Un poeta loco

MATT SANCHEZ, THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S NEW MARY MAGDALENE

It is no surprise that some within the religious Right have embraced former gay escort and porn actor Matt Sanchez.

The notion that Sanchez has seen the light and turned his back on the evils of homosexuality allows people like Kevin McCullough (left) to propagate the false notion that homosexuality is both a choice and a destructive lifestyle – not unlike alcoholism or drug abuse – that can be cured with prayer and a group hug. Let's face it, the ex-gay industry is a multi-million dollar enterprise for the religious Right. It allows people like James Dobson, Kevin McCullough and the rest of the modern-day Pharisees to live the lifestyle that Jesus actually did condemn.

Scandals like Ted Haggard and Matt Sanchez allow people like McCullough, who have bet their economic futures on combating homosexuality, to paint all homosexuals with the same broad brush: all homosexuals are engaged in a destructive lifestyle, just one step away from prostituting themselves and acting in dozens of gay porn videos like Sanchez.   

Like Ted Haggard, the only thing gay prostitutes and their clients have to do to be accepted (back) into the fold is blame their deception and destructive lifestyle on "diabolical liberals." God doesn’t care about the origin of the sin. Kevin McCullough, James Dobson, et al do. It doesn’t matter if men like Haggard sought out men like Sanchez to perpetrate their fraud. Nor does it matter that millions of gay men have never done anything even remotely as destructive as Haggard and Sanchez.    

Kevin McCullough doesn’t care if Sanchez was accepting money from closeted, probably God-fearing, married men or that he is still advertising for sex on gay websites in the present – as long as he blames liberals. In turn, Sanchez is more than happy to give people like McCullough what they want – just like he gave hundreds of pay-for-sex clients and video customers what they wanted.

Make no mistake, Sanchez is still prostituting himself. The only difference is Kevin McCullough is now his pimp.

THE FIRST CEO PRESIDENT DESERVES A PINK SLIP

For years, I’ve been trying to convince diehard Bush fans (the 30% that still think he’s the best thing since twist-off beer caps) that he’s the worst president in history.

For years, I’ve been banging my head against a closed door (that’s a metaphor for Bush’s supporters’ minds), hoping that the person on the other side would open the door (again, metaphor for mind) and realize that Bush has been truly a horrible president.

Silly me! As it turns out, I’ve been wrong all this time. Bush’s isn’t the worst president in our country's history, he’s merely the worst CEO – Ken Lay included.

In the interest of disclosure, I can’t take credit for the reclassification – or even the evaluation.

The credit belongs to Warren Hellman, founder and CEO of Hellman & Friedman, a private equity investment firm.

In addition to sitting on the boards of the NASDAQ Stock Market, Levi Strauss & Co. and the Sugar Bowl Corporation, Hellman consults with corporate boards on evaluation CEO performance.

You might say he helps boards decide when it’s time for a CEO to go bye-bye. According to Hellman, Bush’s time has come.

Hellman published his analysis in an article in Salon magazine.

In a nutshell, Hellman says, “If the United States were a company, if would be a troubled one. A disastrous war in Iraq; another war nearly won, now at risk in Afghanistan; massive budget deficits -- USA Inc. is beset by many crises.”

Fair enough. No one, except possibly Dick Cheney, believes things are going hunky-dory in the United States. The question, then, becomes, to what extent are the company’s, uh country’s problems Bush’s fault.

Hellman judges Bush’s performance based on six criteria, the same criteria he uses when advising boards on evaluating their CEOs’ performance: 1) fiscal responsibility, 2) strategic decisions, 3) execution of strategic decisions, 4) personnel choices, 5) research and development, and 6) adherence to the company’s charter and bylaws.

So how did Bush the CEO do? The short answer: “If Bush were the chief executive of a company, he would in all likelihood be given a good pension and quickly replaced.”

How’s $210 million? That’s what Home Depot paid former CEO Robert L. Nardelli forcing him to resign for failing to turn around the company’s poor stock performance.

I don’t know about you, but I’d pay $210 million dollars to get rid of Bush. Heck, I’d even pay $211 million.

