Spreading Santorum

Several years ago after Rick Santorum's infamous Associated Press interview where he mentioned man on dog sex and other relevant issues Dan Savage coined a new term: spreading santorum. You commonly see many gay men and women wearing t-shirts with the term and its definition at various Pride events. It's become a method for mocking the Senator and his 17th century mindset.

Interestingly all of a sudden a right wing journalist is attacking the Left for the term. It seems he recently discovered a website which has been around for several years and is under the mistaken assumption it just appeared because of the Virginia Republican's re-election campaign. Get with it Mr. Voight SpreadingSantorum.com has been around for quite a while.

Here's what Mr. Voight has to say:

This libel is childish and disgusting, but frankly, it is not unexpected
from the left. As I have pointed out in past editorials, the loudest voices of
the extreme left tend to also be those who are the most unbalanced personally.
Instead of discussing issues with civility, these individuals only seem able to
name-call, shout profanity, and pander hyperbole.

The on-line slander of Senator Santorum simply confirms that he is a
tremendous threat to the wayward agenda of the left.

Wow, he says this amounts to libel and slander. First off, make up your mind, is it libel or slander? Well actually neither. Senator Santorum, to begin with, is a public figure. A VERY public figure. He's fair game for criticism, satire, ridicule and criticism. He certainly engages in enough of all that himself. That's politics. The fact Mr. Voight posted his column on Alan Keyes' website says everything you need to know about the author of these words.

The really amazing irony of this is Mr. Voight has no apparent criticism of right wing nutcases calling for the execution of New York Times writers and their families. No condemnation of the blogger (I'll protect the guilty by not linking to it but read about it here) who called for the lynching of five Supreme Court Justices because of the Hamdan decision. How on earth does having some satirical fun with Senator Man on Dog equate with those atrocious comments?