Dirty Libby

Richard Bradley

November 17, 2005

Richard Bradley is the former executive editor of George magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University.

I don’t normally associate bestiality with Republicans, but in Scooter Libby’s case, one has to make an exception. Consider this excerpt from Libby’s 1996 novel, The Apprentice, which chronicles the depraved training of a Japanese prostitute:

The young samurai’s mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the men and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky-white.

This is a curious passage, and not just because of the less-than-obvious connection between milky-white skin and sex with a bear. It’s strange because the author is a conservative Republican, a member (well, until recently) of an administration which considers sex—even sex between two humans—a bad, bad thing. John Ashcroft, for example, clothed a statue’s bare breast; the FCC tried to cover up Janet Jackson’s; and two months ago, the FBI launched an anti-obscenity squad.  (Would Scooter Libby’s book fit the bill?) So the fact that Dick Cheney’s closest confidante scripted a work featuring bestiality, rape and general licentiousness would seem to constitute hypocrisy in the GOP’s war against immorality—lashing out against others’ smut and sin while profiting off them yourself.

But then, it’s hardly the only such example. Here are a few more.

• Despite years of speaking out against gambling, Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, recently admitted that he had taken more than $1 million in fees from lobbyists representing Indian casinos.

• Back in his days as a Texas state legislator, Tom DeLay earned the nickname “Hot Tub Tom,” for his talents at water sports.

•  Conservative White House “reporter” Jeff Gannon turned out to be a former gay hooker.

• Rupert Murdoch, the owner of conservative Fox News and the New York Post , is also part-owner of DirecTV, which makes millions distributing pornography.

•  Illinois GOP candidate Jack Ryan dropped out of a race for U.S. Senate after disclosures that he had pressured his former wife, the actress Jeri Ryan, to go to sex clubs with him.

• Newt Gingrich cheated on two wives. His short-lived successor as House speaker, Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, stepped down from the post after admitting to his own marital infidelities.

• Lynne Cheney is the author of Sisters, a 1981 potboiler described by USA Today as including “brothels, attempted rapes, and a lesbian love affair.” Earlier this year, plans by publisher New American Library to reprint the book were abandoned after Cheney protested; her agent explained that “she did not think the book was her best work.” With lines like “And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl,” let us hope he was telling the truth.

•  GOP consultant Roger Stone allegedly advertised himself and his wife in a magazine for swingers. (Stone claimed that he had been framed.)

The list could go on (Strom Thurmond, anyone?), but as fun and titillating as that would be, there is a larger point here. The GOP bills itself as the party of family values, and in a hundred different ways imposes its moralistic judgments about sex and reproduction on the American people. It tries to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage; it subverts the FDA’s science to ban the morning-after pill; it attaches anti-birth control restrictions to foreign aid. Etcetera. And all the while the party’s most powerful members live by a double-standard of personal vice and ill-gotten gain.

Of course, hypocrisy on the part of individuals doesn’t entirely negate a morality platform. But at the least, it does suggest that some of the most powerful proponents of “family values” are deeply cynical about that aspect of the Republican agenda. They feel free to impose these values on others even while making a mockery of them in their own lives.

Moreover, in this coming campaign year there’s an opportunity for Democrats here—not to excoriate Republicans for their personal failings, which is a dangerous game, but to remind Americans that government isn’t suited to the promotion of sexual morality upon its citizens. That’s really the work of community groups, churches, schools and other grassroots organizations. Instead, citizens should  demand morality in government—e.g., sending the nation into war as a last resort and on the basis of sound intelligence; protecting the identities of CIA agents; promoting high-quality public broadcasting free from partisan influence; awarding federal contracts competitively with no favoritism shown for administration officials’ former companies.

Government shouldn’t dictate morality to citizens, but citizens should expect morality in government. It’s the kind of thing that Republicans used to say. That they no longer do provides an opening for Democrats to make their case.