Another Republican has been caught playing footsie in a bathroom stall. And he’s got such a perfect Republican name — Joey DiFatta — and such a perfect Republican look — pale and plump — that I hate to see him go.
There’s only one thing we can do. We have to make toe-tapping illegal. It’s obviously the root cause of a lot of vice and criminal activity.
I don’t even want to think about the horrible things Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire must have done. And Shirley Temple…!
“Pink Elephants on Parade” should be the official anthem of the Republican party for so very many reasons.
“Joe DiFatta is completely heterosexual, and Larry Craig is completely heterosexual, and Mark Foley is completely heterosexual. . .”
Yes…they just gotta DANCE.
Where’s his Old Glory lapel pin? I have a rogues’ gallery of those other guys and they’re all wearing flag pins. I tell you, that flag pin in the lapel is a dead giveaway. The camouflage of patriotism can’t hide corruption forever. DiFatta was really sly if he didn’t wear one.
[Link]
The Toe-Tappin’,
Stall-Slappin’,
Tally-Whackin’,
SOUND OF THE NEW G.O.P.!
Get Hep! That Stance is WIDE, Clyde!
Dustin wins this thread right out of the gate, I’d say.
Now when someone tells me they are republican or conservative my reply is “Oh! You must be gay. How nice.”
Yes, because Democrats NEVER do anything like this.
Oh, wait. That’s right. “That’s not the point,” right? “Republicans are the moral majority,” right? I completely agree. Seeing as the Democrats happily support things like the Fulsom Street Fair, I’ll be glad to have the rare instances of Republicans being caught in compromising situations.
Lots of repressed sexuality in the GOP? Why am I not surprised? The forbidden is always so tempting…
It’ll be a good day when gay GOP candidates no longer have to live a double life.
Alas, DSM, it would have been much better for America had the Republicans kept to bathroom stall dalliances while attempting to stem the “homosexual tide”. Unfortunately, they seem to have decided that fooling around with one person at a time is not enough – between their fiscal irresponsibility and their love-love relationship with fascistic control, they seem to prefer to screwing nations rather than just men and women (and, judging from Iraq, they can’t even keep to just screwing one country at a time).
The blog that the story came from on that page – “Down with Tyranny” – says that he was potentially facing a number of charges “including a possible attempted crime against nature.”
Now, what exactly does that mean? Sex outdoors, or in a public space? Sex with a tree?? It’s not referring to the gay sex itself, is it?
Yes, Hap, because these two Republicans are indicative of every single other Republican.
Logic isn’t a real strong point here, is it?
If, by that, you mean they never run national “family values” campaigns aimed at pushing “sanctity of marriage” amendments through congress while on a witch-hunt for “activist judges” while ignoring things like, I don’t know, Operation Enduring Failure in Iraq before going to the local airport for some hot gay bathroom sex because they can’t get picked up at the local disco on account of their being ugly as hell with the personality of a toad, then you’re right. The Democrats NEVER do anything like that.
And I do hate to burst your bubble (lying), but the Democrats aren’t exactly the orgy-promoting hedonists you make them out to be. They’re more content to sit on the fence babbling about civil unions than they are interested in actually making a change in the world, and so very many of them only throw the civil unions out as an appeasement tool when they throw their lot in behind a bill that would ban gay marriage. And even if they don’t, stopping the government from acting as Pastor in Chief is a far cry from throwing taxpayer money at the Folsom Street Fair.
Also, why do you know what that is?
Yes, Hap, because these two Republicans are indicative of every single other Republican.
Logic isn’t a real strong point here, is it?
You are evidently a USAian (else why would you care?) so you really haven’t any excuse for being so clueless. Republicans have made anti-gay rhetoric part of their political raison d’être. So whenever Republicans get caught with their hypocrisy down around their ankles, so to speak, it is legitimate to poke fun at them. You can’t shake the hand of the devil then say you were only kidding and you can’t make bigotry part of your strategy to gain power then complain when you get caught out.
LOLZ! – “I want to play with you!”
