mr. bill

(Okay, Mr. Bill actually looks more like John Gibson, but that's not necessarily germane to this discussion.)

So, Frothing Crypto-Catholic Sociopath Bill Donohue has been one of the squeakiest wheels in Squeakytown on the issue of the Edwards '08 campaign's decision to hire two bloggers, fire them, and then re-hire them.  Donohue's main bone of contention against the two bloggers was their supposed "intolerance" toward people who believe that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church and that the life of a child begins when a man says to a woman, "Hey, honey, are you awake?"

Donohue has gone into talk-show overdrive over the last few days, spewing his line of faux-Christian tripe utterly unopposed on Tucker (meh) Carlson, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Hannity, the lot.  He referred to the bloggers in question as "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots".

Well, excuse the fuck out of us, Donohue, you goddamn herpes sore.  If you're so against sexual perversion, then why do you insist on defending the pedophile clergy who can't keep their hands out of those little altar boys' cassocks?

But while we're on the topic of blazing, in-your-face, bald-faced lies and hypocrisy, why don't we dip into this rather marvellous Media Matters piece by Jamison Foster which lays out a catalog of Donohue's own stellar pantheon of "Did he just fucking say that?!" statements?

Let's start with religious intolerance:

  • "People don't trust the Muslims when it comes to liberty." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 2/9/06]
  • "We've already won. Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. ... Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 12/8/04]
  • "I'm saying if a Catholic votes for Kerry because they support him on abortion rights, that is to cooperate in evil." [MSNBC's Hardball, 10/21/04]

Trash-talking:

  • "Name for me a book publishing company in this country, particularly in New York, which would allow you to publish a book which would tell the truth about the gay death style." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 2/27/04]
  • Addressing former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) in a press release, Donohue said: "[W]hy didn't you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?" [10/4/06]

(Please note the ocean of Christian compassion, the wellspring of charity and kindness...)

  • "Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 2/9/06]

And vulgar:

  • "Just imagine if a white guy is performing oral sex on a statue of Martin Luther King with an erection. Do you need to see it to know it's ugly?"

Ew.  I mean...just, ew.  What the hell is wrong with this guy's head? Really, though, he's just like most all of the Right Wing screechers who persist in showing us exactly how dark, twisted, and sick their minds are with the truly breathtaking array of weird, random, perverted shit that they project on to "liberals".  "Liberals" here meaning the faceless mass of godless heathens who are, in fact, the large majority of the US population, the ones who don't agree with Donohue's perverted, Medievalist view of sex, the body, and mankind's relationship with God.  Donohue just wants to party like it's 1699, and that's just not going to happen in this country.  That ship sailed in, oh, 1901.

When is someone in Big Media going to start calling these crackpots out?  Bill Donohue is not a reasonable man.  He does not represent the majority of Catholic opinion in this country.  Back to Media Matters:

A February 2 article in Women's Wear Daily described Donohue's efforts to "manufacture controversy" -- and, unlike the Times and AP articles, noted that other Catholics disapprove of his antics:

It's this ability to manufacture controversy that has brought a moribund advocacy group firmly into the black and turned Donohue into catnip for the press. For talk show bookers and reporters on deadline, he's a never-ending sideshow who comes ever ready to hurl expressions of indignation and opprobrium at anyone who might have offended him. As prejudice against individual Catholics has receded, Donohue has simply turned up the volume, taking aim at everyone who questions the church's official positions on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, lapsed Catholics included.

[...]

But the same thing that keeps Donohue in the press prevents him from becoming truly respectable within the religious community, where his antics are a source of frequent consternation.

Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College said, "He's a thug. He reverts to bullying because he thinks that's what the job entails."

Rev. Mark Massa, a Jesuit priest and co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, accused Donohue of being unable to differentiate between healthy debate and real religious bigotry. "Not everyone who criticizes the church is anti-Catholic," he said.

The editors at the Catholic weekly magazine America seem to agree. In 2000, they chastised Donohue for denouncing movies he hadn't even watched. "While being first may increase one's chances of attracting media attention, there is a danger that the Catholic League reinforces the stereotype that the Catholic Church is at best unreflective and at worst unfairly biased and paranoid," wrote Rev. James Martin. "In the long run, this may do more harm to the church's reputation than a short-lived movie or play."

Indeed.  Bill Donohue is bad for Catholicism and bad for America.  Someone needs to shoot his bogus morality crusade right out of the sky before it actually does some real damage.  Fortunately, in this skirmish, the Edwards campaign told Donohue and the Malkinites to take a powder and STFU.

More of this, please, Democrats.  Those Right Wing shitbags aren't going to vote for you, anyway, so don't do what they say, okay?  Is that clear?

Good.