Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.
He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.
His double life is now exposed with the news he has a 3-year-old love child with a divorced Air Force colonel, and critics are calling him a hypocrite.
Making this even more fantastic is the fact that Fossella, the Republican representative of a district comprised of Staten Island and a small section of Brooklyn, got arrested at the beginning of this month for driving around Fairfax County, Virginia, with a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit, and his extramarital affair first came to light when his mistress came to bail him out of jail.
Now, you can say what you want about a guy like, say, Jerry Falwell -- and Lord knows I have -- but I'll at least give Falwell this: He may have preached a petty, exclusionary brand of Christianity completely at odds with almost everything I've been taught, but he at least did us the courtesy of following that in his own personal life. He apparently never went and hooked up with gay guys in hotel rooms, and we haven't seen any "secret families" come out of the woodwork to reveal that Falwell fathered X number of bastard children and funneled them cash for years. This guy Fossella, though, not only carried on a years-long affair and fathered a child, but he thought he still held moral superiority over his gay sister, to the point where he refused to so much as breathe the same air as her at family gatherings. And that's even before you get to his multiple votes on Capitol Hill punishing not only gay people but even the people and communities who try to stand up for them.
This type of thing makes me want to go out and just punch somebody -- and it says something about the current state of the Republican Party that they're not willing to give him the heave-ho just yet. Sure, he's hateful, hypocritical scum, but . . . he got re-elected by a 14-point margin two years ago!
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
3 comments:
Just curious, did Eliot Spitzer leave you with those same feelings? I agree that it sucks the two parties now have to pander to special interest groups to become electable, be it the religious right or the left side's current choice. I think, however, that we'll see a lot more of this as politicians claim certain beliefs just to grab a previously undecided crowd.
I'm not Doug, but to answer your question, "Yes." I am a liberal Democrat, and I did not defend Spitzer, nor did I say anything such as, "It's a matter between him and his family," or, "He is a good guy." If I recall correctly NO fellow Democrats said anything in his defense.
There's something in the water up there. On both sides of the aisle. And don't get me started on California. Jeez.
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