Well, DSM, the policy of the Republican Party hasn’t changed much since Reagan, and the gay self-hatred thing was a problem then as well (at least one article in Hitchens’ compilation of essays (1992 – can’t remember the name) discusses the covert gay subculture in the Republican Party, and their simultaneous revulsion of it and willingness to use it for their political benefit.) I didn’t accuse all Republicans of being secretly gay (your logic is showing as well), but they obviously have some problems with self-consistency – if you know that a chunk of your people are gay and yet continue to espouse hatred of them as a political tool (and accept their help, of course), then the Republicans would seem to have truly earned their hypocrisy.
As I said, I’d take the tiny minority of Republican who get caught doing this stuff any day over the Democrats who embrace or turn a blind eye to perversions like that Fulsom Street Fair.
Did you all see the Alabama Reverend with the scuba fetish?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1008072scuba1.html
DSM said:
So the hypocrisy doesn’t bother you so long as your party continues to hate on teh gays? Wow, you’re an immoral bastard.
Oh, please, DSM. I just checked the Folsom Street Fair website, and there are NO Democratic or electoral-politics-oriented organizations on their list of sponsors or beneficiaries. Believe me, the Democratic Party would be happiest if their gay constituents were all wearing khaki instead of leather.
Please understand: when we atheists and skeptics point out the latest Republican sex scandal, it is not the sex that we are objecting to. It is the HYPOCRISY. These people have the nerve to lecture us about sexual morality, and to make money and political points off the sexual repression of others, while they are all secretly getting their own jollies all they want! I think it is our moral duty to expose them as the craven liars they are.
I dunno, if you go around being a sanctimonious asshole about all subjects sexual and then solicit in a bathroom, I think it should a huge deal. I really do consider hypocrisy to be a very serious violation of intellectual honesty. One of my beefs with the modern GOP folk is that they seem (It could be all a lie, but is that any better?) to have no idea why it should be a big when you are caught doing something that you and your repressive party spends decades belittling as morals scolds.
Disclaimer: Not all GOP politicians fall into this category of hypocrisy, but they sure seem to go along to get along. I wouldn’t vote for a Republican for leap-day dog catcher until they get back to some sanity. Party of Lincoln. Roll that around in your brain for a while while considering the “Southern Strategy”, Macaca, gay-bashing, misogyny, pro-torture, anti-habeas corpus (Before some wing-nut squeals about Lincoln during the Civil War, go read the exceptions), Etc., Etc. Hard to imagine Lincoln as part of this party.
Hmm. Would that be a “Obviously there are not that many.” or a “Well, there is only one of them, so it doesn’t count.” argument. Either way its sidetracking the point, which is that, in general, where there is one, there are bound to be others. Democrats hardly pretend to hold some high ground with respect to “defending the nation against the gay!”, that some disagree with its is an acceptable stance, since they are **not** advocating the idea that its 100% wrong and that “their” party is going to somehow fix it. The Republicans on the other hand, while there are exceptions, are the self proclaimed “moral” party and have made it their mission to shove every sort of idiotic bit of moralistic drivel down our throats, which includes the idea that they *know* that gay people are bad and need to be stopped. Its not hypocrisy to hold a different of opinion, it **is** hypocrisy to claim that you are a member of the republican party “because” it hates gay people, and other so called moral offenses, while secretly “being” the thing they claim to hate so much. It shows a basic fundamental moral bankruptcy. A sort of, “Do what I say, not what I do, because only **I** am allowed to do those things.”, mentality. Then again, this is basically *exactly* what self proclaimed members of the moral high ground usually do. They tell everyone else, “You are not allowed to do that!”, yet there hasn’t been a single century in recorded history, in which they haven’t usually been the worst offenders.
Folsom Street. With an ‘o’. And it’s just so disgusting… you can’t bring yourself to look away. And whatever your fascination with leather-clad people is, it really doesn’t have any bearing on what we’re talking about. Whining that Democrats have no place to complain about Republican witch-hunts and hypocrisy because they aren’t trying to ban something that isn’t any of their business is a red herring if there ever was one.
Besides, The Start and Imperial Teen are both playing Folsom. That’s as good as an endorsement from God himself.
Oh, PZ (et al), did you see the brilliant ‘toe-tapping’ vid that Dan Savage put up? It’s here.
Jim D.
meh.. what you call a perversion, I call a reason to move to San Francisco. Tomatoes, tomatoes. For another example, where someone might call you a bigoted douchebag, I call you a bigoted wanker.
syn.
