Masturbation, Mutilation and Tea

Apparently, my feelings about the Tea Party are very funny over in Trollhattan, because I'm regularly accused of stupidity and dishonesty and the entire list of standard calumnies when I mention the evidence of insanity in the house of Tea. "Proof" is the usual demand of the rightly accused and of course there's never proof of insanity; but not only do most people know it when they see it, they also know the preponderance of evidence when they're drowning in it.

Take Christine O'Donnell -- please. Masturbation, says the Delaware Tea Party Express candidate soon to appear on primary election ballots, is the same as adultery and as "proof" she offers the Bible. Yes, the same book that tells us that a cheeseburger is an abomination and damnation results from using cotton thread to sew a linen shirt.

"the Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust."

Of course when she says "the Bible" she's referring to a Gospel and it's inclusion under the biblical rubric is a matter of dispute and a matter in which proof has no place. It's also a document which, like the Koran, has no legal status in our country, yet she rolls on with rapturous certainty:

"When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse's purity. As a church, we need to teach a higher standard than abstinence"

she told MTV, some years ago. Of course we're a secular Republic and not a church, but can you think of something of a "higher standard" than abstinence that doesn't include genital mutilation? I can't, but one does not expect the words of a Tea Party candidate to mean what they say any more than one expects Biblical cosmology to reflect reality.

One does expect however that when one refuses to list one's place of residence while running for Representative, using the excuse that her house was broken into, when in fact it wasn't, one will be called a liar as well as a nutjob. Please feel free to do so with my blessing.

Again, I'm sure I'll be called names and "proof" will be demanded. I'm sure I need not remind you that it's the guilty party that demands proof of their guilt, while the innocent often has more faith in the evidence. If there are more nuts in that misbegotten party than in the fruit cake you threw away last Christmas, perhaps this will serve as one more chewy bit of that evidence.