Demagogue

A link between political douche-bag Jack Abramoff and the morality sheriff Lou Sheldon? You bet there is, and Tucker Carlson writes about it today in a column that Atrios declares "shockingly sensible." Not only that -- it reveals that Lou Sheldon is even more of a whacko and hypocrite than we might have thought. Carlson writes:

Lou Sheldon was the first person I ever officially interviewed. I was 22 and working at a quarterly magazine in Washington ... (and writing) a story about religious revival in the inner city.

... Someone suggested I talk to the Reverend Lou Sheldon, the head of a group called the Traditional Values Coalition .... Sheldon came to my office for the interview. We sat across from each other in my cubicle and I threw a series of questions at him. He answered each one impatiently, then stopped me.

"You want to know what the single biggest problem facing inner-city black neighborhoods is?" Yes, I nodded, readying my pen and pad. Sheldon paused. "Homosexuality," he said.

As a general matter, I try to give people like Lou Sheldon the benefit of the doubt.

As you may have guessed, this is one of the not so "sensible" lines that Carlson penned.

... I wanted to keep an open mind. But I couldn't.

Homosexuality was the biggest problem in the inner cities? Bigger than crime? And unemployment? And poverty? And broken families? And AIDS? And for that matter, graffiti? Nope, there was no way around it. What the Reverend Lou had said was bizarre. And creepy too.

So it was with not all that much surprise that I read Lou Sheldon's name again recently, in a story about disgraced lobbyist and admitted felon Jack Abramoff.

... Sheldon allegedly took money from an Abramoff client called eLottery and in return pressured members of Congress to defeat an anti-gambling bill. Sheldon was joined in this by former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, another longtime Abramoff friend.