Mark Foley and the Bush Administration - Perversions of Power

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/rosen10272006.html


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A peculiar sexual perversion marks George Bush's presidency. The Bush administration began auspiciously when Attorney General John Ashcroft draped two semi-nude statues, "Spirit of Justice" (female) and "Majesty of Law" (male), in the Justice Department auditorium. It gained momentum with the obscenity scandal involving Janet Jackson's now-infamous nipple, forcing a reluctant FCC to stand up for moral rectitude and slap a stiff fine on a contrite (if dumbfounded) CBS. It achieved its clearest absurdity in the scandal involving Jeff Gannon, the Republican White House blogger who, afterhours, turned out to be James Dale Guckert (aka "Bulldog"), operator of a gay website with U.S. Marine Corp. themes for the solicitation of male prostitutes.

However, no one will soon forget the disturbing photographs of tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England's seductive leer to the camera--the moment when the perversion of sadism became the pathology of empire. (It was Rep. Chris Shays who warned America that Abu Ghraib "ain't torture, it's sex.") But the most perverse moment surely was when (to use Arundhati Roy's wonderful term) Bush-the-Lesser jumped from the cockpit of the Navy S-3B Viking and, posing against a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished," strode assertively across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Like the super-stud captain of a small town Texas high school football team, Bush symbolized unchallenged power.

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Bush's public sexuality is centered in a Christian zeal that rejects sexual pleasure for itself, erotic fulfillment beyond the requirements of procreation. Like the Puritans of old and subsequent evangelicals, he seems to take literally the notion of original sin, in which the most intimate human relation is contaminated, forever scarring all subsequent generations. His sexuality seems to be one of prohibition, a sexuality infused with a shame of the physical body and its wilder passions. One can only suspect that this repression is rooted in a deep, personal knowledge--and fear--of the excesses of self-indulgence, an outgrowth of W's equally threatening excesses of alcohol and cocaine. The Bush presidency is today's incarnation of the long-festering Puritan curse.

But keeping with the times, Bush's public sexuality embodies a highly fetishized eroticism, replete with all kinds of symbolic meaning. Strutting about in his Top Gun uniform or with his sleeves rolled up while he ineptly asserted command amidst the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, Bush is a fetishist's dream come true. He understands (if only unconsciously) that the trappings of power, the costumes, the proclamations, the public presentations, are as essential as its exercise, the wars conducted, the deals cut, the legislation passed. Whether in a Top Gun outfit, a business suit or swaggering in a cowboy getup, Bush's uniforms codify a fetishistic representation of power.

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As the Foley scandal continues to unravel, the great unspoken fears among Republicans--and raised by Christian commentators and bloggers--is that Foley did violate (whether through sexual assault or seductive email exchanges) one or more of the pages and that a Republican man-boy sex ring could be operating in Congress. Recently, CBS's Gloria Borger reported on what is known as "The List" -- what an unidentified House Republican called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." A few days later, New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich added fuel to the fire by making public that every month or so, ten top staff members from Capitol Hill got together for dinner. Referring to themselves as the "P Project," a nod to P Street that cuts through Washington's version of boy's town, they met to commiserate about their experiences being gay Republicans.

The List includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries and two directors of communications. If accurate, it shows that some of the Christian right's favorite Washington legislators, including Representative Katherine Harris, Robert Dornan and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum, knowingly hired gay staffers. These insiders join a growing gay caucus within the Republican orbit that includes Jim Kolbe (Arizona), the retiring (and only "out") Republican Congressman, as well as retired--and disgraced--Rep. Ed Schrock (VA), a virulent right-winger forced to resign when his secret homosexuality was made public; questions about the sexuality of David Dreier (R-CA) circulate in the Los Angles gay press. This orbit also includes two legislative insiders central to the Foley affair, Jeff Trandahl, the former House clerk, and Kirk Fordham, former aide to Foley and Tom Reynolds (R-NY). Most disturbing, against a background of Christian fundamentalist denunciation of homosexuality as a sin, a value embraced by the Republican party, none of these upright political leaders repudiated the belief, let alone left the party.
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the last paragraph of the article says that - Bush-the-Lesser's ultimate historical legacy may well be a profound sexual panic.

I don't know if panic is the right word but whatever it is it is 'profound'.