In the first category, “fiscal responsibility,” Hellman criticizes Bush for squandering the surplus he inherited from his predecessor, record deficits, a “skyrocketing” debt service, and a growing trade deficit with China. More importantly, he accuses Bush of “hid[ing] the magnitude of the [company’s] losses.”

Isn’t that what Ken Lay was convicted of?

As for the second category, “strategic decisions,” he faults Bush for “minimize[ing] the importance of stabilizing Afghanistan, while at the same time choosing to invade Iraq,” adding, “Those choices turned out to be a perfect example of the adage ‘fire, aim, ready!’”

“Not only were those decisions based on faulty intelligence,” he writes, “but Bush also had no business plan for his new endeavor.”

In the third category, “execution of strategic decisions,” Hellman concludes, “Bush has left USA Inc. with no good options as to how to fix the [Iraq] problem. If USA Inc. were a corporation, an effective board would almost certainly not choose to ask the executive who got the company into such dangerous trouble to be the one extricate it; the board would find a new CEO.”

For number four, “personnel decisions” he writes, “Excellent chief executives make excellent personnel choices; they are willing to admit mistakes and replace the occasional bad personnel choice with alacrity. This has not been the case with our chief executive.”

"Instead," Hellman says, “Bush stuck too long with his mistakes, remaining stubbornly supportive of inept individuals from Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld…”

Number five: “Because of the strategic error of invading Iraq, our CEO now finds his company can't spend money on conducting basic research or rebuilding its physical infrastructure, plus it is drastically shortchanging its educational system.

In the final category, “adherence to the company’s charter and bylaws,” Hellman chastises Bush for “allow[ing] his ideology to subvert the charter and bylaws this country was built on, namely the Constitution.”

So what should the board of directors do?

“When a company is going in the wrong direction, the board of directors has the responsibility to do everything possible to change course and move forward with better direction. […] For the past six years, Congress has abandoned that role,” Hellman says, adding, “If [Congress] were a corporate board of directors, there might well be shareholder lawsuits over how it has neglected its oversight responsibilities.”

The $211 million is starting to look better by the minute.

WHY DOES GEORGE BUSH AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HATE THE TROOPS?

Every time I hear a Republican say anything about supporting the troops, I want to throw up. The Republican's treatment of troops during the first four years of Bush's war was negligent at best.

Not only did their failure of oversight lead to hundreds of deaths that could have been prevented if the Bush lapdogs had lifted one finger to provide adequate armor, thousands of others were critically wounded (many permanently) as a result of their refusal to give a shit. And now they are living, literally, in rat-infested quarters in what is supposed to be a rehabilitation hospital.

This situation was not created overnight. It was allowed to happen during the four years the Republican Congress was too busy kissing George Bush's ass to care about the troops.

It's easy to stand in front of television cameras and spout platitudes about patriotism and feign undying support for soldiers fighting their war, it's another to actually do something about their safety while refereeing a civil war, and taking care of them once they get home -- especially the critically wounded.

If you want to know what I'm talking about, read the Washington Post article here.

In the meantime, Lindsey Graham dares to question Democrats' patriotism and accuse them of undermining troop morale while his sorry ass has been bent over for George Bush for the last four years.

Does anyone else think that Leslie Jordan (featured left as Brother Boy from Sordid Lives) would be perfect to play Graham in a made-for-TV movie?

But what are 21,000 more soldiers?  In the end, it's a cost-benefit analysis:  billions of dollars in Iraqi oil versus a few thousand more lives. And if they're permanently disabled, just buy a few more rat-infested motels to dump 'em in.

What's George Bush's solution? Slash funds for veterans' health care over the next two years. Who cares if the number of wounded troops returning from his war in Iraq increases as funds to take care of them decreases!  That's money that could go to tax-cuts to the top 1% of Americans -- or to Exxon.

After all, in the Republican Party, it's enough to say you support the troops. No one expects you to mean it -- do they?  I didn't think so.

