Right Wing Hall of Shame

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Monday, September 22 2003, 10:21AM

After 20 years of listening to their lies, I've had enough of all the right-wing hypocrisy, so today I'm fighting back. Thanks to the two new excellent books by Al Franken and Joe Conason, I've prepared some ammunition to fight back against the liars on the right. Most of these high-profile right-wing leaders talk extensively about morality and patriotism, but as you'll see here, many of them don't practice what they preach.

If you're like me, you've heard over and over again how the liberals hate America. The conservatives pretend they have a monopoly on family values, morality, the flag and patriotism. Liberals, on the other hand, are accused of being soft on crime, weak on defense, low on morals, and out of touch with the average person.

I'm proud to be a liberal. If liberalism means looking out for other people and not trying to impose my views on the rest of the world, then I'm glad to be a liberal. If liberalism means I respect my country enough to speak up when I disagree, I'm happy to be a liberal. And if liberalism means I don't make up lies to challenge my opponents on their patriotism, Christianity, or morality, then I'm not the least bit ashamed to call myself a liberal.

On the other hand, a lot of these so-called conservatives should be ashamed of their hypocrisy, lies and demagoguery. It's not that conservatives are the only hypocrites, liars and demagogues, but this particular group of right-wing conservatives are using those tactics to vilify and demonize anyone who disagrees with them.

So here now, thanks to Al Franken and Joe Conason, are my nominees for the Right Wing Hall of Shame.

John Ashcroft
Young Ashcroft never served in Vietnam because he was too busy teaching. As a Republican senator in 1997, Ashcroft said "the state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights," but as Attorney General he promoted and defended the USA Patriot Act, which restricts civil rights and civil liberties in the interest of fighting crime and terrorism.

William Bennett
Bennett served as Education Secretary and drug czar in the Reagan and Bush Administrations and since then as America's self-appointed virtue czar. In 1997, he said homosexuality "takes 30 years off your life" and claimed the average life expectancy for gay men is just 43. In 2003, Bennett confirmed media reports that he has been a frequent high-stakes gambler at casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, although his group, Empower America, opposes the extension of casino gambling.

Mike Bowers
The Georgia Republican Attorney General defended that state's sodomy laws in the famous 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, but later his campaign for governor was upended when the media exposed his 10-year affair with his secretary.

David Brock
in his book, Blinded By The Right, the former right-wing hatchet man, now openly gay, acknowledged how he had been manipulated by conservatives to attack the Clintons. At least he owned up to his disgraceful past.

Pat Buchanan
Despite his pro-military rhetoric today, Buchanan avoided military service in Vietnam because of a bad knee.

Dan Burton
Although Burton called Clinton a "scumbag," the family values Republican senator bore a son out of wedlock.

George H.W. Bush
In his 1988 convention speech, Bush said, "Read my lips: no new taxes." Two years later, after he had been safely elected, he raised taxes. The Bush campaign was also responsible for the racist Willie Horton ads. Bush claimed to be a full partner in the Reagan White House but said he was conveniently "out of the loop" during the Reagan Administration Iran-Contra scandal of trading arms for hostages.

A week before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bush's ambassador told Hussein, "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait...the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

George W. Bush
Young Bush joined the Texas National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam. In 1976, he was arrested for drunk driving. At the 1988 Republican Convention, reporter David Fink asked Bush what he talked about with his father when they're not talking politics. Bush replied, "Pussy." In his campaign, Bush vaguely admitted he had done "some irresponsible things when I was young and irresponsible." When asked if he had ever used drugs, Bush cleverly responded, "I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child."

In October 2002, Bush said definitively that "the Iraqi regime possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons." Nearly a year later, no weapons of mass destruction have been found.

Saxby Chambliss
The right-wing Republican from Georgia defeated decorated Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland in the 2002 Senate election by comparing Cleland to Saddam Hussein. Although Cleland "lost three limbs in Vietnam," Chambliss never served because of a "knee problem."

Dick Cheney
Cheney avoided serving in Vietnam by claiming he had "other priorities." In the 2000 campaign, Cheney claimed he had not benefited from government affirmative action to create his wealth, even though he was hired as CEO of Halliburton with absolutely no business experience after he served as defense secretary in the first Bush Administration. Halliburton went on to win billions of dollars in government contracts.

Helen Chenoweth
During the 1998 Clinton impeachment scandal, it was revealed that Chenoweth had had an 8-year adulterous affair with Republican Representative Henry Hyde. But in 2002, as chairwoman of America 21, she published a letter to churches that the election that year would determine "whether godly leaders will control the agenda and the policy in the U.S. Congress."

Anne Coulter
Although Coulter once compared First Lady Hillary Clinton to a "prostitute" and criticizes the lax morality of liberals, the preachy conservative has never been married herself. Coulter, who once dated the son of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, said on national television: "Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me, I'm not married."

Tom DeLay
DeLay claims he could not serve in Vietnam because there was no space left for him after all the black kids were signing up in the military to get out of the ghetto. Thirty years later, the pugnacious House Majority Leader told Senator Tom Daschle to "shut your mouth" in French after Daschle expressed doubts about the President's rush to war in Iraq. After encouraging a witch hunt of President Clinton's sexual life, DeLay attacked reporters for "obstructing justice" when they discovered the sexual histories of Republican moralists.

Newt Gingrich
Gingrich never served in Vietnam because he was in graduate school. He later said he regretted not serving because he felt he "missed something." In 1993, the House Republican predicted Clinton's economic plan "will lead to a recession next year." In 1998, after the Clinton economic boom and a disastrous midterm election for the Republicans, Gingrich was forced to resign from office.

