Wink-and-nod smear mongering

I used to be a regular reader of the anti-Bush website Salon.com but its shrill tedium has turned me off in the last few years. (Its consistent ad hominem attacks against Ralph Nader's candidacy last year didn't help)

It regularly rails against the right-wing smear machine but is more than happy to use some of its tactics.

Today, I saw an article that repeated rumors about the sexuality of right-wing Rep. David Dreier, who had been expected to take over as House majority leader for the indicted Tom DeLay.

Though Dreier is one of the most detestible Congressmen in a body with more than a few, I loathe this sort of sneaky, smear campaign. The Salon attack didn't even offer any original journalism on Dreier's alleged sexuality; it merely repeated rumors peddled by other publications.

The article's author, Tim Grieve, passed off this smear as an "analysis" of why Dreier may have been passed over for majority leader in favor of Roy Blunt. In reality, it was just nothing more than peddling the rumor that one of the top right-wingers in Congress is thought to be gay be some. It was the loathsome wink-and-a-nod attacks that Salon regular condemns Karl Rove and company for engaging in. ("Psst, did you hear? Dreier's a homo! Pass it on.)

Grieve rationalizes the attack by pointing out that Dreier voted against the gay rights lobby on some issues they think are important (in favor of the misnamed Defense of Marriage Act and in favor of banning gays from adopting kids in the District of Columbia). I think Dreier is profoundly wrong on those issues but are they so fundamental that the politics has to get personal? Reasonable people can argue that gays shouldn't get married or adopt kids. I think the state should get out of the marriage business altogether and sanction civil unions for gays and straights. There is no reason, as I see it, that gays shouldn't be able to adopt children. But those are simple policy positions without a consensus in the country at this point in time. If Dreier were advocating the ritual stoning of gays or that they be forced to wear pink triangles on their lapel, I might take a different view.

Salon and like-minded folks like to think of themselves as better than those nasty righties, but they're just as capable of being unethical if they think someone "deserves" it. Salon claims to oppose the right-wing smear machine, but quite clearly it's only the right-wing part they object to.