THANK GOD HE'S RETIRED

I just read retired Barstow Community College professor Richard Reeb’s opinion column entitled “Barstow High School needs to think twice about gay club," 

Ironically, the college's website boasts "an innovative learning environment that respects student diversity." 

Fortunately for Mr. Reeb, the homosexual agenda has not yet deprived Americans of their right to free speech – no matter how misguided. 

The privation of civil liberties, as we’ve seen in the last six years, is more of a Republican agenda than a homosexual one. Our agenda – yes, I’m gay – is not nearly as nefarious as Mr. Reeb would have you believe. Unless you can find harm in wanting children to have the right to live a life free of violence and harassment, to know that it is okay to accept who they are, and to realize that their sexuality is as much a part of their creation as their hair color.

I do not live in Barstow. I live in Dallas, Texas, a place where thousands of gay men and women move to escape small-town homophobia. I did, however, grow up in a small Oklahoma town.

There was no gay-straight or gay club in Sapulpa, Oklahoma in the 1970’s. Not only did I not know anyone gay, I didn’t even know the word. None of that stopped me from knowing my truth: I was gay.

No one molested me. No one lured into a secret lifestyle. I went to church. I sang in the choir. I listened to preachers condemn who I was.

Fortunately, my parents and my education instilled in me the intellect and the courage to accept one truth: God did not create me just to condemn me. According to people like Mr. Reeb, a person can alter his sexuality. That false premise is essential to their argument that homosexuality is unnatural – that what is unnatural is ungodly.

Indeed, a straight man could be made to have sex with another man, but that does not make him “gay.”  Some gay men have claimed to have been “cured” of homosexuality.  Regardless of what Ted Haggard would have us believe, it is not possible to be cured of homosexuality – in three weeks or three years.

In the end, changing sexualities is not unlike changing hair color: it eventually changes back to its natural state.

It is no surprise that Mr. Reeb uses the Bible as a means of defending his bigotry. Thousands  do. The biblical arguments are nothing new. Nor are they as absolute and definitive as Mr. Reeb would have you believe.

He uses the same arguments and warped interpretation of the Bible that religious bigots used to defend slavery, oppose granting Blacks equal rights, deny women the vote, oppose mixed-race marriages. Interestingly, this is the first time I’ve read an article written by a homophobe who has attempted to equate supporters of slavery with supporters of gay rights. It’s a novel, if not wholly specious, angle to an old argument.  

The bottom line is that the amount of violence and bigotry that “good Christians” have used to defend their un-Christian behavior is impressive in its frequency and abhorrence. 

While Leviticus 18:22 does refer to homosexual sex as an “abomination,” (Latin: abominatio from abominari or “to shun an ill omen”), St. Jerome uses a different word in Leviticus 20:13: nefas (Latin: “not lawful”). There is no explanation as to why he changes words. Both the Greek and the Hebrew are consistent.

The Hebrew word is toeyvah, which was used to refer to acts that were ritually unclean or impure. In Greek, it is rendered as bdelygma, which also refers to ritual impurity. Having sex with your wife while she is menstruating is considered toeyvah or bdlegyma.

I have no idea what Mr. Reeb’s views on that subject are. Far be it for me to ask him if he has been ritually impure. It would be inappropriate – not to mention none of my business – to ask. Yet he insists on making my sex life his business.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word zimah, which refers to acts that are considered immoral or evil, is not used to refer to homosexuality.  Murder was zimah, evil; homosexual sex was toeyvah, ritually impure.

I mention this with every expectation that Mr. Reeb will be totally unimpressed. I also mention it for those who, with an open mind, are willing to accept that the biblical position on homosexuality is not as open and shut as the King James Bible would have us believe.

In fact, the whole conversation is senseless. I am willing to accept that the ancient Hebrews viewed gay sex as ritually impure. There considered many acts impure. They also lacked the modern social and linguistic constructs that we have today. To discuss modern gay relationships in the context of a set of laws written 6000 years ago is beyond foolhardy.

It is one thing to accept that murder is as wrong today as it was 6000 years ago. Murder was then, and still is, zimah, evil. The notion of ritual impurity has no place in modern society – except, perhaps, among Orthodox Jews.

