A Stitch in Haste

The least professional of the "professional journalists," OpinionJournal's infant-at-large James Taranto, tries to spin the hypocrisy of certain radical social conservative theocrats as an indictment of his own personal ManBearPig, the "Angry Left" —

One ugly theme has emerged ... cross dresser ... They make Giuliani sound like Boy George. In fact, as we've noted, he's more Monty Python, having donned a dress on a couple of occasions purely for comic effect.

As Andrew Sullivan succinctly noted:

It's a good day when the gay-baiting, pro-torture James Taranto accuses me of being part of the "angry left" and a homophobe!

Indeed.


Of course, the idea that we-who-are-apparently-the-Angry-Left-merely-for-pointing-out-a-historical-fact are trying to convey by referring to Giuliani as a "cross-dresser" is not that we have a problem with cross-dressers. The idea is that radical social conservatives are hypocrites for not admitting that they have a problem with cross-dressers — a problem that they are apparently willing to overlook in order to rationalize their support (such as it is) for Giuliani.

Moreover, Giuliani's cross-dressing episodes (there have been several) are merely a convenient refraction, a pictorial distillation of all the other ways that Giuliani is (to the theocrats) hell-bound, but apparently now only by way of the White House. This one picture is worth a thousand inconsistencies: abortion, gay rights, gun control, twice ran for mayor as the Liberal Party nominee, etc.

We are not mocking Giuliani; we are mocking those who are not mocking Giuliani but who would mock anyone else who had Giuliani's record. These Evangelical "kingmakers," who insist that they "speak for the real America," (i.e., the Christian theocratic America) are betraying their spiritual principles for secular-political gain. They are selling their collective political soul to the devil (or devils). And we of the Angry-Not-Left have earned the privilege to call them out on it.

This is not a difficult concept — at least for anyone other than James Taranto.