The word “hero” is often overused. - UPDATE

It sure as shit would be here.

UPDATE: I got schnooked. He was doing satire. A cocked eyebrow or a Colbert interval (that tiniest of lags-and-looks that lets us in on the joke) woulda been nice, especially from the behind the mike and on the record in the House, but I was taken, good and proper and no two ways about it.

Here's the real story --

UPDATED: Tennessee congressman now says proposal to outlaw divorce was political satire

By BILL THEOBALD
and MICHAELA JACKSON
Staff Writers - THE TENNESSEAN

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis was trying to make a point - and not being serious - on the House floor Tuesday when he proposed outlawing divorce and adultery.

But not everyone picked up on his use of sarcasm.

The Pall Mall, TN Democrat's straight-on delivery during the House debate on gay marriage, broadcast live on C-SPAN, left many believing he was serious. The remarks, and video of them, have ping-ponged throughout political blogs on the Internet and prompted calls to his office from all over the country.

"The intent of the congressional speech was not to say that he intends to introduce legislation making divorce and adultery a felony," said Davis spokesman Tom Hayden. "Rather the intent was to point out the purely partisan nature and timing of the" constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

"As he rhetorically pointed out, if the Congress' true intent is to protect families and marriage, why limit the scope of this amendment?" Hayden added in a written statement released later Thursday. "Should we not look at factors that have more of an impact on families such as child and spousal abuse, adultery and divorce?"
...

Well, there ya go, but WTF: I managed to live down having a couple of thousand cubic yards of pompous gas let out of my younger-know-it-all-driftglass self after holding forth imperiously that Hemingway's "The Hills Like White Elephants" was obviously about the Spanish Civil War. My teacher let me have juuust enough smartass rope before she pointed out that the story was published in 1927...and the fascists began running their pre-Nazi experiments in Spain in 1936.

So I think I'll survive this too :-)

Here's my original post, the sentiment of which I'll still proudly cop to.

The facts, not so much...

This ingrown little monkey thinks that everything that jumps out from the bushes and threatens the institution of marriage -- from those irritating but oh-so-pump-primingly-useful queers, to divorce and adultery, to, presumably, flatulence and football and “women’s groups” -- needs to be outlawed. Right now. (click on the pic for the whole ramble, flown in fresh to you from 1821.)

Which is just...nutty. And what he’s doing in the Democratic Party is a profound mystery to me. But it does give me a chance to toss you over to Susie Bright – a self-described “...author, editor, performer, sex guru, teacher, mom, seamstress, pumpkinhead” – who writes “about sex and politics every day of the week.”

Which, c’mon, is a pretty terrific alloy.

(Her essay below is also followed [or preceded, depending on how you count such things] on her site by this wonderful meditation on sex, drugs and growing old entitled “The First Psychedelic Wives Club”.

In case I hadn’t mentioned it recently, Susie writes better and more truly –- and more regularly and voluminously -- about human sexuality and the thousand aspects of the business of being alive in the field of time that intersect with our horny, damaged, splendid, non-mitosis-reproducing natures that anyone I know.)

Anyway, on with the show...

Round Up the Fornicators!

Meet a Southern Democrat who thinks the anti-gay marriage amendment doesn't go nearly far enough. If you're going to crack open the Constitution, boys, get out your stone tablets and wreck it!

Rep. Lincoln Davis of Tennessee wants divorce, of any kind, to be be outlawed, and adultery made into a felony. Fornicators would never be allowed to elected office, naturally. Straight people need to be taught a lesson.

A lot of people thought Davis was being satiric, brilliantly deadpan, but it was no joke. He's been on the record for this line of thought since Day One. He's not alone, as many of his religious persuasion are quite serious about saving marriage. Homosexuals are just one fly in the ointment, as far as they're concerned.

Think Progress gives some extra depth to the story by counting at least 29 members of Congress who are divorced. They lament that there is "no official data on how many members have committed adultery."

Davis is also very concerned about child abuse, so I guess we do have some common ground.
…

I have only one quibble to register with Ms. Bright’s fine assay of this lawmaker’s astonishingly rustic, antediluvian attitude, and that is that I feel a flicker of something akin to admiration for the messed-up old rutabaga.

Not for his attitudes, certainly – nothing about his “What” is anything but absurd and repellent.

But the “How” of his “What” is oddly laudable. Or would be, if it existed only as a historical footnote from a long dead age. He is, at least, consistent. Which as we all know, in foolish quantities – such as here -- is the hobgoblin of little minds.


Like Bob Barr -- that bent little scrap of 90s-vintage irk who made a cottage industry picnicking on the Real and Imagined Sins and Peccadilloes of Bill Clinton –– at least has the courtesy of being outraged by the actual high crimes and frontal assaults on the Constitution by George Bush.

Of course, waging his orc-war on Clinton and clamping his pincers onto the Big Dog’s hind leg garnered Barr fame and power and almost weekly face time on the major networks.

Now, his indignation over the genuine and deliberate threat the Dubya regime poses to the foundational principles of our democracy gleans Bob Barr a brief appearance on PBS’s “Now” on Sunday morning, slotted between "Maya & Miguel"
(This week...”The Adventures of Rabbit-Bird Man”, which sounds like Dubya’s worst nightmare -- A Human-Animal-and-Public-Teevee hybrid on the Lord's Day!) and "Martin Yan Quick & Easy."

I’m sure there’s a lesson there somewhere.