Fortunately, we don’t live by the Old Testament or Mosaic Law any longer – although many Christians wish that we did.  Some see them as essential to fulfilling end-time prophecy.  Others cling to them because they allow vengeance, bloodlust and righteous judgment – in short, man’s darkest and most un-Christian urges.

It is no surprise that Ted Haggard, the fallen evangelical mega-minister and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, condemned homosexuality at the top of his lungs week after week, sermon and sermon. It was what he hated most in himself.

I wouldn’t presume to speak for Mr. Reeb.

Why Rick Perry has a sMerck on his face

When Rick Perry told a reporter in June, 2005 that gay and lesbian veterans returning home from Iraq could move somewhere else if they didn't like the new constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, "amens" could be heard emanating from churches all across Texas.

When Perry - Governor Goodhair as the late Molly Ivins dubbed him - told a group of religious supporters last November that non-Christians (read: Muslims) were going to hell, his remarks were received with applause.

When the governor signed an executive order last week bypassing the state legislature and sidestepping public hearings requiring mandatory vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) for sixth-grade girls, the response from his conservative religious base was a collective "holy crap!"

To say that conservative Christians aren't happy would be an understatement. They are already making their displeasure known.

What isn't being said is as important as what is being said - on both sides of the debate.

"I am absolutely opposed that Merck and the state government are planning to inject young girls with a cancer-causing virus," said Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum, a conservative family-values group that endorsed Rick Perry in November. 

No mention of the thousands of lives that will be saved by the "cancer-causing virus."

"The HPV vaccine provides us with an incredible opportunity to effectively target and prevent cervical cancer," Perry said in a prepared statement.

No mention of the billions of dollars Merck stands to make as a result of his order, or that his former chief of staff now works for Merck as a lobbyist.

The official line from the religious right is that the vaccine will turn virginal daughters into modern Jezebels - the same twisted logic it uses for opposing the morning-after pill to avoid unplanned pregnancies and condoms for stopping the spread of HIV.

For conservative Christians, the issue is black and white. For Perry, it's green. For me, you might be surprised.

The Libertarian in me has a hard time accepting the government's role in mandating the vaccine (government intrusion, Big Brother, mad scientists, etc.).

The pragmatist in me understands the obvious benefits (saving lives, reducing cancer-related health-care costs, etc.).

The cynic in me sees the long reach of big pharmaceutical and wonders how it will next flex its economic muscle in other public policy issues.

The sadist in me simply wants to sit back and watch it all play out.

So far, Perry isn't flinching. And why should he? Like George Bush, Perry, who can't run for reelection, has no reason to continue to pander to the religious right. All the more reason why the religious right is pitching a good old-fashioned hissy fit.

It was bad enough that the fundamentalists' savior, George W. Bush, who promised to overturn Roe v. Wade and outlaw gay marriage, didn't mention even one of their issues in his recent State of the Union address.

Never mind the fact that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice-President Dick Cheney, referred to her out-of-heterosexual-wedlock pregnancy with lesbian partner Heather Poe as a "blessing from God."

To say nothing of the fact that Republican religious right darling Marilyn Musgrave, who narrowly won reelection in November, has decided not to reintroduce the federal marriage amendment again this term.

If there were ever a reason to hold a tent revival, Chautauqua Assembly or Justice Sunday teleconference, this is it. 

In one stroke of the pen, Perry realized the religious right's worst nightmare: godless heathens imposing their secret agenda to turn young girls into whores of Babylon. Except the godless heathens were supposed to be liberals - not fellow conservatives.

As for secret agendas, the only agenda is Merck's rush to make an inside deal with as many states as possible before GlaxoSmithKline's own HPV vaccine receives final approval. Governor Perry is no stranger to behind-the-scenes deals. 

