By way of background, Matt Sanchez is the new hero of the right wing -- a Marine, a student at Columbia, and a former porn star and male escort. He claims, in a round-about way, not to be gay, but allow me some scepticism: I can see performing in gay porn if you're straight, on the assumption that men evolved as sexual creatures, pure and simple, and will fuck anything with a hole. I have a harder time accepting the idea that anyone who does not like sex with men would offer himself as an escort. Of course, this may be a Ted Haggard moment -- just acting out.
Robbie at The Malcontent is a little too predictable in his first post on Matt Sanchez:
There's something about the beleaguered gay psyche that wants to prove to the world that everyone is just as messed up as they are. So, they start off with the term hypocrite and work their way backwards looking for signs of deviant behavior in hopes of discovering some type of bastard kinship. That's why I've had the term self-loathing thrown at me so often. The gay community eats its own in a frenzied hope of self-serving fulfillment. - Matt Sanchez
You know, I'm finding it very difficult to disagree with this sentiment in light of how certain quarters are reacting to Matt Sanchez. (Check out this bit of over the top hysteria. Get thee some valium).
Frankly, I find Sanchez' comment self-serving. After all, the best defense is a strong offense, and it's just too pat to come back to the perceived attacks with the tired old line about how we all hate ourselves and take it out on each other. I say "perceived" attacks because I'm having trouble finding them. Here's the Towleroad post that Robbie characterizes as "over the top hysteria." Excuse me? I found this comment by John Aravosis at AmericaBlog. It's shrill, but Aravosis is always shrill, about everything, so you can't take that as an indication of much. And here is the original post at Joe.My.God, which Shanchez characterized as vicious, and the interview with Joe and Sanchez. (It seems to me that if all you're interested in is trashing someone, you're not going to give them the opportunity to be heard on your own blog.
Robbie follows up the first post with this one, in which he grudgingly agrees with Matt Foreman:
This is in direct contradiction to the queerospheric hysterics attacking Sanchez and the mass amounts of vitriol currently being piled upon him. It seems to me, rather than attacking Sanchez, certain bloggers might have been wiser in using him as strong example against Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Instead, certain bloggers saw Republican, underwent the predictable radical queerwolf transformation, and brought out the claws.
(The interesting thing is that Pam Spaulding, who is usually among the more vitriolic of the left-wing gay bloggers, largely confines herself to Foreman's statement. In fact, she doesn't editorialize as much as Robbie does, at least as of this writing.)
Robbie, unfortunately, falls immediately into an all-too-predictable gay-left bashing (and let's refer back to Sanchez' comments about "self-loathing" and "devouring our own").
I even read Sanchez' famous OpEd, which turned out to be a string of conservatives cliches about the left, and tremendously self-serving. But then, he admits he wants to be heard as much as anyone does.
Of course, I had to check out GayPatriot, hoping (in vain) for a surprise. Bruce Carroll had had this to say:
One of the greatest things about our nation (as opposed to others) is that we give our fellow citizens a second, third, and fourth, etc. chance to re-do their lives. Here’s an extreme example… just to make my point…. It was amazing how Richard Nixon morphed from Constitutional Villian to Elder Cold War Statesman.
But does this spirit of tolerance and renewal extend to those who challenge moral standards? Does a gay porn star get a second, third, or fourth chance to do something else with his life? Apparently the Post-Clinton Angry Liberals say “NO!”
It is amazing how an issue like this really challenges the political stereotypes of who is truly tolerant. Most (not all) Liberals these days talk the talk, but can’t walk the walk. And most (not all) Conservatives that I know don’t preach but instead accept all Americans as individual gifts from God. I’d prefer the latter.
Case in point….. Contrast Michelle Malkin’s awesome post this morning on the Sanchez matter versus the hate-filled, angry liberal commenters at Joe.My.God.
Notice one thing: Michelle Malkin is cited as a contrast to the commenters at Joe.My.God. I find a pattern here: Commenters at blog posts are taken as the representatives of liberal thought, while the actual posters are virtually ignored (in this case, the comments by Joe himself might as well not exist). Sorry, not equivalent, and if Carroll honestly thinks they are, I think I deserve a pass on considering him shallow. However, if we're going to be fair (not something that I'd accuse Carroll of without serious thought), we should haul in Malkin's commenters, or those wonderful folks at LGF, as the counterpart, or put up someone like David Neiwert or Digby as the counterpart to Malkin. (Y'know, the left doesn't seem to have an Ann Coulter.)
There are also his comments about the Post-Clinton Angry Liberals and political stereotypes. Here's another place where I'm convinced GayPatriot and I do not inhabit the same universe. I'm still looking for the monolithic, goose-stepping PC leftists. They're probably someplace close to where I left my copy of the Gay Agenda. Carroll's blog lives on straw-men and red herrings, and this is just another example. I mean, c'mon -- we're talking about a political group that can't even get its shit together long enough to run a decent campaign and only wins elections when the right gets so repellent the voters have no other alternative. Sorry -- speaking with one mouth is not something you're going to find on the left side of the aisle. Why don't we just admit it?
Ah, but then who could we accuse of doing what we're doing while we're pointing at them?
You see why I tend to dismiss GayPatriot: Zero Credibility.
Notice also, in Sanchez' remarks as well as Carroll's (and for Carroll it seems to be a mantra) -- they are "patriotic Americans." In fact, Sanchez is a "red-blooded, flag-waving 100% American." OK -- a fast and easy one, no thought required. Just say you're patriotic, and of course that means your opponents (or should I call them enemies?) are not. Let's talk for a bit about shallow readings of "patriotism," the kind that play right into the hands of the people who are trying to dismantle the country.
