IOKIYAR
by digby
So a famous Republican law and order, anti-immigrant tough guy turns out to have an undocumented gay lover and there are pictures to prove it. Just another day in Arizona.
It’s interesting how willing so many right wingers are to defend him and blame “the left” for intruding into his private life. But it isn’t really all that unusual. They don’t want the government intruding on the private lives of their own. That would be wrong. But subjecting people who don’t agree or identify with them to the long arm of the law is perfectly fine. After all, they deserve it.
There’s a phrase for it: hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Put another way, hypocrisy is the tribute Republicans politicians pay to their equally hypocritical church lady constituents, also known as IOKIYAR.
I suspect that Sheriff Babeau will be easily forgiven by many right wingers, despite the fact that he has had a secret life as a gay man involved with a Mexican who is (apparently) illegally in the country. After all, he’s one of them — a card carrying, freedom loving, CPAC attending wingnut. On the other hand, a sheriff who was openly sympathetic to gay people and undocumented workers would be fair game to be outed and run from office. It’s one thing to sleep with an immigrant of the same sex, it’s quite another to advocate for the freedom of others to sleep with whomever they want or for the humanity and dignity of non-citizens. The first is just being a flawed human being. The second is being a liberal and that’s unforgiveable.
Quote from wingnut commenter at Gateway Pundit:
“[Liberals will] clutch their pearls and go on and on about Babeu being a hypocrite, followed by wringing their hands as they go on and on about those who continue to support his run for sheriff also being hypocrites. They’ll tsk tsk those hypocrites as if behaving in a hypocritical way is the absolute worst sin a human being can possibly commit, worse than raping children and/or detonating the explosives strapped to ones body in the cabin of a commercial jet chock full of passengers and soaring thousands of feet above the Atlantic ocean. Typical libtard bullsh*t.”
There you go.
Update: There’s more to this story. Howie has it here. Yikes.