Last August, it was revealed that Perry's former legislative director was working for the Spanish company Cintra, which won the rights to develop the $7 billion Trans-Texas Corridor.  Then there's the executive order Perry signed to fast-track permits that would allow TXU to build 11 coal-burning (read: pollution) power plants in Texas - the same day former TXU chairman Erle Nye donated $2000 to Perry's campaign. That donation was soon followed by $5,000 from a TXU political action committee, then another $25,000 from Nye.

While both the Cintra and TXU deals were public knowledge before the November election, Perry was able to beat his Democratic opponent by ten percentage points, thanks in large part to conservative Christian voters who were more than willing to ignore a few shady deals provided Perry was willing to spew sufficient anti-gay hate speech to guarantee the passage of the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. 

As usual, most people are unable - or unwilling - to see beyond their own interests. 

The issue isn't whether the HPV vaccine is beneficial to public health. It is. Nor is it whether the vaccine will lead to promiscuity. No reliable study suggests that it will. It isn't even whether Perry is dumping his base after he used them to get re-elected. He is. 

The issue is whether Texas voters are comfortable with a governor who has a record of using his public office and the state’s resources to enrich a handful of well connected people.

According to the word on the street, there's a movement to draft Perry as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008. If it's true, just remember: you get what someone else pays for.

SMU SINKS ITS REPUTATION ON A BUSH THINK TANK

Ozymandias of  Egypt 

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818 

To many people’s surprise, I have resisted commenting on the Bush library – in part because my opposition would come as a surprise to no one, in part because others have argued much more articulately than I could against the building of the library. 

And in part because as a non-tenured lecturer, my opinion matters about as much as that of the feral cats that live around the over-crowded, run-down building (Clements Hall) that houses Dedman Advising, Education, Honors, ESL, Foreign Languages, Math, Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies – have I left anyone out?

Not to mention lecturers serve at the pleasure of the president -- not unlike Donald Rumsfeld.

What is taking place on campus is window dressing disguised as debate, not unlike the Baker-Hamilton Commission, which the president treated like an ugly blind date whom his father foisted on him. 

That is not to say that there are not those – on both sides of this issue – who are not sincere in their opposition or support. But to call what is transpiring a debate is akin to calling the Bush presidency a democracy. 

While the faculty debates, the iceberg has torn open the hull of the ship. 

That said, do I think the Bush library will be good for SMU? In theory, yes. In principle, no. In theory, presidential libraries are good for universities. The only problem is we haven’t had a president for the last six years. We’ve had a dictator who would be king. 

Kings do not build libraries. They build monuments of narcissism to warehouse their egos -- like the (fallen) Colossus of Ramesses II, which Shelley so eloquently mocks in his sonnet Ozymandias of Egypt.  

As for think tanks – which seems like an oxymoron considering this president’s absence of thought – a war room seems more likely considering the neocons' penchant for waging war as a vehicle of foreign policy. 

Drs. Hopkins and Ippolito, chairmen respectively of the departments of History and Political Science, not surprisingly have weighed in on the controversy that has engulfed the University. 

Needless to say, the opinions of the chairmen whose departments will be “vitally engaged in the scholarship to emerge from the Bush Library” matter. It is unfortunate, however, that what began as an intellectual argument in favor of the library ended with a maudlin plea to sentimentalism. 

“We should be honored,” they write, “that SMU will have the opportunity to be a major documentary repository that will over time allow generations of scholars and their audiences to understand better the undeniably crucial years of the Bush presidency.” 

If this is the pre-construction rhetoric, I can only imagine the dedication ceremony. 

To argue in favor of the Bush library using reason in one thing, invoking “honor” as a rationale is another.  There is no honor in being chosen to host this library because there is no honor in the Bush presidency. 

In the end, when the Bush library is built, like a new Wal-Mart on the outskirts of a small town, people will come – but at what price? 

Drs. Hopkins and Ippolito allude to the “caveats and concerns,” associated with the library. The fact that his department is grooming students – even before the library is built – who think that liberal professors should be routed out should be a primary concern to Dr. Ippolito, not to mention a scary portent. 

There is no question that SMU will become more conservative when the library is built. An ideological shift will be inevitable as forces from above and below wreak havoc on the faculty landscape – not unlike the Bush administration has wrought havoc on the environment, foreign policy, civil liberties and the middle class and working poor.

