Grumpy Old Queen.
Posted on 11/29/2011 6:12:16 AM PST by markomalley
Oh, that lovable rascal, Barney Frank! He may have been opinionated (and boy did he let you know what he felt!) but he was always looking for a way to solve problems. We need more people like him in Washington.
That's the official liberal mainstream media line on the retiring congressman from Massachusetts, and it tells us more about the media than about Barney Frank. The encomia to the man pour forth from admiring reporters from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Slate. They almost all ignore entirely Frank's role in subsidizing the housing bubble, his coziness with the very industry he was regulating, his million-dollar investments in an industry he worked to boost.
And of course, the liberal mainstream ignore or gloss over the fact that Barney Frank was censured by the House of Representatives for fixing parking tickets and writing a misleading memo to Virginia probation figures. These actions were to protect the male prostitute Frank had hired for sex, but then later hired for other duties, paying him under the table without paying withholding or Social Security taxes.
This blog post at the New York Times, the hub of Frank sanitization, describes the house censure this way:
Much of the animus against Mr. Frank from the right stems from his advocacy of gay rights, and his 1990 reprimand for hiring his roommate as a personal aide.
That's like describing John Ensign's sex scandal -- sleeping with his chief-of-staff's wife and then trying to pay the couple to be quiet -- as a matter of him finding a new job for his chief of staff.
Dave Weigel at Slate has a piece about Frank being "at home in the culture wars," and quotes him saying to gay marriage opponents, "Are your relations with your spouses of such fragility that the fact I have a committed, loving relationship with another man jeopardizes them?”
Setting aside Frank's disingenous wording there -- and disingenous wording was a staple of his bullying style -- it seems that Frank's relationships with men did matter, when those men were running prostitution rings out of his house, or when he was getting them jobs at a housing-bubble-inflating Government Sponsored Enterprise Frank was supposed to be regulating, but was instead trying to protect from all regulation.
Much of the coverage of Frank's retirement glosses over the unethical blending of his sex life and his congressional privileges. That might be because Frank is gay, and bringing up his sex-related scandals seems like gay-bashing to mainstream liberal reporters. Sex scandals are only relevant if you're conservative or a Christian, I guess.
Like Rush mentioned yesterday, there are some openings as an asst football or basketball coach.
I don’t think there’s enough Lysol in the world to sanitize Barney Frank.
As Rush also said, with this retirement, Frank’s seat is wide open!
Barney’s the gay Bill Clinton when it comes to sex scandals—it’s just proof of his robust human-ness, or something.
The man is slime, pure slime.
If there was any justice in the world, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd would be in jail.
I believe the phrase is:
Barney Frank has extracted himself from a Democrat seat of government.
Let us not forget U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds who died at 69 years.......
the news media is having a feeding frenzy calling for the resignations of coaches Boeheim and Paterno, yet the the perps are hardly mentioned in comparison. Boeheim probably just thought Fine was gay.
Barney’s sliminess is matched by his self-righteousness. He gives off this tone of “How DARE you question my integrity!” when he’s questioned about his wrongdoing. On top of that, he’s always prancing around like he’s the smartest guy in the room, but he didn’t know a prostitution ring was being operated out of his home, had no idea his boyfriend was growing pot on his property, and asks how could he have known Fannie was heading for an iceberg?
In other words, a typical lib.
Franks fantasy was to be a waitress between Dodd and Kennedy!
The man is vile.
“How DARE you question my integwity”
fixed it
Grumpy Old Queen.
Heh. I think Barney actually qualifies as a Superfund site.
Odd, in that Frank possesses neither.
Penn State University President Spanier saw Paterno as the chief obstacle for instituting his "LGBT friendly" agenda, and wanted Paterno out years ago. Sandusky was even boasting at one time about becoming head coach. He retired in 98 after Paterno told him he would never be head coach. It wasn't Paterno who gave Sandusky emeritus status at Penn State - try Spanier and the trustees. Yet Paterno is out as a result of the media frenzy led by the Sports Illustrated and ESPN NAMBLA crowd. I hope Joe Paterno sues the hell out of them all, but am afraid this will eventually be the death of him. Sadly, the gay advocates appear to have won this one...
I was thinking “autoclave”...
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