WASHINGTON (DC)
Boston Globe
By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist | July 17, 2005
WASHINGTON
IN THE END, I've decided, after a decade of absurdities, Rick Santorum is not funny, just weird.
The Pennsylvania senator's latest outburst of cruel insensitivity -- imagining some tie between the ''culture" of Boston and the behavior of priest-rapists -- is garden variety demagoguery.
I'm glad he has been denounced and called to account by Senator Edward Kennedy and Representatives Ed Markey and Barney Frank, but I worry that the condemnation of Santorum's bizarre behavior may elevate his comments to a level of seriousness that is not merited.
The same concern should prompt decent people everywhere to battle against the constant attempts by President Bush and his architect, Karl Rove, to politicize the terrorist attacks on this country nearly four years ago. Making preposterous assertions about how those of differing ideologies and politics reacted trivializes the loss of those whose family members and other loved ones perished in the attacks. Given the fresh nature of these wounds, this kind of gutter politics is cruel.
It's no different with those who suffered the extreme trauma of sexual abuse as young people from authority figures who took hideous advantage of their vulnerability. Their extreme pain, and their families' pain, is ongoing and deep, in large part because their suffering has yet to result in justice. Playing politics with it is beyond obscene.