The Maverick Tribe

Hey blogosphere, what do you think?  Should I submit this little diddy below to the Onion?  (If you want a challenge while you read it, see if you can identify the true vs. made-up parts.) -- MT

BREAKING NEWS:  Virulently Anti-Gay Senator is Indeed Straight

In a discovery that sent shock waves though the heterosexual and homosexual communities alike, gay activist Mike Rogers claimed on his blog today that he has conclusive evidence that the routinely anti-gay Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) is in fact not gay.

"I still can't believe it myself, but there's no way this guy is gay," Rogers wrote in a statement posted to his website.  "I mean, I've interviewed just about every male escort in his home state of Oklahoma, and trolled every gay bar in Washington, D.C., and, amazingly, no one claims to have had sex with him.  Although, on a less surprising note, of the gay men I interviewed who have even heard of Senator Inhofe, two-thirds suggested that the senator go fuck himself, rather than another man, which is roughly in line with national polling."  Rogers also claims to have interviewed dozens of male congressional pages and D.C.-area interns and found nothing resembling homosexual inclinations of any kind.

What's more, police records and court documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that Inhofe often displays vigorously heterosexualurges.  In one police report, the three term senator is charged with disturbing the peace for reportedly having uncommonly loud sexual intercourse with one of his many mistresses in a Georgetown hotel.  In another circumstance showcasing Inhofe's robust heterosexual virility, a Fairfax, VA, strip club obtained a restraining order against him for an episode in which he behaved disorderly at the club and refused to leave until receiving a "hooter shooter" from each of the establishment's exotic dancers.

While rumors that Sen. Inhofe was not gay have been circling among Beltway insiders for months, they were not corroborated and made public until today.  The senator was not immediately available for comment, as he was "probably out bangin' some ho's", according to a staffer who answered the phone at his office.

Psychologists and political pundits have yet to develop an explanation for the novel phenomenon of a vocal gay rights opponent not being himself a raging queer.  "This is completely unprecedented," said Washington-area psychoanalyst Dr. Katherine Grunig.  "It seems like every other day we hear about some right wing douchebag having illicit homosexual relations, with Larry Craig being the latest example."  Craig, the senior senator from Idaho, was found Monday to have attempted to get his jollies off with a plainclothes cop at a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport restroom.  The revelation about Craig follows on the heels of similar disgraces experienced by a string of socially conservative figures all found to be crazy about wanton man-on-man sex.  Some examples:

• Reverend Ted Haggard:  founder of the evangelical New Life Church; frequently preaches that homosexuality is a sin; connoisseur of male escorts and speed.
• Marine reservist and conservative darling Matt Sanchez:  friends with Ann Coulter; former gay porn performer appearing in multiple films, including the legendary Touched by an Anal.
• Former House Representative Mark Foley of Florida:  helped enact the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act covering sexually explicit internet communications with minors; enjoys sexually explicit internet communications with minors.
• Former Spokane, WA, mayor Jim West:  consistent anti-gay champion; confirmed having romantic relationships with barely legal boys.
• Former House Representative Ed Schrock of Virginia:  co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment; likes hooking up through gay phone lines.

At least one aspect of the Inhofe story was unsurprising to Dr. Grunig.  "The fact that Sen. Inhofe is, if not homosexual, than an adulterous man-whore, fits the sociological profile of a preachy moralizer, so we can at least take solace in the empirical predictions holding up in that respect," Grunig explained.  "We call this the 'Vitter Effect'," named after the hooker-loving Louisiana Senator David Vitter.  (When asked why hypocrisy concerning adultery was not called the 'Gingrich Effect', the 'Hyde Effect', or the 'Swaggart Effect', Grunig said these terms had already been used to refer to other psychiatric disorders.)

