I don't like him any more than you do, but I thought you were on the side of the sex worker industry.

Unfortunately, Vitter and the rightwing PACs air about 4 commercial to every one of Melancon's and the left-leaning PACs. And Melancon really doesn't have a chance of being elected, simply because he has a "D" after his name (he isn't exactly liberal - in fact, he's pretty conservative...though he doesn't actively practice hate the way a lot of Republicans do).

I voted early for Melancon. Most of the people I know voted or will vote for Melancon. But I live in Baton Rouge. My guess is that Melacon will carry Baton Rouge and New Orleans (and Lafayette, but that is a really small city) by a small margin, but will lose big in the rest of the state.

I think Dan's point wasn't that the guy is visiting prostitutes, but that he's pretending to be a fine, upstanding Christian when he's actually another hypocritical lying douchebag.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking FLgirl. But whoremonger? C'mon Savage.

Yeah, he's an asswipe, but at least the NRA has him in their pocket. Works for me.

He's pretty tame by the Catholic Church's standard of Christian. But it's always been "do as I say, not as I do" with them anyway.

It amazes me that Diaper Dave has managed to hang on. When the details came out in the DC Madam case, I thought for sure he'd be finished. I'll bet he saw it as a personal sign of approval from God that Larry Craig's scandal came right at the same time and overshadowed his. Pfft.

Disappointed. I click on the hyperlink with the hopes of seeing grinders in speedos and I get crazy Carl "I'm sorry but I'm not really sorry" Paladino. Yes, yes, I know what he said, but still. When there's a link to "grinders in Speedos," it should link to actual grinders in Speedos.

A whoremonger is a pimp. Surely Vitter's only a john.

Dan, thanks for exposing what an ass Vitter is. Unfortunately, his opponent, Charlie Melancon, is no better. He couldn't bring himself to vote for the Hate Crimes bill and he was paired against DADT repeal. These votes would not have hurt him in his district--the Republican reps from Baton Rouge and New Orleans voted in favor of the Hate Crimes Bill, and the latter also in favor of repealing DADT. Melancon hates the homos as much as Vitter does. In fact, the two have almost identical voting records. As long as the Democratic Party anoints bluedogs like Melancon, they will never succeed in removing assholes like Vitter.

What was it that Louisiana Gov. Earl Long once said?
"One day the fine folks of the great State of Louisiana are going to have honest, upright and upstanding government. And they ain't gonna like it a bit."

I can't source the quote, (hell it might even be from the movie ) but it sure fits, doesn't it?

18

@12,

How would they have a chance of removing Vitter with a real Democrat?

Re Keshmeshi, there are lots of people who would vote for a real Democrat or at least a moderate one if given the chance. Mary Landrieu wins narrow races because she is very good on gay rights and social issues while being conservative in terms of pandering to the oil industry, etc. When she first ran, the RC Archbishop of NO said it would be a sin to vote for her because she is pro-choice, but she carried New Orleans, which must be one of th most Catholic cities in the country, by 90% and managed to get enough outside the metropolitabn area to squeak by. In the 2002 campaign for Governor in which Kathleen Blanco beat Jindahl, she did so by running as a moderate, including promising to issue an executive order protecting gays from discrimination in state employment. In the debate with Jindahl, she said "As a Christian woman, I don't believe anyone should suffer discrimination." Like Melancon, her base was in Acadiana, which is much more moderate than North Louisiana. When Jindahl was elected in 2006, the first thing he did was to invalidate her executive order protecting gay people from discrimination. Anyway, Louisiana is not a hard Republican state. Republicans win because the state Democrat party keeps anointing candidates who are too much like the Republicans. The last Democratic candidate for Senate was a congressman who had a very bad civil rights record. Inasmuch as about 40% of the Democratic party in Louisiana is black, that was not smart. They had no incentive to get out and vote. In this year's matchup, no gay person with any sense would vote for either Vitter or Melancon.

He gives diaper-wearing guys a bad name :P

We're not spending tax dollars on prostitutes, we're paying a representative. Once that happens, it becomes his money, to spend on whatever he wants (and sex work seems like a perfectly reasonable expenditure, though it's probably illegal).

Of course, he's also a big fat hypocrite as a result of this stuff, so it's relevant (no charges of sexual harassment or slut-shaming here?).

Actually, the slut-shaming comment is a bit disingenuous coming from me: because of extant gendered systems of privilege, slut-shaming happens in a different context for women than it does for men. Identical treatment/action is actually only equality if it happens in an identical cultural context, which is something many people don't consider when talking about equality (and actively ignore when deploying the language of equality to reinforce oppressive vectors, as with "reverse racism", "reverse sexism", etc.). This is why people doing theory about this stuff have changed from a discourse of "equality" to one of "social justice": once one realizes how systems of privilege operate, it rapidly becomes apparent that "equality" (as equal treatment with equal results) is impossible in our current cultural context.

I still think politicians make legitimate the discussion of their sex lives as a campaign issue when they campaign on their sex lives or those of others. None of the "family values" candidates can defensibly deploy charges of sexism or assertions of privacy as a shield for their own heterosexism, sex-negativity, and hypocrisy.

@10: Tru dat.

It's really starting to bother me a lot that Dems seem to be going after "Conservative" voters, because their ads make me cringe as much as the Rep ads. Prostitution is bad? Sinning? Ugh. This is why we have an "enthusiasm gap": Dems are deploying messages aimed at Republicans and alienating their bases in the process. The whole thing swings the discourse to the right, so what's seen as the "center" is really solidly to the right or center, center-right is now seen as "center-left", actual centrists are seen as solidly "left" of center, center-left politicians like Obama are "socialists", (Social) Liberal Democrats are seen as far-left radicals, and actual socialists and far-left radicals have fallen completely off the map.

Did no one see that article on discursive framing that Democracy Now! put out this summer? You can't really use the opponents' rhetoric to discredit them, because using their rhetoric validates their discourse and reinforces their frames. A much more effective strategy is to subvert their rhetoric or avoid it completely, re-framing issues within a counter-discourse. The Republican Propaganda Machine took some lessons in postmodern anthropology, psychology, advertising, and socio-linguistics after WWII, and it's allowing them to consistently stomp all over the Democrats in the advertising department. The only time we regain ground is after they spend 8-12 years destroying our economic infrastructure by siphoning money from the rest of us into the coffers of the top 3%. Unfortunately, it seems that many people's memories only go back 1.5-2 years, so as soon as the Dems get into power, they're ousted again, because it takes more than two years to fix a decade's worth of damage to our social and economic systems.

Whoremonger? Shame on you.

A whoremonger would be a pimp, Dan. Or the sex worker herself, if she was advertising her services.

C'mon Dan. You're on the side of the sex workers, except when debasing them makes for a good pun at some bastard's expense?

A little integrity, please.

There's no slut-shaming going on here. Men are not capable of being slut-shamed in the US because they're members of the hegemonic group. It's cool for men to be promiscuous in society.

However, there IS hypocrite-shaming going on. This is a good thing.

At no point did I see Dan maligning whores, unless you think calling sex workers whores is malignant. I don't.