Friday, February 09, 2007

Republican Drama Queen

Pity poor Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown. The staunchly anti-gay Massachusetts politician apparently had his feelings hurt over colorful comments about his anti-gay legislative efforts posted by some high school students:

Sen. Scott Brown was discussing his stance on gay marriage during an assembly at King Philip Regional High School on Thursday according to WHDH-TV, when he decided to share the comments written about him and his family posted on a facebook.com page dedicated to a pro-gay rights history teacher at the school.

Brown, a Republican from Wrentham, opposes gay marriage.

”I hate scott brown” and ”scott brown ascends from the underworld,” were two of the tamer comments on the site, some of which contained profanities.

Some of the comments were aimed at Brown’s daughter, Ayla Brown, a former American Idol finalist and scholarship basketball player at Boston College.

He read the comments verbatim, even naming the students who wrote them in some cases, witnesses said.


....

”What I was doing was reading from what they had written about me and about my family,” Brown said. ”I actually called them on it. I said ’Now there’s hate speech and then there’s respectful proper speech.”


So, launching efforts to marginalize the children of same-sex couples, dramatically increase their taxes and health care costs, prevent American gay men and women from sponsoring their foreign partners for visas, describing their families as "unnatural and perverted," referring to homosexual people (including teens) as "objectively disordered," and a whole other slew of nasty things I could write pages about is just dialogue in an honest debate.

But a couple of insults on a web site about a public figure rise to the level of "hate speech."

By that standard, your faithful author here has been "hate speeched" hundreds of times last year, and I'm not even a politician!

Brown's outrage didn't stop at the assembly. As he wheedled to the International Herald-Tribune:

"And now I find out I'm being portrayed as a vile-speaking hate-monger. It's pretty saddening. I feel very badly that I'm being victimized here," he said.


Goodness, I'd always suspected the victimhood schtick in the media has been carried a bit far, but this is ridiculous. A powerful, influential, well-paid politician has been "victimized" by some high-schoolers who reportedly wrote on a web page that he "eats shit?"

One could argue that Mr. Brown "has his head up his ass," but not this author. I wouldn't want to further victimize the clearly traumatized Senator. So instead, I will simply note that he suffers from apparent cranial-rectal inversion syndrome.

That's clearly not a natural state, in fact, it's redefining biology! In a respectful spirit of dialogue, I urge the good Senator to de-invert, lest he be compared to the rump of an equine mammal.