The question is how far to the right (and white) on an ideological and homogeneity scale will the George Bush mega-mall push an already largely white and conservative student body. 

How long before the moral conscience of the Methodism is replaced by the moralizing intolerance of rightwing fundamentalism?

How long before SMU becomes GWBU?

If 70% of the American public, the Baker Hamilton Commission, and a majority of retired and active-duty generals were not enough to dissuade a contumacious frat boy-turned-president from escalating an already losing war in Iraq, the chances that a group of liberal academics, for which both students and their president have nothing but contempt, could influence the "decider" are as remote as Mitt Romney becoming president.

In the end, any discussion about the library is, well, academic. In the meantime, that sound you hear are the bulldozers roaring in the background. 

 

 

 

 

BEHIND THE SCENES AND UNDER THE CARPET AT SMU

Sometime on December 2, SMU sophomore Jacob (Jake) Stiles died from a drug overdose – a lethal cocktail consisting of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol.

His body was found in his room at the SAE fraternity house. The fraternity had celebrated its holiday party the night before.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate that is 100 times more potent than morphine. It's used to treat the excruciating pain associated with terminal cancer. One of its delivery systems is a berry-flavored lollipop. A street form of fentanyl is sometimes used to cut cocaine and heroine. 

Jake was a student of mine last spring. I can’t say I knew him. He attended class less than a month before dropping the class. The photos of Jake that I saw on Facebook don’t really square with the young man I remember. The Facebook Jake was animated and convivial. The Jake I (barely) knew was quiet and withdrawn. 

Most of Jake’s friends would probably say that the Facebook Jake was closer to the real guy. I wonder if the mirthful party animal who wore palm-tree sunglasses was just one side of a very complex person.   

Just hours after Jake’s tragic death, officials scurried to conduct damage control. A representative from his fraternity’s national headquarters labeled the death an “individual isolated incident.”

Few people know, with absolute certainty, what the circumstances were surrounding Jake’s overdose. But one thing is certain: there was nothing isolated or incidental about it.

It was not incidental that Jake was able to obtain an expensive, highly-controlled schedule 2 narcotic. 

It was not incidental that Jake was also using cocaine. 

It was not incidental that Jake, a minor, was consuming alcohol – whether at Ozona or in his fraternity house. 

Nothing about Jake’s life or death at SMU was incidental. If anything, Jake’s life and death were emblematic of the lives of (too) many students at this school. 

It would be naïve to say that Jake took drugs and drank alcohol simply because he liked to have a good time. No matter how convenient or tempting it is to dismiss Jake’s death as an “individual isolated incident,” no one mixes lethal doses of drugs and alcohol just to have a good time. 

There are a lot of (uncomfortable) questions that need to be asked. Not to do so is to relegate Jake’s death to a mere footnote to the fall semester. He deserves better. 

Where did Jake get the drugs? Surely he didn’t come to school with drugs packed between his toothpaste and iPod. Did he find a dealer after he got here? Did Jake buy a dime bag at Ozona? Or did he share a teener or an 8-ball with a friend or a fraternity brother? 

Was Jake the only SMU student doing drugs that Friday night? Was he the only SAE? I’d venture to say there were more than a few SMU students – Greeks and Independents – doing bumps and lines the night before finals – if not cocaine, Adderall. 

Jake belonged to a Facebook group called Adderall Enthusiasts. Was that a red flag that friends overlooked? Or is Adderall abuse no big deal? 

Adderall is the reincarnation of an appetite suppressant (amphetamine) that was developed in the 1920’s. It was re-approved in 1997 by the FDA to treat ADHD, attention-deficit- hyperactivity-disorder. It’s also one of the most abused drugs on college campuses today. According to a University of  Wisconsin study, one in five college students have abused Adderall. That translates to slightly more than 2200 SMU students. 

During the decade from 1987 to 1997, the diagnoses of ADHD in children increased almost 400 percent. There's little wonder why the manufacturers of Adderall were eager to have it re-approved for ADHD. That’s a chunk of change.

