . by the way, would that be okay, Zev? If I played a gay person next year?” 

Critics from all corners of the Democratic Party had slammed Hikind, accusing him of being insensitive, or worse.

It amazes me that this guy has been a public figure for decades. If he represented my community, I'd consider paying him to remain silent.

Amusing politics, starring Todd Akin

Remember Todd "I say stupid things about rape" Akin, the man who obliterated his campaign by revealing his sickening beliefs about women's bodies? So is Akin butting out of the race, as most Republicans want him to? Of course not. He's doubling-down because that's what they do.

Instead, Akin plans to ramp up his campaign. He's holding a fundraiser Monday with former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. He's addressing a potentially influential group of pastors Tuesday morning. Then as the drop-out clock ticks down, he's kicking off a statewide bus tour for his Senate bid that will include venerable conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.

I roared laughing when I read that. Had to share it.

Wide stance extended

You remember dear Larry Craig, don't you? The congressman whose story went like this: "I wasn't coming on to the guy in the next stall with my foot -- I just have a wide stance [when I poop]." Oy on so many levels. But today, he went a step further.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig aims to fend off a federal election lawsuit against him by arguing his infamous July 11, 2007, Minneapolis airport bathroom visit that ended in his sex-sting arrest was part of his official Senate business.

Could this man be more bizarre? Wait, there's more.

"Not only was the trip itself constitutionally required, but Senate rules sanction reimbursement for any cost relating to a senator's use of a bathroom while on official travel," wrote Andrew Herman, Craig's lawyer in Washington, D.C., in documents filed Thursday. 

The very fact that he would call attention to this again is beyond insanity. And it's such a pathetic notion: he was doing government "business" in the bathroom. There's so much fun with wording here. Just as "business" could refer to having a bowel movement, saying the "trip" was "constitutionally required" could be read as "he really had to go". It's just stumblingly bad on every level.

As my header said: wide stance extended. The man should have flushed this episode down the toilet long ago. But apparently he likes being a bathroom joke. Good. He deserves the scorn. Closet cases are the lowest form of human being -- always have been and always will be. I'm cheered by his public shaming. Good old Larry!

Steve King (R): Deep Thinker

King is wrong about everything. Here is he on sexual orientation.

If colleagues never know an employee’s sexuality, there’s no opportunity to discriminate, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told Think Progress this week.

“If you don’t know anybody’s sexuality you can’t discriminate against them,” King said in a discussion about sexual orientation in the workplace. Private businesses need the freedom to operate, King said. “I would think that, unless somebody makes their sexuality public it’s nobody’s business. Neither is it our business to tell an employer who to hire,” he added.

So I guess this means all the straight folks will stop wearing their wedding bands to work, right, Steve? And they'll never mention dating, marriage plans, babies, spouses or family life while in the office. And no more office bridal showers. Nuh-uh.

If we admit we're gay, we're flaunting it. Yet straights douse themselves in straight memorabilia and wear it everywhere they go. So you're promising an end to all that, Steve? Way to go!

New meme

KOS today noted that:

Secessionist Rick Perry shows off his technology savvy by asking his supporters to follow him on Tweeter.

You just know this is going to become another liberal meme like "the Intertubes" and "moran".

Santorum for bathroom

He has to go.

In the brave spirit of Gore Vidal and Miss Myra Breckenridge, I suggest we start using the word "Santorum" for "bathroom". It sounds right, doesn't it? It's sort of sanitary-sounding and the Latin "orum" ending gives it the gravitas that a bathroom word needs. Admit it -- if you didn't know better, you might think lavatory and santorum were in the same class of words. I say we go for it.

As for the capitalization issue, I go both ways on this. I lean toward "santorum" because we don't capitalize bathroom or lavatory, but it might lose its connection to the fool from which it comes. What do you think? Will you switch to using this word in your own life? And chime in: lower case, right?

PS: For those who didn't read Vidal's book, he took the names of the Supreme Court justices who refused to protect the right to publish 'obscene' material, ruling that "community standards" should decide what was obscene -- and used those names for human body parts. Thus in "Myra Breckenridge" all men had a rhenquist between their legs and most hoped to pop it into an attractive woman's blackmun. It may sound silly but it worked -- it really, really worked. Gore won this battle big-time. Now, let's do it to Santorum!