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alan keyes and "selfish hedonists" Unbelievable, some of the reactions from Alan Keyes's fellow conservatives to Keyes's statement that gays, including Mary Cheney, are "selfish hedonists". “He’s used to speaking. I’m not saying he wasn’t tricked, but he’s got a lot of experience. He should know better.” They think he was tricked or ambushed by the reporter. How is it a trick or ambush? Keyes explicitly said gays are "selfish hedonists", and the reporter asks what about Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter. That's a trick? If someone asked a racist rightwinger who'd just said "blacks are shiftless and lazy" if they thought Alan Keyes was "shiftless and lazy", does that qualify as a trick? No, it's a pretty obvious thing to ask anyone who's making bigoted generalizations of any sort - you ask them about specific people whom they presumably respect but who are also members of the group they're maligning, in hopes they might admit that they were exaggerating or making unjustified generalizations. “I think Alan is right on the issues, but he just has to pull back on the rhetoric,” said Ruth O’Connell, a Wheeling Township committeewoman and trustee. So the problem isn't that he thinks gays are "selfish hedonists" and shouldn't have equal rights - it's just that he should be more quiet about it. Conservative Joe Morris, a member of the United Republican Fund, thinks Keyes might be forgetting he’s a politician now and not a teacher. “He will sometimes use the vocabulary of a philosophy professor when people are looking for a response on a political level.”
Morris cited Keyes “selfish hedonist” remark as an example.
“Obviously, when a reporter tries to bait you, on Mary Cheney for instance, the appropriate answer - political answer - is, ‘I’m not here to talk about any particular individual, I’m talking about the philosophical background behind our Party’s principles on same sex marriage,’” said Morris. “But he took the bait, because he didn’t draw the line between being a politician and professor.”
Raymond True, head of the conservative Republican Assembly of Lake County, echoed, “I think if Alan would find a way to make his answers crisper, that might be helpful. He borders on giving professorial responses rather than political ones. I’m sure he’s capable of making his point in a more summarial fashion.” Wow - do conservatives really think that Keyes's bigoted generalization is actually philosophical or professorial or somehow too academic and high-minded or something? I've heard this defense of Keyes before - that he's a really smart scholarly hifalutin kind of guy, and so he gets himself into trouble in these exchanges because his clever diction is too subtle for news soundbites, or some such nonsense. Certainly one of the more novel defenses of bigotry I've heard in a while. “I’d say the response to the ‘selfish hedonist’ remark has been about 60/40,” said one campaign worker who asked not to be identified. “Sixty percent of the feedback we’ve been getting has been negative. Forty percent say, “Good job defending marriage, keep saying what you’re saying.”
Yes, there is always a silver lining. “His value is in raising the issues, of bringing out the volunteers, building solidarity among conservatives, and educating everyone, even if people find the education disturbing,” said Morris. So 40% of the feedback is nonetheless positive to his extreme homophobia? Compassionate conservatism in action! |