Too Grotesque for Mere Schadenfruede

The revelation that former GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert sexually abused at least four minors and then tried to pay to keep it silent is disturbing in and of itself. It certainly is troubling that he abused those kids before leading the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying about a consensual affair after his predecessors were removed from that position for various things. It was probably really weird when he found out about Mark Foley and those pages. 

But what does it say about hypocrisy? What does it say about so-called "family values"?

I dunno.  What does it ever say? George Reker, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig. John G. Schmitz (father of Joseph E. Schmitz and Mary Kate Letourneau.) There's a lot of fucking about amongst yon pillars of rectitude. And hypocrisy is, verily, really awful.

But kid-touching is really worse than just hypocrisy. So I look at Hastert with something worse than just schadenfreude. And I am sure some foreign tongue has a name for it, even if I don't.

This Hastert Mess is Somehow Shocking and Unsurprising

If you asked me ten years ago if I thought there would be a corruption scandal regarding Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, I'd have been diffident about it, and assume it would be just some kind of simple pay-to-play grifting of something. The news that Hastert, who had left Congress and was until just lately a lobbyist, just never stood out to me as being awful. There are some figures in politics you can, well, I won't say hate. Extremely dislike, I guess. Tom Delay was like that. Newt Gingrich was like that. Hastert wasn't "that guy"--he really came off as a basic model conservative who wasn't about ego but about doing his job in Congress.