And todays panic inducing sound bite is …..
I looks like Im going to get what I want for Christmas. I enjoy laughing at the total disconnect of people who scream about how we are living in an oppressive puritanical society. One small aspect of that hysteria is to always acuse the Attorney General of being a fundamentalist Christian prude. The new Attorney General Michael Mukasey has been in office for less than a month and its already looking to be the most entertaining panic attack yet.
You remember the panic that set in when John Ashcroft ordered that drapes be put up to cover a boob statue? The panic that swept over the alt-sex community was staggering and all consuming. Why sexual liberty as we know it is only minutes away. I even know a few folks personally who voted as they did in the 2004 election because they felt they absolutely HAD to get rid of John Ashcroft and voting Bush out was the only way to do it.
The trouble is that Ashcroft didn’t do it. The curtains were actually first put up by Dick Thornburgh under the Reagan administration. The Thornburgh archive at the University of Pittsburghhas a searchable database of photos that turns up pictures of him in the great hall both with the boob statue, and with the boob statue covered.
So if the curtains had been around for over 20 years before Ashcroft, why is it that Ashcroft gets the blame? Money. See, up until that point the curtians had always been rented. But someone on staff (Lani Miller? Monica Goodling? Whoever.) noticed that with all the money they were spending on renting drapes, it would actually be cheaper to just buy them outright. Just leave them up and no money is wasted on union labor to setup and tear down again and again.
Penny pinching is boring. Outrage that sexuality as we know it is about to be destroyed by an iron fisted prude just gets the masses in the alt-sex community more worked up. So there wasn’t ever much doubt as to what way the story would get spun. Besides, Ashcroft was a fundamentalist Christian so it fit nice with the story.
The curtains didn’t last long. After the election Ashcroft left the Justice department to follow a singing career and was replaced with Alberto Gonzales. One of the first things he did was to order the drapes removed. The alt-sex community cheered and welcomed him with open arms. Proclamations were spread through the land welcoming in a new dawn for sexual liberty and open mindedness.
Oh no, wait. That didn’t happen. Gonzales was claimed to be even worse than Ashcroft. Gonzales had barleyd moved in when he ruthlessly attacked sexual liberties by announcing that combating porn would be his ‘top priority’ Specifically, he was going after ‘bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior’.
Oh! Scary words! ‘Top priority’! ‘bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior’! He is talking about us kinksters! Its clear to see he means business. Anyone into kink in the slightest was sure to be rounded up and hauled off to reeducation camps.
Only trouble is he never said it. The quotes actualy came from a job posting seeing 8 people to join a new departnment. And it was probably writen by some human resources desk jocky and not by Gonzales himself. I have never been able to find a copy of that job posting, but I can just imagine how it would read.
New exciting career opportunity! Unlimited advancement! Join the FBI
field office in a brand new department. Start in on the ground floor
of what promises to be one of the top priorities of the Bureau. Dont
miss this opportunity. Call today.*Warning, applicants should be informed that they may be exposed to images of bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior.
It wasen’t a ‘porn squad’ that was forming. It was a childporn squad. Big difference. 27 people were charged in a bust in march 2006. Fairly clear indication that those 8 transfered agents were working on child porn cases and not going after people preforming kinky sex in the privacy of their own bedroom.
But ya cant get panic attacks rolling along in the alt sex community by talking about child porn busts. So instead the spin was that the child porn crackdown was just a cover story. Gonzales was actually cracking down on kinky porn and the child porn thing was just a cover story he was using to get the public behind him. Besides, Gonzales was a Roman Catholic and those guys are even more uptight about sex than fundamentalists.
So now here comes Michael Mukasey. You cant get a guy with a more single mined focus on terrorism. He spent the bulk of his career on it. But the guy has barely been in the office a month and buzz is already starting that this whole terrorism thing is a false front and his true passion is to destroy sexual liberty.
This time the out of context bit of information is ‘Mainstream Obscenity’. Why this is even worse than Gonzales. Gonzales was only going after the alternative sexual community. But Mukasey is wanting to target the mainstream. All americian publications like Playboy are now at risk. A larger group of people now than ever are at risk from the Attorney Generals obsession with stamping out not only sexual expression of minorities, but of sexual expression of the mainstream. Just google on ‘mainstream obscenity’ and you will come across hundreds of blogs in a total meltdown over what they suspect Mukasey has in store.
But this time the standard panic inducing line of calling him a Victorian mined Jesusfreak is going to be a little harder to pull off. Mukasey is Jewish.
I cant wait to see the show.