"Democrat" Steny Hoyer won't get my money

Each time nowadays when the DCCC calls, I have to tell them they won't get my money this election year unless and until they can prove to me they've grown some balls.

DC insider newspaper The Hill reported this unfathomable behaviour from the man who purports to be second-in-command in the Democratic House delegation:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took on a rare role yesterday as a defender of President Bush.

Hoyer came to the defense of the commander in chief after Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where the president took a drubbing from comedian Stephen Colbert.

“I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough,” Hoyer said. “He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect.”

“I’m certainly not a defender of the administration,” Hoyer reassured stunned observers, but Colbert “crossed the line” with many jokes that were “in bad taste.”

No, Mr. Hoyer. No, no, no. Here, let me explain to you what is "in bad taste".

Jokes about a sitting preznit jacking off a horse, perhaps? Little off-colour, maybe? You see, references to bestiality are perfectly OK ... as long as it's done "in good fun" (even if you have to explain to the kids what "milking the horse" means, I suppose).

How about 'jokes' about not finding weapons of mass destruction that were the raison d'etre for starting a war which has killed 2400 U.S. servicemen so far and many thousands of others? A war based on completely mangled intelligence and outright lies. Is that not hip-slappingly, rip-roaringly funny? Yep, nothing raises a laugh like jokes about why people's bodies are being violently dismembered by high explosives and supersonic metal projectiles traversing their bodies.

Yeah, these are "funny."

What's intolerable is to actually make some biting comments that actually point out what a bozo the preznit is and that he hasn't any clothes. No deviant sexual references, no humour in disrespect of the sacrifice of dead soldiers. Just a graduate dissertation on "truthiness". If you actually get too close to serious matters such as the rape of a nation and thousands of needless deaths, the people who bear part of the responsibility -- whether by commission or by assent -- lose some of their sense of humour.

But I think what really irks Hoyer ... and the local audience of slacker media that Colbert also skewered ... was the no-holds-barred needling of all the enablers in the media and the Democratic congressional caucus. Colbert was doing what Hoyer should be doing. And that has to hurt. Sorry, Hoyer, if it hurts, get a clue and go do your job. Until you do, I'll give my money this year to the few Democrats, like Feingold, who have a pair.

H/T to John Aravosis at AmericaBlog and Buzzflash for this story.