HOME
DV NEWS
SERVICE ARCHIVE SUBMISSIONS/CONTACT ABOUT DV
Meet
The Mullah Omar of Pennsylvania
Santorum:
That's Latin for Asshole
by
Jeffrey St. Clair
May
2, 2003
Rick
Santorum had only been in the senate for a few weeks when Bob Kerrey, then
Senator from Nebraska, pegged him. "Santorum, that's Latin for
asshole." It was probably the funniest line the grim Kerrey ever uttered
and it was on the mark, too.
Such
a stew of sleazy self-righteousness and audacious stupidity has not been seen
in the senate since the days of Steve Symms, the celebrated moron from Idaho.
In 1998, investigative reporter Ken Silverstein fingered Santorum as the
dumbest member of congress in
a story for The Progressive. Considering the competition, that's an
achievement of considerable distinction.
Even
Santorum's staff knows the senator is a vacuous boob prone to outrageous gaffs
and crude outbursts of unvarnished bigotry. For years, they kept him firmly
leashed, rarely permitting him to attend a press interview without a senior
staffer by his side. They learned the hard way. While in serving in the House,
Santorum was asked by a reporter to explain why his record on environmental
policy was so dreadful. Santorum replied by observing that the environment was
of little consequence in God's grand plan. "Nowhere in the Bible does it
say that America will be here 100 years from now." The reference was to
the Rapture, which apparently is impending.
Santorum
is the self-anointed prophet of family values on the Hill, who issues frequent
jeremiads on the threats Hollywood fare poses to the "fabric of American culture."
Of course, these sermons are hard to swallow from a man with Santorum's resume.
After all, before entering Congress Santorum worked as a lobbyist. His top
client? The World Wrestling Federation.
But
now the Republican leadership, apparently cruising along in self-destruct mode,
has elevated Santorum to the number three spot in the senate and his staff
can't run interference for him anymore. The results have been comically
predictable. Six months ago, Santorum penned an op-ed for a Christian paper
blaming the sexual molestation scandals in the Catholic Church on "the
culture of liberalism." Surely, an omen that the senator from Pennsylvania
wasn't quite ready for prime time.
So
it came to pass that on April 7, Santorum sat down for an interview with AP
reporter Lara Jordan. He should have been on his guard. After all, Jordan is
married to Jim Jordan, who oversees John Kerry's presidential campaign. Kerry's
wife, Teresa Heinz, despises Santorum. He inherited the senate seat left open
when her previous husband, John Heinz, perished in a plane crash.
"Santorum is critical of everything, indifferent to nuance, and incapable
of compromise," Heinz said. This should have been a warning signal to
Santorum that the interview with Jordan might be hostile terrain, but his
intellectual radar seems to function about as well as Baghdad's air defense
system. Post-war, that is.
After
a brisk discussion of the degeneracy of American culture, the interview turned
to the subject of the pending Supreme Court case on sodomy laws. Like most
religious zealots, Santorum is obsessed not just with homosexuals but with
visualizing the postures and physical mechanics of homosexual love. He seized
on her question with an enthusiasm many Republicans reserve for discussions of
the tax code.
"I
have no problem with homosexuality," Santorum pronounced. "I have a
problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would
consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And
that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing,
absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their
orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other
orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not
the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from
their actions."
In
the past, one of Santorum's staffers would have found some way to interrupt the
interview and deftly muzzle the senator. But he was flying solo and evidently
trying to impress Ms. Jordan with his encyclopedic knowledge of the work of
Krafft-Ebbing. Note the senator's excited and flirtatious tone.
AP:
OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would
argue that they should not have sex?
SANTORUM:
We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that
[have] sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would
argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if
the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your
home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you
have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to
anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it
does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't
exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was
created, it was created in Griswold - Griswold was the contraceptive case - and
abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it
out, the more you - this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You
say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of
our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy
families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all
of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.
"Every
society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond
between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that
society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children.
Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not
ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on
homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the
case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic
impact on the quality . . .”
At
this point, even the unnerved reporter tried to rein in Santorum. "I'm
sorry," Jordan interjected. "I didn't think I was going to talk about
'man on dog' with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out."
But
the man was on a roll and there was no stopping him. "And that's sort of
where we are in today's world, unfortunately," Santorum said. "The
idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and
passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there
are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they
desire. And we're seeing it in our society."
There
you have it. A case study in the politics of pathological homophobia. Despite
outcries from gay Republicans, Bush stood by Santorum in his hour of media
martyrdom: "The president believes the senator is an inclusive man,"
Ari Fleishcer informed the press. "And that's what he believes."
Santorum's pal Tom Delay, the pest exterminator-turned-Republican House
Majority Leader, was ebullient. He called Santorum's remarks
"courageous."
Trent
Lott must be snickering in the senate cloakroom.
Santorum,
the Mullah Omar of Pennsylvania, is a ridiculous spectacle but he can't be
taken lightly. He is the slick-haired darling of the neo-cons, an obedient
automaton that feverishly promotes their wildest fantasies without hesitation.
Undeterred
by the First Amendment, Santorum says he is planning to introduce legislation
that will limit criticism of Israel in colleges and universities that receive
federal money.
And
his passion for Israel is so profound that it obviates even his rancid homophobia.
When it comes to the Middle East, liberal Democrats race to co-sponsor
legislation with him. Most recently, Santorum and Barbara Boxer teamed up to
introduce the Syria Accountability Act, which would inflict trade sanctions on
Syria like those which gripped Iraq for 12 years, killing nearly one million
children. Talk about family values.
Sure,
Santorum is an asshole. But he's not one of a kind.
Jeffrey St.
Clair's new book, Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: The
Politics of Nature, will be published in September by Common Courage Press.
He is co-editor of CounterPunch with Alexander Cockburn, the nation’s finest
muckraking newsletter, where this article first appeared (www.counterpunch.org). He can be
contacted at stclair@counterpunch.org