Saturday, August 06, 2005

Just a little honesty, please...

I've made a point of cruising other aspects of the blogosphere to see what's going on.

Looking at Crooks and Liars' blog, I found a reference to Senator Rick Santorum's interview on Brian Lehrer's radio show. Senator Santorum recently published a book, "It takes a family" as a counterpoint to the Hillary/liberal viewpoint on how to raise children. Crooks and liars trumpets the fact that Rick Santorum 'lost it' during the interview. Thirty minutes later, I come to the conclusion that Rick Santorum actually maintained his cool throughout. Most of the comments to Crooks and Liars on that particular item, left and right, said the same thing. During a segment discussing gay marraige, Brian Lehrer throws this bomb out.

LEHRER: It came out this month that your communications director, Robert Traynham, is gay. How long did you know that?

SANTORUM: Uh, I’ve known it for a while.

LEHRER: And if he has a boyfriend, is that the moral equivalent as, in a famous quote of yours, of bigamy, adultery, or incest or even bestiality?

SANTORUM: Well, I didn’t – number one, my famous quote did not draw moral equivalence. And in fact if you read the quote in its proper context without words inserted by a reporter, uh, who put words in my mouth that I did not say, nor did I mean –

What? You gotta be kidding. Rather than deal with issues of the day, make it personal why don't you? If anything, the fact that Mr. Santorum discounts his comm director's sexual 'orientation' as a qualifier for the job speaks volumns to his open-mindedness. Can't say the same about liberals, generally.

LEHRER: By the way, do you have lively debates with your press secretary over this? Does he try to convince you, do you try to convince him to go get cured?

SANTORUM: Uh, no, I – look, his personal life is his personal life. I don’t have lively debates with any of my staff about their personal lives. It’s their personal life, and I have lively debates about issues of, that, of public policy. And I have people on my staff that agree with me on everything and – well, not everything, but most everything – and I have those who don’t. And uh, you know, that makes for a healthy debate in the office.

So, we have a liberal talk show host trying to bait the Senator with a 'gotcha', which he didn't take, by the way. Yet a liberal blog paints Santorum as some raving loonatic.

Look, if we're going to disagree and debate, at least keep it honest. Sheesh...

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