Rick Santorum didn’t like what I had to say about him—not what I said about Republicans generally, which I didn’t mean and immediately apologized for—on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron said something about wanting to hatefuck Michele Bachmann. To keep things from seeming all sexist and shit, I graciously offered to “whip up a little santorum in Santorum.” Rick’s feeling a little buttsore about that:
“[It’s] a liberal beating up on a conservative. And that’s okay. Whether it’s Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann, it’s the Left making fun of someone who believes in the values that built America. It believes in traditional marriage. How outrageous. How bigoted. How hateful that you actually believe that, that, you know, raising children and, and, and families with mothers and fathers is something to be encouraged. That you’re, that, that, just because you hold those opinions, you are subject to the worst form of, of, of, of vulgarity on the internet, on television, and everywhere else.”
Remember when Ann Coulter apologized for her liberal-bashing books Godless, Treason, and Demonic? Or when Jonah Goldberg apologized for Liberal Fascism? Or when Michele Bachmann apologized for suggesting that the media investigate liberal members of Congress for their anti-Americanism? Or when Rick Santorum apologized for comparing same-sex couples who want to marry to Islamist terrorists who want to kill Americans?
Yeah, me neither. More after the jump…
Conservatives beat up, impugn, and slam liberals all the time. And conservatives make their attacks personal because their policies are unpopular and they’ll always have an easier time running on “Who you’d wanna have a beer with?” So they beat up and brutalize their opponents. Because they’re bullies. And like all bullies, they react with shock and sputtering rage when someone they’re beating the shit out of has the nerve to swing back at ’em.
For the record: Rick Santorum is America’s leading anti-gay bully. He wants to reinstate DADT, ban gay people from adopting children, split up bi-bational gay couples—he wants to prevent a gay person from being at his partner’s bedside during a medical emergency, for Christ’s sake, because perversions like that somehow undermines straight marriage.
But while we’re on the subject of traditional families: I support families with mothers and fathers. Hell, I’m the product of one of those traditional families. (And I believe in raising children—those barbarians aren’t going to raise themselves.) I also support families with fathers and fathers, families with mothers and mothers, and families with just a mom or just a dad. Support for families isn’t a zero-sum game: support for gay families takes nothing away from straight families. Rick Santorum is the hateful douche who’s out there telling people that you can’t support one kind of family without taking a shit on all other kinds.
I’m glad that Dan himself sees the analogy between what he’s doing and what Ann Coulter does. How is this whole “Google santorum” thing supposed to win people over to “our side” again? It’s not having “the nerve to swing back at ’em,” it’s sinking to Coulter’s level, and playing right into the hands of the Right, embodying crass stereotypes and surrendering the moral “values” high-ground to them.
Dan almost single-handedly took a Nazi of a politician (Santorum) out of the game, probably for good. Coulter and Santorum encourage religious bigots to support legislation against their neighbors. Dan Savage encourages people who are victimized by those bigots not to kill themselves.
I don’t think it’s clear at all that he took him out of the game, single-handedly or not. The It Gets Better project is not part of the point I was making about Dan’s comportment. I wasn’t trying to attack everything he’s ever done, obviously. There’s still an analogy to be made between some of his statements and Coulter’s, even though they’re clearly not *the same*.
Ann Coulter: “John Edwards is a faggot. We should physically intimidate liberals.”
Dan Savage: “Rick Santorum is an anti-gay scumbag. We should mock conservatives.”
I’m on Dan’s side, so I don’t claim to be an impartial judge, but I think he’s sort of doing the same thing Santorum himself is: linking his political identity to his culture-war policy stances. Ann Coulter writes books that are basically pornography for conservatives. Dan is using vulgarity to make a point.
Apparently being so full of shit causes righties to have exceptionally thin skin.