Sen. Inhofe consistently comes out against the advancement of gay rights and is widely viewed as a homophobic jackass.  He has embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment enshrining in the Constitution the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a women.  Moreover, he has said he would not back the appointment an openly gay person to any government post, nor would he hire one on his staff.  During the Clinton administration, he compared James Hormel, Clinton's openly gay ambassador to Luxembourg, to former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

In June of last year, Inhofe trotted out a blown up photograph of his family to the Senate floor and declared, "My wife and I have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship."  This ostentatious display led most Americans to assume that all of Inhofe's progeny were either gay, prostitutes, or both.  However, now that the senator's potent predilection for the opposite sex has come to light, the possibility exists that one of his sons may turn out to be a lusty lady's man just like his father.

The return of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to the national scene (he just started a pro-Iraq War political group called Freedom's Watch) has gotten me all verklempt.  Honestly, President Bush should not have let this guy go - he was a true believer, not to mention a real pro.  Neither Scott McClellan's shaky, autistically repetitious shtick ("I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, Who's on first, What's on second...") nor Tony Snow's affable insincerity have ever held a candle to Ari's bullying command of the White House briefing room.  Whether evading, obfuscating, or just plain lying, Ari always did it with the utmost class.  Or as Slate.com put it, "Ari Fleischer's ability to repeat a lie even after it's been shown, repeatedly, to be false is what separates him from the amateurs."  His taking on the 5-foot, 83-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas set a new standard for political courage.  His helpful admonition that we Americans should "watch what [we] say, watch what [we] do" quite possibly defrayed thousands of dissenting voices that may have averted our important invasion of Iraq.

And, most recently, Ari's group Freedom's Watch manages to slake my yearning for those happy, innocent days of Early Bush, when it was still okay to just believe in things - for example, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq had something to do with September 11th.  Not to spoil the surprise, but the new Freedom's Watch ad brings back that hoary old conflation of Iraq with 9/11, which goes something like this: 

"We went into Iraq because...*WE INTERRUPT THIS SENTENCE WITH HORRIFIC IMAGES OF PLANES FLYING INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER*...and that, children, is why we invaded Iraq.  Any questions?"

Enjoy:

"Every time a life is lost, we all lose.  We all have made a sacrifice, some more than others."

- former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, when asked what sacrifices the president has asked Americans to make for the Iraq War (other than to go shopping).

"I don't have his name in front of me."

- Ari Fleischer, 3 minutes earlier, when asked to identify the double amputee Iraq veteran whom Mr. Fleischer features in an upcoming television ad advocating for his new pro-war organization Freedom's Watch.

The full blood-curdling interview can be found here.  And the soldier's name is John Kriesel.

Today I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.  One of my goals for the month of August was to do some volunteer work, and building a house seemed more rewarding than spooning out beef stew to the homeless.  Early this morning, I dragged myself out of bed and with apprehension made my way over to the constuction site, not knowing exactly what to expect.  (I have about as much experience with carpentry as Charles Bukowski had with sobriety.)

The site was in one of the many drab, foggy neighborhoods in San Francisco that most people never visit or even hear about.  Prosaic, square housing units crowd up against winding streets.  (These are, apparently, the scrappy and proud anti-Victorians.)  The occasional resident, usually Asian, ambles down the sidewalk.  Everywhere one looks, grey is the dominant color.

The houses already built by Habitat are, by contrast, cheerfully painted and architectually creative, if not particularly ornate.  They neither patronize nor condescend to the surrounding neighborhood.

The house we were working on was little more than a foundation.  The site was being supervised by a friendly lesbian named Erin (or Aaryn?  I don't know how lesbians spell it).  She looked tan and healthy, and born to wear a toolbelt.  The day pretty much went like this:

Erin/Aaryn:  Here's a shovel.  Dig this ditch.

Me:  Ok.

Erin/Aaryn:  Here's an industrial-size power drill.  Drill seventy holes in these 4-by-12's.

Me:  Ok.

Erin/Aaryn:  Here are some bags of cement mix.  Mix up some cement and pour it.

Me:  Ok.

