Very much a drive-by diary about a genuinely hypocritical, dissembling conservative Republican who really disgraces no one but himself by his behavior.
To wit: eight more men have come forward to state that they either had sexual relations with Larry Craig or received advances from him.The cohort of eight includes the man who fingered the former megachurch Evangelical Ted Haggard.
***UPDATE*** I feel kinda bad for the guy myself. I mean really. His head must be about to explode from the Mobius-like internal contradictions of his life. But the fact remains that he is a very public hypocrite. It's not the fact that he's gay that bothers some people; it's the fact that he persecutes gays in public through policy and invective while pursuing the very lifestyle he so vocally abhors.
That absolutely makes him a legitimate journalistic target in my view.
The Idaho Statesman states the following:
The newspaper acknowledged that its report was not based on definitive evidence but said it also found no evidence to disprove the accounts of the four identified men. It said it reviewed the senator's travel records, which put him where the sex is alleged to have taken place, and did background checks on those making the allegations.
In an exceptionally feeble denial, Craig had this to say:
But in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press on Sunday, the senator said the newspaper's report was "completely false" and he accused the paper of careless journalism.
"It is unfortunate that the Idaho Statesman has chosen to continue to lower itself to the standards of what can best be described as tabloid journalism," Craig said in the statement.
"Despite the fact the Idaho Statesman has decided to pursue its own agenda and print these falsehoods without any facts to back them up, I won't let this paper's attempt to malign my name stop me from continuing my work to serve the people of Idaho."
The report is the Statesman's latest on allegations about Craig's sexual background since his June arrest in an airport men's room sex sting operation was reported in late August.
Statesman Editor Vicki Gowler said the newspaper spent several months checking the backgrounds and details of the men's stories.
Larry, why don't you just give up and go away? Stop. Just stop. Go get some therapy and finally deal fairly with who you really are. Your sordid, hypocritical life is splashed across the front pages of the nation's newspapers.
I'll note that when I first published this dairy there was a bit more expository writing. However, I posted this at around 2 AM this morning and immediately encountered some very odd glitches. I experienced disappearing comments; the dairy failing to appear in the right-pane list; and losing permission to view comments in my own diary! Apparently, the Kos site backs up at that time of the day. So if the page has appeared to be rather sparse, my apologies. The version that finally got lodged in the Kos site did not have all my material. :)