To both Sanchez and Carroll: You're patriotic Americans, as opposed to what? Equally patriotic Americans who don't agree with you? Of course not -- the implication is that those who disagree are dirty raghead-loving, terrorist-supporting, Christian-burning, morally depraved America haters. Like me. And those who are reading this, most likely. So you know first-hand how correct that implication is. Cheap shot, and morally dishonest. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm really tired of the "hate-filled vitriol" remarks coming from a group that lionizes people like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.
Dan Blatt at GayPatriot has this take:
First, I probably have a different opinion of porn than Michelle Malkin and others on the right. While I don’t think acting, er, performing in such videos is a noble profession nor is it something to be proud of, it’s not an evil thing. As I wrote about Tom Malin’s escorting, “As long as he’s not coercing anyone and not having sex with minors, it’s his body. What Malin used to do may not be good for his soul.”
That said, the second issue is the more important one. He has changed and is no longer doing gay porn. If a man has changed his past behavior, then we should consider the man as he is, not as he once was. Again, as I wrote about Malin, “Jewish law teaches us that if someone does Teshuvah or repentance (the word itself literally means ‘return’), by forsaking his sin and not doing it again, it cannot be held against him.” We have all done things in our past that upon reflection, we wish we hadn’t done — or were appropriate at one time in our lives, but not in our present circumstances.
The interesting thing about the posts at GayPatriot, particularly Blatt's piece, is that they're predicated on the idea that performing in gay porn (or any porn, I would assume) and having been a male escort are bad. They are "mistakes" and we should move away from them. Why? (In case anyone's wondering, I favor legalizing prostitution and I have no problems with porn. OK, there's a major ick factor to some of it -- scat is just disgusting, child porn and snuff films are disgusting in another way. Some things should be illegal -- there's simply no justifying them.) I really don't care that Sanchez was an actor in gay porn or that he's been an escort.
I see it as a shallow, mass-market "morality" that is much too popular in this country (and in others, I'm sure) that has lost sight of morality as a guiding force that comes from firmly held values and sees it as a checklist of dos and don'ts that dictate behavior, not attitude. Remember, these are among the people who would want to burn me at the stake for being a Witch, while I consider Paganism as a religion to be a very tough one, requiring constant engagement if you're going to live your life by its Rule. There are no easy outs here. Consequently, who you sleep with is irrelevant, as long as it's someone who can make an adult decision to participate. How you treat them is the most important thing.
So why all the screaming about hypocrisy? That's not so easy to figure out. In Sanchez' case, I'm not going to even try -- I have no idea as to what his thought processes are, although this post is illuminating. It's just as self-serving as his OpEd, and revealing of the mindset that I mentioned immediately above:
I don’t like porn, it reduces the mind, flattens the soul. That’s not hypocrisy talking, that’s experience. If I started off with liberal leanings, being on a gay porn set should have been heaven. In porn, everything taboo is trivialized and everything trivial is projected. How does a conservative trace his roots to such distasteful beginnings?
Fine -- he doesn't like porn. That's "experience" talking. His experience, but it does, of course, apply to everyone, because if you're a red-blooded, flag waving 100% American (especially if you're a Marine, the most American of Americans), then you get to decide what everyone thinks.
I can't honestly call that "hypocrisy," just moral blindness with a big helping of arrogance. The Greeks called it "hubris" and felt it as great a moral failing as I do.
The hypocrisy, of course, rests firmly within the movement that Sanchez seems to think is the answer to all our problems. Sanchez's comment equating porn with liberalism (and I do take it as such, considering that the contrast is with porn and "conservatism" in its current warped incarnation) is hysterically funny. See my comments about mass-market morality if you want my take on projecting the trivial. So Sanchez feels our salvation is tied up with a movement that wants to use him but not acknowledge his basic humanity. How is this not hypocritical, on their part if not on his?
I will say that I see one area where Sanchez is a hypocrite, and that's playing the victim card. For the reasons I've noted, I don't see all the hatred and vitriol that he's claiming from the left. It appears to me that there's a lot of projection here, not only on his part.
(No, I'm not going to link to his escort page or any of the photos that are more revealing than the one on his blog. They're easy enough to find if you follow the links other people have provided. Besides, I don't find him all that attractive, although it might be different if I actually met him. Probably not -- I find his politics, at least what I know of them, repellent, but you never can tell.)
Update:
Finally, a post that could, if you really, really wanted it to, be characterized as "vitriolic." From TRex at Firedoglake:
You know, people like Michelle Malkin seem to think that progressive writers like me who are reporting on the sordid gay porn past of CPAC's 2007 Hate Camp poster-boy Matt Sanchez are "gleefully" dragging this story out into the light, and you know, for me, that couldn't be further from the truth. Last night on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann", I got name-checked by Max Blumenthal (Thanks, Max!) as someone who has been following the stories that keep emerging about highly-placed gay Republican operatives, but I can't say that these stories make me happy at all.
I have to slam TRex on the sordid issue, as well. Sorry, guys, this is not a no-brainer. I wish I were still sexy enough to make money from it. I truly do.
Update II:
Chris Crain gets one thing right:
But if you believe that gays should be able to serve in the military, and that there's nothing wrong with adult entertainment, then it's Sanchez service in uniform, not his servicing out of uniform, that should matter.
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