John McCain: Child Porn and Sex Slavery Are Bad:
In a speech yesterday, John McCain took brave stands on two issues. Using more rhetorical flourishes than a mincing dandy in the court of Louis XIV, McCain courageously announced that he is opposed to child pornography and human sex trafficking. It was a bold move, to say that kiddie fuck photos and rape victim enslavement are bad things. Next up for McCain: a major policy address where he declares ice cream delicious and "Hey, I love pie, you cunts."

So what was the real purpose behind the speech, since the only people who would disagree with McCain are, you know, child pornographers, sex traffickers, and their customers. Mostly, it was just more coded red meat for the slavering dogs of the evangelical right. In between his pledges that the federal law enforcement agencies in a McCain presidency will go after criminals (which is not unlike saying that book sellers will sell books, goddamnit), McCain dropped a few culture war bombs to soothe the raging erections of the dwindling numbers of Christian conservatives.

"There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man's inhumanity to man; to ignore the darker side of human nature that encroaches upon our decency by subtle degree," McCain said, although the Rude Pundit's not sure that any reasonable person has ever used "moral relativism" as a way of giving a pass to someone who kidnaps little boys and records them being fucked by grown men and then sells the images and videos to men who wish to masturbate to drugged, crying children being anally raped. No, no, the Rude Pundit's pretty fuckin' certain no one has ever said, "Aw, shit, that's just the way they do things in Germany."

McCain blamed our culture, though, for making us blind to such things: "There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture." And perhaps after watching "Two Girls, One Cup," one can say, "I've witness the nadir, the omega of human existence," but, still, and all, it's safe to say that the discovery of a Dominican sex slave basement brothel in New Jersey still has the capacity to at least make one remark, "Well, that's not very nice."

McCain let the nutzoid evangelicals know that he's on their side when it comes to makin' sure the message o' Christ's mighty hammer o' love needs to be spread: "There is no right more fundamental to a free society than the free practice of religion. Behind walls of prisons and persecuted before our very eyes in places like China, Iran, Burma, Sudan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia are tens of thousands of people whose only crime is to worship God in their own way. No society that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way." Putting aside the whole "kicking Myanmar while it's underwater" thing, it does seem that religious freedom might be pretty fuckin' low on the list of "shit what we needs" for, like, the millions of people in those countries, whether or not they're allowed to worship their own version of the invisible sky wizard. Let's say, oh, fuck, howzabout food? Or not being murdered in the streets? Or, you know, not fearing being totally obliterated?

Yeah, it's not that kiddie porn and modern slavery aren't awful things that need to be dealt with. It's just that maybe we could spend a little less time on how watching YouTube and Paris Hilton desensitizes the individual American and a little more time on how the government participates in or ignores the degradations. Is John McCain seriously going to tell China, "Hey, motherfuckers, let the people pray" in any way other than with a wink?

And when McCain says, "Accepting the degradation of values we believe are universal is to relinquish some of our own humanity. America was founded on the belief in the inherent dignity of all human life and that this dignity can only be preserved through shared respect and shared responsibility," maybe he could tell that to a naked guy in his fifth year in solitary at Gitmo.

Important pop culture reference note: If you don't know what "Two Girls, One Cup" is, Google and read about it before you watch it. No, really. This is your only warning.