Family Values

Happy Monday everyone. I see that Becky attached a link to this blog on the e-invitations to Saturday’s party. I’d like to encourage you all to come out to Staten Island and spend a relaxing fall evening basking in the gentle harbor breezes which caress our humble island. We’ll have food and drink and if the weather abides we’ll be taking cocktails in the back yard as well as the house. The ride on the ferry is free and fun, and rides to the house can be arranged.

On to the daily rant! Rep. Mark Foley has entered alcohol rehab where he will attempt to recover from the compulsion of sending sexual e-mails to 16 year old pages. Wonder how he’s going to make amends to the Republican Party? As The Daily Kos reports today: “House Republican leaders stand accused of allowing a sexual predator to work directly with adolescent boys and girls and lead a committee on child Internet safety, while those same Republicans knew he was making lewd and unwelcome advances to teenage boys for years.” Family values, Republican style! I suppose one can draw a distinction between the conservative voters who will demand an investigation and the right wing sociopaths who will do everything in their power to forestall any inquiry until after the election. If these two factions set to fighting, who do you think will win?
Another interesting example of the religious right’s complete detachment with the modern world was brought to my attention this morning. The story originates in, where else, Texas. The New York Times reports that a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended. Kind of reminds me of Ashcroft covering the scales of justice statue, a more symbolic act than anyone knew at the time. Can’t we move all of these right-wing nuts off to their own compound or something? Let’s just give them Texas and some other interior states so they can start their little theocracies. According to a statistic quoted in Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation”, 45 percent of the American people believe that Jesus is going to come roaring down on a cloud in *the next 100 years*. Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of “permanent tax cuts”. I suppose that there hasn’t been any hope for rationalists and atheists in this society since Bush and his evangelical army took power. Although I confess I don’t really understand what the loonies find objectionable about nude statues. Are they afraid that someone is going to get turned on by a piece of marble in a museum? I really don’t get it.