Huck Me

The more I see of good ol' Mike Huckabee, the more I realize what a contemptible phony he his. It took me a while: there was a time when I thought his humor, his bass-playing rock'n'rollery, his aw-shuckery made him a likable guy, even as I disagreed with pretty much everything he said. There are, after all, several people I call friends from whom I'm as far apart as possible politically and religiously.

But really, as he gets closer to a presumed run at the presidency, Mike Huckabee is revealing himself to be a shameless, rudderless, morally bankrupt hypocrite; and his wrapping himself in some sort of ethically bereft blanket of Christianity makes it all the worse. Smiling, beatific, full of love for his fellow man, he oozes despicable and disgusting deceptions, while pretending to be something else entirely. This "Obama grew up in Kenya" episode puts to rest any illusions anyone might have that he's a good guy. I don't care what his policies and religion are or aren't: he's a classic scumbag, well-honed homilies notwithstanding.

I don't want to waste my energy recounting what I'm referring to. For those who don't know, it's here and here and here.

And let's not overlook to whom he's speaking: one of the most bigoted and hate-filled spewers of the RWS™, and that's saying a hell of a lot. He who panders to such a man is as far from presidential as Glenn Beck is from thoughtful.

Mike Huckabee, smiling like a saint, says Obama didn't play Little League and attended a madrassa. And hangs with the Mau Mau. He says he "misspoke" when he said Obama grew up in Kenya, but when you put "Indonesia" in the place of that, the rest of what he said makes no sense at all: he meant it. The idiot. The cheap deceiver.

For the record: Obama played on a state champ basketball team in Hawaii; and the school he attended in Indonesia was the furthest thing from a madrassa. Isn't basketball as American as baseball? And who gives a shit anyway? Does Mike care? Obviously not. Dropping code words like a dog with diarrhea, he's only too happy to suggest our president is not one of us, is foreign, hates America, and, in case we've forgotten, is a black guy.

Mike Huckabee is a monster masquerading as Gomer Pyle. He's worse than a hypocrite and infinitely more dangerous: he's perfectly happy -- it's his goddam game plan -- to appeal to the lowest common denominator while claiming the moral high ground. He dishes his offal while prancing on tippie-toes like a blushing ballerina. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth (lately, it looks like it might be because he's swallowing it too fast again.)

It doesn't get more sleazy.

What a disgusting piece of crap.

_______________

This seems as good a place as any to mention the passing of Peter Gomes, chaplain and professor at Harvard for the last forty years, a Baptist minister, participant in the inaugurations of Ronald Reagan, and GHW Bush, named one of America's "seven most distinguished preachers," self-described "cultural conservative." Also gay. He wrote about guys like Huck the F*ck:

Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant. Such intolerance, in the name of virtue, is ruthless and uses political power to destroy what it cannot convert.

It is dangerous, especially in America, because it is anti-democratic and is suspicious of “the other,” in whatever form that “other” might appear. To maintain itself, fundamentalism must always define “the other” as deviant.

But the chief reason that fundamentalism is dangerous is that, at the hands of the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and hundreds of lesser-known but equally worrisome clerics, preachers and pundits, it uses Scripture and the Christian practice to encourage ordinarily good people to act upon their fears rather than their virtues.

Fortunately, those who speak for the religious right do not speak for all American Christians, and the Bible is not theirs alone to interpret. The same Bible that the advocates of slavery used to protect their wicked self-interests is the Bible that inspired slaves to revolt and their liberators to action.

The same Bible that the predecessors of Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson used to keep white churches white is the source of the inspiration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the social reformation of the 1960’s.

The same Bible that anti-feminists use to keep women silent in the churches is the Bible that preaches liberation to captives and says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free.

And the same Bible that on the basis of an archaic social code of ancient Israel and a tortured reading of Paul is used to condemn all homosexuals and homosexual behavior includes metaphors of redemption, renewal, inclusion and love – principles that invite homosexuals to accept their freedom and responsibility in Christ and demands that their fellow Christians accept them as well.

The political piety of the fundamentalist religious right must not be exercised at the expense of our precious freedoms. And in this summer of our discontent, one of the most precious freedoms for which we must all fight is freedom from this last prejudice.

Think about that sometime when you're not spewing hate in sheepish clothing, Mike Huckabee, you embarrassment, you piggish little nasty.

Huck Us All

Mike Huckabee comes across as a nice guy. On a personal level, I bet I'd like him. Sense of humor. Not seeming to take himself too awfully seriously. Master of the faux open-mindedness of a zealot on a mission, he appears to realize he needs to bide his time, wear a little sheep. He's a really good example of why religion and politics don't mix. Not to the benefit of society. This society, anyway. Well, the kind of society that includes thoughtful people. Treats people fairly. Uses brains.

So I guess it's an open question.

Anyway, here's what he said recently.

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

As tired clichéd rhetoric goes, I guess you gotta admire him for holding off on the horse thing. He had more to say, though:

In what may come as a surprise for some, Huckabee agreed that an atheist could be fit to serve as president. “I’d rather have an honest atheist than a dishonest religious person,” he said.

“It’s better to have a person who says, ‘Look, I just don’t believe, and that’s where my honest position happens to be,’” he said. “I’m frankly more OK with that than a person who says, ‘Oh, I am very much a Christian. I very much love God.’ And then they live as if they are atheists, as if they have no moral groundings at all. That’s more troubling.”

“I think it’s nice if a person believes in God,” Huckabee said. “I’d hate to think somebody was making decisions who thought that he couldn’t be higher than himself.” (Emphasis mine, mine, mine.)

"Huckabee agreed that an atheist could be fit to serve as president." Really? Is that what he said? What he said was that atheists have no moral grounding. And he said something incomprehensible about being higher than oneself. Guess he's referring to George Bush listening while God told him to spend thousands of lives and trillions of dollars (unfunded) to depose a guy who was no threat. Good one, God. Totally got him.

This is exactly the self-important and self-deluding b.s. of the holier-than-thou. It's the smugly satisfied, thoroughly debunkable belief that good behavior based on expectation of reward or fear of punishment is somehow morally superior to the same acts done only because it does right by one's fellow men. And women. The opposite, of course, is true. And what gives Slim Mike the right, based on a self-contradictory book written by a bunch of guys twenty centuries ago, to deny the most basic of freedoms to people with whose sexual orientation he's uncomfortable? To claim, against all evidence, that their orientation is a matter of choice?

God save us from such believers. They'll be the death of us all. Homosexuals first, of course. Non-Christians second, to be sure. But, eventually, every last one of us, including themselves.