Despite his preachy morality, Gingrich handed divorce papers to his first wife while she was in a hospital recovering from ovarian cancer. He told his second wife over the phone that he wanted a divorce. Beginning in 1993, Gingrich had been in an adulterous relationship with a staff member Callista Bisek, 23 years younger than Gingrich. Gingrich later married Bisek.

Rudy Giuliani
The pushy, preachy New York mayor left his wife, Donna Hanover, to shack up with another woman, Judith Nathan. But this paragon of family values threatened to pull the lease on the Brooklyn Museum of Art if it didn't cancel a controversial exhibit that offended his religious sensibilities.

Sean Hannity
In his book, Let Freedom Ring, the right-wing radio and television personality claims that "decades of liberal no-growth policies have seriously endangered our economic and national security," in spite of the fact that President Clinton presided over the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. Hannity also claims "liberal Democrats" at first "showed little interest" in investigating intelligence failures that led up to the 9-11 attacks, but the truth is that the White House resisted the investigation.

When President Clinton launched a military campaign in Kosovo in 1999, Hannity said "I don't think Clinton has the moral authority or ability to fight this war correctly." But when Senator Tom Daschle criticized President Bush before the 2003 Iraq War, the hypocritical Hannity accused him of "disgracefully attacking the president at a time when we're going to war."

Jesse Helms
The conservative North Carolina senator is legendary for his vicious right-wing politics. In 1990, Helms used the infamous "white hands" campaign ad against a black opponent, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt. The ad showed a white fist crumbling up a job application and said: "You needed that job...but they had to give it to a minority." Helms called the University of North Carolina "the University of Negroes and Communists," he called civil rights activists "communists and sex perverts" and he opposed President Clinton's nomination of Roberta Achtenberg because she was a "damn lesbian."

Henry Hyde
During the 1998 Clinton impeachment scandal, it was revealed that Hyde had had an 8-year adulterous affair with Republican Representative Helen Chenoweth.

Laura Ingraham
Ingraham is another preachy conservative who criticizes the lax morality of liberals but is not married herself. In college, she edited the right-wing Dartmouth Review, which slandered faculty critics and outed participants at a gay students meeting.

Rush Limbaugh
Despite his pro-military radio rhetoric today, Limbaugh avoided military service in Vietnam because of a medical deferment. Limbaugh has been divorced twice, and he met his third wife on the Internet.

Bob Livingston
After Newt Gingrich resigned as House Speaker, his elected successor Bob Livingston resigned from Congress in 1998 after his marital infidelity was revealed.

Trent Lott
Lott avoided military service in Vietnam and spent part of the time as a cheerleader at Ole Miss. Lott was forced to resign as Senate Majority Leader in December 2002 after making comments that supported Senator Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign. Lott said "if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."

John McLaughlin
The conservative McLaughlin, host of the McLaughlin Group, settled a sexual harassment suit brought by a former employee. He has been married twice.

Bill O'Reilly
O'Reilly lied repeatedly about his journalistic credentials, claiming he had won a prestigious Peabody Award for his work at Inside Edition. In reality, Inside Edition had won a less prestigious Polk Award a year after O'Reilly left the show. O'Reilly lied and said he came from a rough working-class neighborhood but actually grew up in a prosperous suburb, attended private school and a private college. O'Reilly claimed to be an Independent voter but was actually a registered Republican since 1994. O'Reilly led a boycott of Pepsi for using Ludacris in a commercial because of the rap artist's explicit lyrics, but O'Reilly used explicit language in his own suspense novel, Those Who Trespass.

John Paulk
The prominent national ex-gay leader was caught inside Mr. P's, a popular gay bar in Washington's Dupont Circle, on September 19, 2000.

Dan Quayle
Despite his pro-military rhetoric today, Quayle joined the Indiana National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam.

Ronald Reagan
The paragon of family values, Reagan divorced his first wife, Jane Wyman, in 1949. After signing a massive tax cut in 1981, the very next year Reagan signed the largest tax increase in history. In 1985, after telling the country that he would not negotiate with terrorists, Reagan approved a plan to sell arms to the Iranians to help win the release of hostages held in Beirut by Iranian terrorists.

Steve Symms
In 1988, the Idaho Republican senator falsely accused Mike Dukakis's wife Kitty Dukakis of burning the American flag. In 1992, he lost his reelection after he divorced his very ill wife of 30 years.

Clarence Thomas
Thomas never served in Vietnam because of a medical 4-F status. Although Thomas opposes affirmative action, when he was nominated by President Bush, he had served only one year as a judge. Bush claimed "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this sense that he is the best qualified at this time." Remarkably, this intellectual giant claimed he had never thought about Roe v. Wade when it was decided while he was in law school.

After law professor Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment in the workplace, Thomas pulled out the race card and claimed he was the victim of a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks."

George Will
The bow-tied conservative never served in Vietnam because of a student deferment. Will's first wife reportedly put many of his belongings outside their home when she discovered he was having an affair.

Armstrong Williams
In 1997, Williams was sued by former employee Stephen Gregory, who accused him of repeatedly fondling and kissing him, then firing him when Gregory tried to avoid the advances. An out-of-court settlement was reached that avoided a trial.

Many of these military hawks never served in the military. Many of these family values folk never got married, got divorced, or cheated on their spouses. And a lot of the others just lie. I'm not condemning them for what they did, but nor should they be in the business of condemning others for doing the same things.

Sources: Conason, Joe, Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, 2003. Franken, Al, Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, 2003.

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