The GOP: Strengthening Family Values After All

I adore my little brother. He is one of the smartest, funniest, most erudite people I know, and when it comes to things like the genius of comedians Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G), Eddie Izzard, Bobcat Goldthwait, Red Foxx, Richard Pryor, and John Cleese--or the superiority of English chockies over their disappointingly sicklysweet and near-flavorless foreign counterparts (if you doubt this, treat yourself to a real, UK-made Cadbury bar and get back to me)--he and I concur in the fullest.

Then there is the touchy subject of politics, about which we've agreed to disagree. Sort of.

You see, we're only two years apart, and I admit I still have rather fresh memories of Baby Brother chasing me around the kitchen table until I shrieked, which got us both in trouble for fighting, as well as him hiding behind our Dad's car with the garden hose at the ready, choosing the perfect moment of ambush and soaking my school uniform and me along with it. In other words, our respective fighting spirits are no more sedate now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Cue the announcer:

"In the Left Corner, wearing the vintage Versace satin trunks and ridiculous high heels, standing for universal health care, the First Amendment, restoration of habeus corpus, marriage equality, science, reason, and the institution of meaningful campaign finance reform...it's...litbrit!

And over in the Right Corner, wearing camouflage trunks, a tae kwon do black belt, and a t-shirt reading You Can Take Away My Gun Collection When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Warehouse; and standing for conservative values, the Second Amendment, science, reason, and big Ford trucks...it's...Baby Brother!"

Everyone has a tipping point, though, a moment when something just happens and it occurs to him or her, with no prompting or pressure from without, that maybe the old belief system is due for an overhaul. An epiphany ex machine-gun, if you will.

For Baby Brother, Senator Larry Craig's hypocrisy was the last straw. Oh, I don't doubt that my witty (if maddening) sibling will be still voting Republican from the grave, sometime around the turn of the next century, but I have to say, I never thought I'd see the day when he'd state, in writing, that he felt Bill Clinton was owed an apology. Herewith, an excerpt from his e-mail to me this morning (and though I'm only excerpting, I still fully expect some form of aqueous payback come Christmas):

I was bombarded today with endless images of Idaho Senator Craig denying that he was gay (or has ever been gay). Maybe the people of Idaho have a somewhat different definition of gay than the rest of us. He claims that the undercover policeman in the Minneapolis airport bathroom misunderstood his actions, and he was not trying to have sex with him, even though he later plead guilty in court.

It seems now that tapping out the Moonlight Sonata with your feet, while your pants are around your ankles as you squat on a public toilet, while sticking your hand suggestively under the stall into the OCCUPIED neighboring stall is something other than some sort of bizarre geriatric gay pre-mating ritual indulged in by hypocritical closet queens. And he is a Conservative Republican! I guess we really are the inclusive, Big Tent party.

It can no longer be denied that former President Clinton is owed a great big motherfucking apology. Those who shouted the loudest had the most to hide. We should hire Samuel L. Jackson to broadcast, across the country, a loud request for his forgiveness. And we should learn, once and for all, to shun, despise and hurl shit at people like Craig who accuse others of low moral character while holding themselves up as fine church-going examples. Tonight, President Clinton is having a damned good laugh as yet another of his antagonists turns out to be a bathroom hypocrite. I hope President Clinton enjoys the moment--he has sure earned it.

Sing it, Baby Brother.