Anti-Semitism, The Media's Gay Love and So Much More!

Fox News And Savage Tag Team Barney Frank


The right sure has been having a field day reaming homo-politico Barney Frank.

First there was Fox News’ Bill Sammon claiming the press had spared Congressman Frank negative press because he’s gay.

The lusty bits stem from a relationship Frank – who heads the House Financial Services Committee – had with former Fannie Mae executive Herb Moses. Moses and Frank’s relationship ended in 1998, the same year Moses left the doomed mortgage lender.

Despite the chronological distance between Frank, Moses and the most recent meltdown, Sammon calls on his conservative pals to raise the specter of Frank’s gay ways, which, for some reason, provide a shield. David Fiderer elaborates:

Sammon’s original source material was offered up by one of those right wing storefronts, the Business & Media Institute. Sammon quoted Business & Media Institute vice president Dan Gainor, a frequent guest on the Fox Business Network. “If this had been his ex-wife and [Frank] was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane,” said Gainor. “But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.”

Really? ‘Cause that’s news to us. Fiderer wonders whether Sammon was getting revenge for Frank’s whooping of Bill O’Reilly last week. Probably.

Meanwhile, the always infuriating Michael Savage may have outdone himself by both repeating age old – and erroneous – gossip about Frank’s sexual history in Washington, a “history” Savage claims tarnishes the whole of Judaism.

Frank came under fire back in 1990, when staffer Stephen Gobie claimed Frank allowed him to run a prostitution ring out of his house. The House ethics committee found that Frank had done nothing naughty and “did not have either prior or concomitant knowledge of prostitution activities involving third parties alleged to have taken place in his apartment.” That was eighteen years ago, yet Savage last week spoke of it as truth. Via Media Matters:

And Barney’s an upstanding man. He ran a house of ill repute for male prostitutes out of his apartment in Washington. But now he’s talking about Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for the Jewish people. It makes my flesh crawl when a lowlife degenerate vermin like him brings up the Jewish people. I’ll tell you the truth: I squirm, I cringe when I hear a degenerate like Barney Frank reverting to this. Of all people to wrap himself in religion, of all the people to have done it, this lowlife communist rat is the wrong one to do it. You want to know where anti-Semitism comes from? It comes from men like Representatives Barney Frank…

Now, we know Savage and other right wing wackos are illogical beasts who fail to grasp the reality of social evolution, but the radio host’s argument goes beyond his typical lunacy. In short, it makes no sense. Wouldn’t anti-Semites be drawn primarily from the same group that hates gays? Therefore, Frank’s gay ways wouldn’t birth anti-Semitism. It would only fuel it further, much in the same way Savage fuels homophobia. It’s the circle of right-wing life!

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