And so on.  And I don't know what else I can say about this day except that I loved it.  It was the perfect antidote to sitting in cubicle, sifting through emails, worrying about PowerPoint decks.  Digging and moving dirt around was good exercise and meditative to boot.  Drilling all those holes nurtured my perfectist urges, as with each one I strived to manuever the drill such that the hole was exactly straight and precisely centered in the right place.

At the end of the day, my hands were sore, but in a satisfying way, not in that pinched, tense way one's hand and wrist get sore by operating a mouse.  As I thanked Erin/Aaryn and walked back to my car, I absently passed my hand over the burn in the back of my neck which was bright red.  And I recognized a strange, parental attachment to the house.  I wanted to see how it was going to grow, and have my hand in its development.  And most of all, I didn't want any of those hack volunteers of tomorrow to mess it up.

I'm still fascinated by the search terms people are using to find this blog.  Here's this month's list:

rio de janeiro beaches
sao paulo architecture
brazil rio de janeiro night club
hippies naked
jackass hang glider
jungle mistresses
karl rove has a family
mavericktribe
nightli-
rio de janeiro bitches
ron paul
sao sebastiao sao paulo ilhabela
sex bar kara-
terminal sao sebastiao
naked hippies
nightlife ho chi min cit-

Again with the "rio de janeiro bitches".  And I'm slightly sheepish that some looking for "jackass hang glider" ended up finding me.  Lastly, what's the fascination with naked hippies?

Remember that girl you hated in high school?  She got A's in every class, always had her homework done on time, and seemed to be genuine friends with each of her teachers?  She was smartly dressed without being ostentatious, and would always be carrying a pen of each color, and a few pencils - just in case.  She knew to bring a protractor on the first day of geometry class.  She played sports, but not particularly well.  The marching band, the conservation corps, and class secretary were among her calculatingly diverse portfolio of extra-curricular activities.  She wasn't really a standout at anything, just a studied, solid, meticulous performer.  She was a nice girl, friendly in a way that seemed a bit forced.  And, of course, she was universally despised.  Everyone hated how she was always on time for class, how her hand was the first to shoot up when the teacher asked a question, how she never seemed to fail at anything.

As I've watched her Senate career over these last six years, I've realized that Hillary Clinton is that girl... and we Americans are her classmates.  She just wants us to like her.   Her careful incrementalism on policy, her meticulously managed public image, her bland centrism, her focus group tested sound bites, all add up to that insecure teenage girl who desperately wants to be accepted.  Alas, she is a tragic figure, for the harder she tries to impress us, the ever more perfectly palatable she tries to become, the more we resent her.  But sometimes jealousy lies at the core of resentment, and the main ingredient of jealousy is admiration.

I have a great deal more respect for that classmate of mine now than I did then.  And respect, for all my squeemishness about a Hillary Clinton presidency, is something I'm beginning to feel for her as well.

Since Barack Obama has to endure the infantile question regarding whether he is "black enough" for the African-American community to embrace him (a more enlightened question might go something like, "What is the significance of Obama's heritage existing outside the legacy of American slavery?"), the Huffington Post asks the reciprocal questions of the current Republican front-runner.

Here are the findings:

No
Pro-choice
Surname is over 50% vowel, including the last letter
Surname starts with sneaky spelling of Jew, cf. "Giu" York City
Brown eyes, tans easily

Yes
9/11
At least one of his kids hates him enough not to vote for him
First marriage was to a relative
Thin lips
First name: Rudy
Wife is a bitch

At this point, Rudy registers as white, by a hair.

Telling it like it is last night on Larry King Live:

How about a candidate who would lose the Iowa straw poll or the Iowa caucus by a record margin and wear that as a badge of honor and say, yes, that's right, I lost the biggest anybody ever lost in Iowa because I wouldn't pander to these farmers, because I'm going to tell you the straight poop, which is that ethanol is a scam to funnel more money to Archer Daniels Midland?

I always knew I should stay away from Nebraska.