I’m thinking about starting a line of pornographic videos for repressed Republican congressmen. I expect to make a killing. I think I’ll give DSM a call and see if he wants to star in “Hung Young Interns 8”.
Intern: Sir, we can’t do this… your career will go down in flames.
Senator: That’s the only way I like to go down!
And he’s got such a perfect Republican name — Joey DiFatta…
DiFatta is certainly amusing, but I marvel at the new infantilization of the Republican male: “Joey,” “Jimmy,” etc. “Pale and plump” doesn’t begin to describe it: pasty and emasculated is more like it.
“Joey knows what the people want.” Blechhh! He isn’t sexy enough to be gay. Is it a coincidence that “intelligent design” rears its head in our era of increasing obesity and “total makeover” shows?
That toe-tapping certainly is symbolic, too. It’s like they know that life has passed them by while they were busy playing the hoity-toity goodie two-shoes and minding everyone else’s business.
So you hate gays and are a homophobe theocrat or thuglican. By now we all know what that means. You are a Focus on the Family guy by day, and a kinky pervert by night.
So DSM, what is your kink? Kiddies, animals, bathrooms, diapers, slabs of beef, cantaloupes, republican politicians. Or something we can’t even imagine. I suppose we will read about it in the paper someday, LOL.
DSM-
I guess my original point was that had the Republican Party stayed with what it claimed were its core competencies – smaller government and fiscal responsibility – it might have done better at the things it has tried to do. However, for the past twenty-five years, the Republican Party has been focusing on bigger government (particularly on military spending and subsidies to business, particularly big business) and moral probity while trying to claim that it’s really the Republican Party of old. As a result, they have managed to spend more that the Democrats (with no way to pay it off) while managing a brilliant Iraq campaign (sarcasm), demeaning the freedom they claimed so often to support (in enlarging the federal government, in overriding local government, and in diminishing the freedoms of its citizens while providing little real safety) and while diminishing the real power of the US. We are perceived as intolerant and self-centered around the world because of what we have done. Either the Republican Party doesn’t believe what it claimed to believe and instead wishes to be what it so long claimed to hate and fear (essentially, a fascist state), in which case, it has been lying to (many of) its voters, or it is incompetent in the extreme. I am assuming that you believe their position to be the former. I don’t exactly know what kind of moral probity with which that might be considered consistent, but whatever. You reap what you sow.
Kristine, you seem to be unaware of the “Bear” movement. Not everyone likes skinny. There are tons of chubby chasers out there for BBW(Big Beautiful Women) and big, ol’ bears.
What you’re saying is he isn’t thin or tan enough to be a “twink”. (By the way be careful what you say about bears, PZ would qualify as a straight bear as would filmmaker Kevin Smith)
Republicans claim the moral high ground, such as gay does not = moral. You can castigate Difatta for playing with fire – Cruising While Republican, but lay off the sanctimonious fat jokes.
Hello, what?
A Fair is a perversion? Last I heard, fairs of all sorts were simply peaceable assemblies of people, something fully protected by the constitution.
Are you trying to say that you consider human rights to be a perversion?
Do tell…..
I predict that if DSM stays around, when he gets really mad, he’ll threaten insertion of some item in someone’s fundament.
Zeno, it was his Morning Glory not his Old Glory that got him into trouble.
Ding dong, the troll is dead! See how fast they melt when you drown them w/ facts…
Also – Jsn, I didn’t see any sanctimonious fat jokes in Kristine’s post. Are you reading too far into it?
Another poor Republican
Who only wants to dance
Was captured in a public stall
With much too wide a stance.
I’m nervous now, and hesitant
To take my public shits–
It’s not the gays I’m frightened of,
But rather, hypocrites.
I hate to break it to you, but it’s actually becoming not so rare. These Republicans you worship, who commit these acts you despise are growing in numbers. Meanwhile, you have the audacity to condemn others for not sharing your infantile, bigotry and hatred.
Grow the fuck up DSM. It’s a big country, and no one’s going to be required to march in lockstep with your little army of self-righteousness. The second you start waving your banner of morality around, you become a hypocrite.
You condemn and despise the Democrats for allowing the Folsom Street Fair while openly welcoming those who actively seek gay sex in a mensroom. So, really, you’re condemning the Democrats for allowing something that, an aspect of which, these Republicans secretly endorse.
