We Can Win the War on Hypocrisy

When I was in college, at Eastern Illinois University, in the early and mid eighties, my congressman was a guy named Dan Crane. I suspect that he managed to get elected because his brother was powerful Illinois congressman Phil Crane.

Though I hated Phil Crane's politics, at least he was a functional congressman for his district. Brother Dan, my congressman, was a dentist. And as a congressman, well, Dan was a pretty good dentist.

Dan got not one piece of legislation through in his three terms and six years in office. In fact he only proposed two pieces of legislation. One I can't remember, the other was a resolution against the practice of cockfighting in the Phillipines, a burning issue of the day.

Dan took a stand on a couple of issues. One, was family-- nuclear, straight families. Anything else was bad, bad, bad. And he hated higher education, although the University of Illinois, the biggest school in the state, and Eastern Illinois University were in his district. Dan loved to come to campus for forums and explain why he voted against student aide. If he put himself through college, well dammit, so could we. Never mind that the costs of college had begun their insane upward spiral by that point.

So when Dan got caught boinking one of his Congressional pages, a 17 year old girl, it was hard for us to have a lot of sympathy.

Dan put on a big show, with his kids, including a newborn, and his ugly wife, and blubbered for the camera, crying "I broke one of God's commandments!"

Dan was not re-elected. He lost to a Democrat who served for over a decade afterward.

My friend Hank's sister was a page down on the Hill, and she said that when Dan got a couple of cocktails in him, he would chase anything that moved.

My point? Well, guys like Dan Crane seem to love telling everybody else what they can do in their bedrooms, and with their wombs. Blogger Bilerico has a grand idea: if they're so concerned with our lives, let's get concerned with theirs. When they do something hypocritical, put it out on the Blogosphere. Read Bilerico for details.

Thanks to Shakespeare's Sister for this one.