Santorum: Making it easy

Deep down, I still don't really believe that Rick Santorum (please follow the link!) is going to be the Republican nominee. I really don't.

Still, you have to admit that he's making it easy for us.

Take the last couple of days.

On Saturday Santorum told a crowd of supporters that President Obama's religious beliefs are a "phony ideology" "not based in the bible". Naturally Obama's people jumped all over that, saying that the remarks were over the line. Even though we're electing a president and not a religious leader, it's hard to deny that, especially in light of years of racist attacks claiming that President Obama is a Muslim.

It was so bad that Santorum had to do damage control and claim that he was not attacking Obama's religion.

So that's all behind us, right?

Umm, except for what Santorum's spokesperson said today.

He was talking about the president's "radical Islamic policies".

No attack on President Obama's religion there, eh?

Bob Kerrey was right

If you're a regular reader around here you know that I'm fond of Dan Savage's definition of Santorum, but the news reports today demonstrate that Bob Kerrey was right.

At an appearance in Florida one of Santorum's supporters spoke out, saying "He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of our government?"

Sound familiar? It should, because four years ago a John McCain supporter made a similar charge with regard to then-Senator Obama. Watch the video and then come back. It's short.

Okay, back?

See what McCain did? Even though he was fighting for every vote, he corrected this misguided woman, even saying that Obama was a decent man who just disagreed on policy.

He set quite a standard for your boy, Santorum, eh? So what did Santorum do?

"It's not my responsibility as a candidate to correct everybody who makes a statement that I disagree with," Santorum said. "There are lots of people who get up and say stuff in a town hall meeting and say things that I don't agree with, but I don't think it's my obligation, nor should it be your feeling that it's my obligation to correct somebody who says something that I don't agree with."

Maybe politics are like sports. They claim that sports build character, but maybe politics, like sports, reveal character.

And maybe that's why Bob Kerrey observed “Santorum, that’s Latin for asshole.”

No argument here.

More Santorum

It's not just in the Times, it's also on NPR, and some people are unhappy.

Take this ombudsman's note defending their coverage of the Santorum story.

The ombudsman found that covering the story was a legitimate journalistic enterprise.

I have to say that for myself, I sympathize with Wolff but agree with Sydell. It would be disingenuous to ignore what anyone can see on Google. We Latinos call that trying to cover the sun with a finger. Sydell's story, at least, gives a responsible explanation of why you find what you find on Google. And why Santorum has a problem.

Of course it was. Journalists have no business pretending a real news story isn't news. Even if the subjects of those stories don't like it.

My favorite part of this whole thing, though, is the phrasing of the letter of complaint. Read this sentence:

All Things Considered has stepped out of bounds for this cheap political smear.

He said it, I didn't.

I've always been partial to Bob Kerrey's definition of Santorum, but I have to agree that Dan Savage has really topped him.

Don't you wonder, though, why Santorum's friends are working so hard to keep the meme alive?

Did you see that?

Rick Santorum's anal sex problem just made it into the pages of the New York Times.

And the credit goes to Maureen Dowd, who has not always been treated kindly in these pages.

Still, credit where credit is due.

Rick Santorum is getting a bit more attention, what with his dead-heat finish with Willard M. Romney in the Iowa caucuses this week, but attention isn't necessarily good for him.

As MoDo points out,

Not satisfied with mentioning homosexuality in the same breath as bestiality and pedophilia, as he did in 2003, Santorum tried to win over the kids by equating homosexuality with polygamy.

Maybe Santorum doesn't remember what it was like to be a college student, or maybe he just was never the kind of college student who talks back or disrespects his elders, but here's the response he got:

The grating Santorum was their worst nightmare of a bad teacher. He merely got booed; he’s lucky the kids didn’t TP his car or soap the windows.

But that might just show that Santorum has a tin ear when it comes to talking to college students; here comes Dowd's money quote:

When 17-year-old Rhiannon Pyle, visiting with her civics class from Newburyport, Mass., pressed Santorum on how he could believe that all men are created equal and still object to two men in love marrying, he began nonsensically frothing.

"So what?" you say? It's only a "so what" moment if you are unfamiliar with Santorum's anal sex problem.

You see, back when Santorum first started saying homosexuality was the same as "man on boy" or "man on dog" it offended a gay sex advice columnist named Dan Savage, who decided to retaliate by coming up with an appropriate definition for Santorum's name. After a poll of his readers Savage decided the appropriate definition for Santorum is "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex."

Santorum doesn't like it. In fact, he hates it, and he's gone crying to Google to make it stop, but it won't stop. If you google Santorum the Dan Savage definition is likely to be the top link, and is pretty much guaranteed to be in the top two or three.

Now "frothy" is not a particularly common word, so when Maureen Dowd, a person who is undoubtedly familiar with the new definition of Santorum, uses "frothing" in referring to Santorum in a column about Rick Santorum and same-sex relationships, there is no way that's an accident.

So you go, MoDo!

By the way, in case you're wondering, one of the readers' pick comments in the Times had the same thought:

Frothing? As in the first Google entry for Santorum? Well, Maureen, you had me chuckling (even if it was a tad subtle).