I don’t know what’s funnier:
1/ the story
2/ the snappy first five comments at the beginning of this thread; let alone the comments at crooks n liars
3/ thinking of how that bozo Ben Stein is going to spin *this* one
The funniest thing is picturing the reaching under the stall to rub the deputies ankle.
These guys are desperate AND hilarious.
They’re also HUGE hypocrits, as most elected conservatives seem to be.
we can only guess why DSM is so obsessed with the Folsom Street Fair
(i had to Google it, myself …)
Oh Man! I really gotta go. I mean I REALLY GOTTA GO!
But I’m afraid to go into the bathroom. There might be . . . Republicans in there!
Oh My.
[dances on one leg with knees held together]
Re: “Fulsom Street Fair”. Something of the nature of a freudian slip here?
So what DSM is objecting to is a street fair that is unpleasantly appealing to him. Or, at the very least, “oily”.
“How stupid of me not to have thought of this!”
— Thomas Henry Huxley out of context
I’m so stealing that.
“How stupid of me not to have thought of this!”
— Thomas Henry Huxley out of context
I’m so stealing that.
I see that DSM is purposefully leaving off the B from the front of his/her name. The B only shows in private.
Secondly, if DSM thinks Folsom is bad, s/he’s never been to Bourbon Street in New Orleans, LA during the last few days of the Mardi Gras season.
Google Laud Humphreys, who did the original comprehensive research on the tearoom trade. It is an interesting story and what he found about the toe-tappers may surprise you.
Ingrid: “when we atheists and skeptics point out the latest Republican sex scandal, it is not the sex that we are objecting to. It is the HYPOCRISY.”
No, it’s not just the hypocrisy. It’s the psychosis. Going around banging strangers in public bathroom stalls goes way beyond hypocrisy. This has about as much to do with sex as rape does. It’s about power, degradation, being dirty, nasty and evil.
This is a serious personality disorder, the kind of thing that at it’s most radical produces serial killers who are deacons at their local church, and a significant portion of the Nazi leadership.
These folks aren’t primarily “gay,” that’s just an expression of their authoritarian nature. With a bit different bent, they’d be wearing diapers, molesting kids, or making “up-skirts” videos. This is the same kind of dichotomy seen in much of the leadership of Nazi Germany and the FBI in their red-baiting days (Hoover, anyone? Or Ray Cohn?). This is like an anti-semitic Jew, or Ann Coulter.
These folks aren’t just a bit “bad”. They’re more like medieval Satanist clergy – positively mad.
Just look at DSM. He’d rather have a few people screwing in bathroom stalls willy-nilly than have to consciously deal with frank but appropriate adult sexuality.
It’s another S&M variant, like their politics, their families, and their religion. And they want to take the rest of us to hell with ’em.
Kristine, you seem to be unaware of the “Bear” movement.
Well now, no I’m not – are we talking about hirsute homosexual men? Because that’s what a bear is, honey. (I’m sure it’s in Wikipedia if you don’t believe me, but I don’t have to look it up.) Yes, you should be careful what you say about bears, because I don’t think PZ qualifies.
but lay off the sanctimonious fat jokes
When PZ does I will, honey. It’s amusing when people jump on a woman for saying the same thing than a man did previously. I call those particular complainers “cubs.” (My use of “honey” is also a joke. Ha ha.)
Fuzzies against Bush! That’s the skinny.
Sadly, the fools like DSM are the winners in stories like this. It is apparent that DSM is a homophobe and belives the all leftists are queer friendly. (He really should check out Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin gutting ENDA this past week. Can’t allow those weirdo trannies to get the same protection that gays and lesbians have been fighting for.) DSM has no problem with closet cases fighting for the repressions that DSM supports. Dam has no problems with hypocracy. It is easy for the likes of DSM to excuse this by saying that man is fallible.
Guess what,DSM does not really have to worry about it. Ted Haggart is disgraced. The church he founded still runs. Have they changed their prosition on homosexuality? Mark Foley gets caught. Drop him and pretend that he is a democrat. Larry Craig gets caught. Back away, let everyone laugh and sooner or later, he will be gone. He can be replaced once his term comes to an end. DSM does have to and will not rethink his beliefs. His not answering the questions to his assertions is the online version of him placing his hands over his ears and shouting, ‘I’m not listening!’ over and over. There may be a dozen more gay anti-gay warriors that are exposed but it will not change the likes of DSM.