Adderall is also used to treat narcolepsy, ergo its appeal to college students: it allows them to stay awake for prolonged periods of time while studying.

Unfortunately, ADHD is too often (mis)diagnosed by family physicians who have little or no training in diagnosing spectrum disorders, much less prescribing psychotropic drugs like Adderall for their treatment.

That’s not to say that some people do not benefit from drugs like Adderall. The question is how many children have been misdiagnosed by overzealous, prescription-happy doctors. A better question might be, for how many students has Adderall been a gateway drug?   

The most common method of Adderall delivery among students is snorting. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t suspected some students had snorted something – Adderall? – after getting up during class to “go to the bathroom”

Who knows if Jake abused Adderall. Perhaps one of his fellow Adderall enthusiasts knows. 

It’s possible that many of Jake’s friends didn’t know he abused drugs. That’s not to say they didn’t know he used them. It would be interesting to know how many make a distinction. It’s also possible that some didn't feel empowered to do anything. 

Perhaps the administration will publish a protocol for students and faculty on how to handle suspected drug use.

Earlier I mentioned a red flag on Jake’s Facebook page. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. It can also be paranoid. Take for example this excerpt, listed under his favorite quotes, taken from the 1996 heroine-chic film Trainspotting:   

“Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. the [sic] reasons? There are no reasons."

Shortly following Jake’s death, the quote was erased. Apparently, someone didn’t like the impression it created. 

Perhaps I’m being paranoid. Perhaps someone wasn’t being paranoid enough. One thing’s for sure: the circumstances surrounding Jake’s death raise questions that need to be answered. 

Granted, we may never know all the whys surrounding Jake’s death. But it would be unfortunate if we ignored the opportunity to learn something from it. Then again, we could just sit around and wait for the next “individual isolated incident.” 

Rest in peace, Jake.

HELLO, CAMPBELL!

You will eventually ask yourself what the title, "Hello, Campbell!" has to do with this post. The answer is nothing. Campbell is my five-year-old best friend, the absolutely adorable son of my friends Tim and Eddie. He said hello to me recently via his dad. So I thought I'd say hello back.

Now about my post.  First, I have never heard Lawrence O'Donnell say anything I've either disagreed with or taken exception to.

In my mind, O'Donnell is a genius.

For those of you who don't know him by name, besides being a co-creator of West Wing, he is, in his own words, a "practical European socialist."

The week of the midterm elections, he correctly predicted, on The McLaughlin Group, the Democratic sweep of both the House and the Senate, correctly naming each seat Democrats would pick up in the Senate. The following week, he gloated unapologetically, much to the chagrin of the pudgy-fingered Republican mustard-shirted dandy Tony Blankley.

On Tuesday's Scarborough Country, while discussing Congressman Charlie Rangel's bill to reinstate the draft, he made mushmeat of effete Republican warmongers who get erections (that lead to nocturnal emisions), sending other people's children to fight in wars that they have no connection with.

Watch the masacre here.

He has a brilliant column posted on The Huffington Post on the same topic here.

He begins:

Charlie Rangel is angry about the Iraq war, the one that Henry Kissinger has told us we can't win. Thanks, Henry, but most Americans figured that out before you did. Rangel saw combat in Korea. Kissinger has only seen combat on TV. That might have something to do with why Kissinger thinks our troops should stay in Iraq even though we can't win.

Continue reading here...

It only gets better.  Tell me the man isn't brilliant.

MADAM SPEAKER...

HOUSE SWEET IT IS!

MY, MY, MY ... HOW THE MIGHTY FALL!

"Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse?”  (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

The day before Ted Haggard confessed to “lifelong sexual immorality,” Lance Coles, a longtime friend of Haggard and the administrative pastor for New Life Church, told the Denver Post, “I know who he is at his core.”

Apparently he didn’t. 

Even as Haggard was continuing to deny the worst of the charges in public, he had already confessed to church board members that he was guilty.

But Haggard - known as Pastor Ted to his congregation and Art to the 49-year old former bodybuilder turned prostitute who outed him - is just one man, right?

