Offered For Your Amusement

Ah, Hookergate.

As the Devil in the Blue Dress incident of the '90's proved, there's nothing quite as effective as a good sex scandal to bring down an administration and turn the electorate toward the oppostion party. And in this case, it's an administration those of us in the reality-based world already knew were shameless whores.

Call me a wide-eyed innocent, but I still can't quite get my head around the fact that BushCo have pulled off lying to the public about the stone-cold-serious matter of WMD's in order to take us to war; squandered thousands of young American lives on a war that has also left tens of thousands horribly and irreparably wounded; turned a record surplus into a record deficit; shredded the Bill of Rights and pissed on the Constitution; promoted an atmosphere of xenophobia and paranoia to the point where Americans are so terrified, they'll allow all manner of intrusions into their personal lives; ruined America's reputation in the world, so much so that our athletic teams are forced to travel in unmarked buses; and perverted every noble and good ideal for which brave men and women fought, and continue to fight...(etcetera, etcetera), yet the thing that will most likely (finally, thankfully) rid the country of this crime family's evil Rethuglican rule is a sex scandal.

So I was doing a Google search on the term Hookergate—which is all over the blogosphere—to see if any mainstream media had begun using the word yet (hey, fellow blogger Waveflux remarked yesterday that he'd pay fifty bucks to watch Bob Schiffer say the word Hookergate on the CBS evening news) and lo and behold, there at the top of the results page is a listing about a school in England (oh, where else) called Hookergate. Hookergate Comprehensive School.

Swear.

And it gets better. The school's slogan?

One school, many talents.

Then, again courtesy of Google, I wound up on a comments page at the notoriously inane Free Republic (to which, on principle, I will not link—sorry). Now, knowing the general lay of the land there, one wouldn't expect to find discussions about global warming or string theory, but still. The choked-on-pretzel logic has a certain beauteous hilarity. To wit:

"Well at least Republicans are having lobbyists pay for their extra-marital shenigans (sic). Clintoon (sic) used women paid for by American taxpayers (intern)."

First, interns don't get paid—and please feel free to correct me in comments if I'm wrong. It's kind of an apprenticeship period and one's "pay" is the attendant prestige and experience one receives, plus the benefit of having something to put on one's resume (at least, that's how it worked when I was an intern my senior year). And even if they are paid, it's probably a token, minimum-wage kind of amount, hardly in line with the billions of defense-contract dollars handed out by our (s)elected officials.

Second, do these idiots really think what was going on at the Watergate and Westin doesn't have any impact on the taxpayer? That the gazillions of dollars in contracts being handed out by those happy, sucked-and-fucked, poker-playing congressmen don't come from us, which includes them?

Hell, more kudos to Pam for donning the biohazard suit and heading over to Freeperville as she does in order to report back on the state of the mentally unbalanced Right. I can see why most of us don't--it's damned scary how stupid they are.

And how unintentionally funny.

UPDATE: Media outlets (other than blogs) are starting to use the term Hookergate. Right off the top of a Google search, we find:

The London Times, Yahoo News, and Editor and Publisher.

UPDATE 2: Fox news affiliate in Australia, The Australian, is also using the term Hookergate now.