Thank You, Baby Jesus!

And thank you, Rev. Ted Haggard, for exposing yourself to your congregation and to the country as the consummate hypocrite you are at such a politically opportune time. With the Mark Foley scandal fading from view, Jack Abramoff ancient history, and the Republicans seizing on John Kerry's ridiculous (and completely inconsequential) verbal gaffe about getting "stuck in Iraq" with the hope that it would prove to be the shot in the foot necessary to prevent a Democratic tidal wave at the polls this Tuesday, you, Pastor Ted, have single-handedly put the focus back on Republican hypocrisy and corruption at a time that the Democrats need it the most. Kerry's botched joke has all but disappeared from the media's focus since you were outed by your three-year rent boy last week. Your various responses to the allegations have been nothing less than hilarious, too, and assured that the story would have legs as soon as you uttered them. Let's see a show of hands out there, how many people believe that you only got a massage, and that you purchased, but never consumed, methamphetamine? Anyone?

The first time I read about this story -- and every time I've heard or read more about it since then -- all I could think of was the character Nelson from The Simpsons pointing and uttering his trademark "HAW haw!" I mean, it's not that I personally have anything against homosexuality, or am completely against recreational drug use or even consensual prostitution, per se. What I am against is people who say one thing and do another, who preach the politics of morality but in private practice the very acts that they rail and legislate against. I admit to feeling a great amount of schandenfreude whenever hypocrites like Pastor Ted are exposed. The more powerful and connected they are, the more I snicker. And coming when it did, with the election on the line and the media seizing on any and every little scandal and misstep it can find, this story just seemed to drop straight from heaven, gift-wrapped and with a cherry on top (to mix metaphors just a bit), into the collective lap of the Democratic party.

Now, of course, the big event that the Republicans will try to focus on is bound to be the verdict today in Saddam Hussein's trial, and the sentence to hang that he received, but will that dog hunt in the face of all that's gone against them lately? My feeling is that Americans will be more reminded of how badly the occupation in Iraq has gone by this news, and that the bounce that Karl Rove might have expected from it will be weak at best. Sorry, Karl, but sex and drugs beat discredited tyrants in war zones gone south every time.

Thank you, baby Jesus! And thank you, Rev. Ted!