No, he’s the man, as in the president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).  As well as one of the White House’s go-to men on evangelical issues. Haggard, a frequent participant on Monday conference calls with Karl Rove, was even consulted on the administration’s Supreme Court nominees.

In a letter to his congregation, read Sunday, Haggard confided, “...there is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”

Unfortunately, that statement is what defines gays in most evangelicals’ eyes. To most, we’re all miserable, self-hating people who lead dark, repulsive lives. And if we would just pray hard enough God would make us straight.

Prayer didn’t seem to help Pastor Ted. Otherwise, we are expected to assume that the devil’s desire that Christian men pay prostitutes for sex and drugs is stronger than God’s desire for them to lead honest lives.

A crestfallen Haggard supporter provided what will undoubtedly become the official evangelical talking points: "It could give Christians a bad name. But I think we all do make mistakes, and I feel awful for his family, and I don't want to believe it's true.”

If “it” means hypocrisy, yeah. We all make mistakes? A mistake is pouring bleach into a washer full of dark colors. What Haggard did was the result of living a lie for fifty years. That’s not a mistake. It’s a major character flaw.

As for not wanting to believe “it’s” true, none of his followers do. Gay people, after all, are boogey men who want to get married so they can destroy Western culture.

As you can imagine, damage control was immediate. The NAE scrubbed its entire website of everything except the main page. Why? They don’t want critics to find photos or statements that venerate their disgraced leader.

Russell Allsup, who railed in the SMU Daily Campus against the evil influence of pornography, would argue that the only logical result of viewing gay pornography is paying a gay prostitute for sex and meth. 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Their are not, however, entitled to their own facts.  Ted Haggard did not hire a gay hooker because he viewed too much gay pornography. He hired a gay prostitute because he was living a lie, and a prostitute was a discreet outlet for his sexuality - or so he thought.

I knew I was gay when I was five, and I had yet to see any pornography.

Unfortunately for millions of gay Christians, fear of eternal damnation or fear of being shunned keeps men like Haggard and Foley from living open and honest lives.

Arianna Huffington, one-time darling of the political Right and ex-wife of Republican Congressman Michael Huffington, put it this way:  “Mark Foley and Ted Haggard are textbook examples of how the relentless denial of reality perverts judgment and rots the soul. Same with the Bushies.”

Huffington knows of what she speaks. In 1998, her then ex-husband came out of the closet.

Pastor Ted isn’t the first closeted man – politician or pastor - who has hired male prostitutes.  And he won’t be the last. Not as long as Republicans stay in office, at least. Last week, I wrote about Charlie Crist, the Republican candidate for governor of Florida. Most Republicans polled have said that the rumors don’t surprise them.

Many stated that Crist's sexuality wouldn't be a factor in their decision-making.  And it shouldn't. The reality, however, is that evangelicals won't vote for an openly gay man.  They have, however, voted for many closeted ones.

Crist realizes that he cannot win without the evangelical vote. 

Apparently, in Florida being linked to George Bush is as risky as being labeled gay. Nothing else explains Crist’s decision not to appear with Bush, who specifically flew to Florida on Sunday to campaign for him. Ouch!

If recent events are any indication, Crist’s sexuality will come out. Just as Mark Foley’s did. Just as Haggard’s has.  The only question that remains is whether the revelation will be tied to a career-ending scandal like those that engulfed Foley and Haggard.

The fact that Haggard confessed to struggling with his homosexuality his entire life yet was able to fool 30 million evangelicals should give pause to the so-called morals voters.

Perhaps evangelical author David Kuo’s advice to his fellow evangelicals to take a fast from politics isn’t a bad idea.  Let’s face it. They don’t have the best track record choosing leaders.

Anyone else considering voting Republican should consider the following caveat in an editorial – aptly titled “GOP Must GO” – in, of all things, the latest edition of The American Conservative: "[A] decisive ‘No’ vote on the Bush presidency is important for the health of the nation.”

From their lips to voters’ ears.

(Links to follow)