The good news is there are people with more humane leanings out there.
When anyone can get into the Stall of Fame, it just isn’t going to mean anything any more.
The new official logo of the 2008 Gop convention:
http://blogs.courant.com/colin_mcenroe_to_wit/2007/10/this-is-your-el.html
Suggested variant:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/new-republican-party-convention-logo-30483.html
Republicans insist on keeping the populace under control lest they go and commit sexual sins.
Democrats insist on keeping the populace under control lest they go and commit social sins.
There you have the essential difference between the two parties.
Yeah, man. I totally feel ya. Those leftofascists are always ruining our fun. First it was “you can’t have slaves” then it was “you can’t lynch blacks”, then it was “you can’t lynch queers” now it’s “you can’t tell the queers who they can and can’t marry”. Somewhere in there they got all uppity with “women should vote” and “women should be able to go to college” and “women should be able to get jobs”. And that was just the social end of it. They also get up in arms with “you can’t spew PCB’s everywhere” and “you can’t club baby seals” and “people sometimes need to see doctors”. There’s just no end to it, is there?
So that’s the reason for their continued attempts at the expansion of executive power through deliberate lies and abuse of both executive and state secrets privileges! I’m glad you cracked that wide open for us.
That was some spectacularly stupid pontification, Alan.
incunabulum: “Did you all see the Alabama Reverend with the scuba fetish?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1008072scuba1.html”
Dang, he wasn’t just an Alabama Reverend, he apparently was also a former dean at Liberty Univesity. This guy was one kinky dude. (But I am curious, why did he put a condom on the dildo?)
“including a possible attempted crime against nature.”
Oh, did he kill off another endangered species or few?
Once again it is time for the B-52s lyrics to “My Own Private Idaho”.
“You’re living in your own Private Idaho.
You’re living in your own Private Idaho.
Keep off the patio,
keep off the path.
The lawn may be green
but you better not be seen
walkin’ through the gate that leads you down,
down to a pool fraught with danger
is a pool full of strangers.
You’re living in your own Private Idaho,
where do I go from here to a better state than this.
Well, don’t be blind to the big surprise
swimming round and round like the deadly hand
of a radium clock, at the bottom, of the pool.”
The “pool” is apparently a toilet for Republican legislators.
Dustin nails it again.
I see I’m late to the troll-watching party. Nice post, Janine, but you forgot that Larry Craig was very recently nominated for membership in the Idaho Hall of Fame.
The troll is DSM, who proves himself over and over to be a complete waste of time:
Emphasis mine.
I can enjoy the schadenfreude of hypocrits getting their cumupance with the best of you. However from this side of the pond I can’t help noticing that nobody has wondered why any of this is any sort of crime? So someone else finds you attractive and wants to let you know? quick call the cops!!! Are American men now so defective they can’t handle a come on from another guy without either beating him to death in a fit of homophobic panic or insisting he be arrested?
I am now too old apparently since I haven’t been approached by another man for a number of years now. Can’t be the wedding ring since I got chatted up in clothes store in Sidney, Australia once while happily married (pregnant wife and youngster were back home in NZ, I was conferencing, honest). But I would be just as flattered as when I get whistled at by women when out running (must be the shorts). Honest, it happens, and not all of them are being ironic!
Peter, I hear what you’re saying, and to a large degree I agree, but I think you’re missing something, here…
The incident in question wasn’t flirting. It was soliciting sex, in a manner known to precede immediate intercourse in an inappropriate spot.
I agree with you, expressions of interest are flattering. I would, however, say that expressions of intent are not so much.
I don’t fancy the idea of being propositioned for public sex, personally. I wouldn’t know how to react. Slapping someone in the face is soooo last century…
I agree with what you’re saying, I’m just making the observation that this incident doesn’t really come under the same heading as what you’re talking about.
Logic isn’t a real strong point here, is it?
There in your posts? No, not a bit, you right wing fuck.
However from this side of the pond I can’t help noticing that nobody has wondered why any of this is any sort of crime?
Cluelessness is bliss. It’s a crime because people like Craig and DiFatta make it one.
Slapping someone in the face is soooo last century…
It’s also battery, punishable by up to 6 months in prison in California, unless you slap your date or husband, in which case it’s a year.