Salon.com has a report that tried to give the flu to Gary Bauer according to NYpost. This is kind of wierd and sick if you ask me. I took the time to send them an e-mail and also notified those that advertise with them as to what kind of people they are associating with. I think we should all do this. I don't intend to vote for the guy but I don't think I'd try to give him the flu. This is, as Beavis would say "beyond the limits of good taste". http://www.nypostonline.com/commentary/23221.htm

-- Hank (reardon@not.now), January 28, 2000

Answers

I should have said a reporter. The guy worked for salon.com as a reporter.

-- Hank (reardon@not.now), January 28, 2000.

Hmm, I started a thread on this earlier today ("Only in America") and it was deleted.

I wonder why?

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), January 28, 2000.

"He sucked on a pem..." ROFLMAO

-- JB (noway@jose.com), January 28, 2000.

---ask anyone who's had this three week long flu going around, it ain't fun. You can die from it. I think that someone should take a xxxxxxxx xxx to that guy, start on his xxxxxxxx, and work up to his xxxxx. Then get mean with him. It's vile and disgusting what he did, and with this report, maybe a mean lawyer or six will get involved. I consider it biological terrorism.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), January 28, 2000.

Didn't someone suggest this came from the ONION?????

C

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 28, 2000.

This reminds me of persons with Aids intentionally having unsafe sex to infest other persons. It is my belief that this person, if intentionally has committed the acts described for the reasons reported, should be charged with attempted manslaughter.

---Hokie

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SNOTTY LITTLE GERM SPREADS LIBERAL HATE By ROD DREHER

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DURING the Clinton impeachment battle, the online magazine Salon gratuitously revealed that leading House Republican Henry Hyde had an extramarital affair 30 years ago. Was that playing dirty?

"Frankly, yes," the mag's editors conceded in an editorial. "But ugly times call for ugly tactics."

Salon, ever a trailblazer, has just gone beyond character assassination against conservative politicians, and has begun going after them with germ warfare.

This week in Salon, syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage wrote of his undercover stint with the Gary Bauer campaign in Iowa. While lying in a Des Moines hotel room suffering from the flu, Savage caught the candidate on TV speaking out against gay marriage.

That did it. The openly gay Savage decided his mission was clear: "Get close enough to Bauer to give him the flu, which, if I am successful, will lay him flat just before the New Hampshire primary."

Savage regales readers with tales of coughing on everything in the Bauer office, even licking doorknobs when nobody was looking. He sucked on a pen he later handed to the candidate.

"My plan was a little malicious -- even a little mean-spirited," Savage wrote. "But those same words describe the tactics used by Bauer and the rest of the religious right against gays and lesbians."

My, what tidy moral reasoning. Hate your opponent's rhetoric? Then do your dead-level best to put him and his staff in the hospital. Ugly times, after all, call for ugly tactics.

Bauer's Iowa office was shell-shocked by the news.

"We just kind of knew him as Dan," said Iowa campaign director Loras Schulte. "This is trash-can journalism at its worst. I have no idea what he may have tried to infect us with."

Indeed, it's hard to think of a stunt that could better play into the hands of authentic homophobes. Think of it: a crusading gay avenger secretly tries to pass on a virus to Christian conservatives, and is rewarded for his efforts by a trendy media outlet. It's the kind of fevered propaganda you'd expect from the crazy "God hates fags" people.

Savage couldn't be reached because, according to his Seattle office, "He's lost somewhere in the Midwest." He'd better be across Iowa state lines. A spokesman for the Iowa attorney general's office says the jerk's flu-bug prank opens him up to felony assault charges.

And, by signing an Iowa voter-registration form so he could participate in the caucuses, Savage committed perjury.

Salon editor David Talbot said he didn't send Savage out to infect the Bauerites, and claims not to condone it. But he was pleased to print the story all the same, under the moniker "The Merry Prankster."

Is giving the flu to people on purpose Salon's idea of a "merry prank"?

My wife and I spent two days in the hospital last Thanksgiving, watching our flu-infected newborn gut it out with tubes coming out of his feet, screaming from a spinal tap the doctors had to do to test for meningitis. I wouldn't wish that hell on my worst enemy.

But for Talbot, such sneering disregard for human suffering is just lively journalism.

"It was provocative and it raised lots of questions about the ways gays are scapegoated by the religious right," Talbot said. "The kind of passion and fury that Dan feels I completely empathize with."

Bob Giles of the media think tank Freedom Forum warns that Salon is setting a dangerous precedent.

Savage "is acting as a terrorist, and he's using a journalistic cover to do it," Giles said. "This is the kind of unedited behavior that some will try on the Internet."

Where is the outrage? If a right-winger angry over Al Gore's gay- rights views tried to take down the veep's campaign by spreading disease within its ranks, then profited from it by penning a sanctimonious tell-all, the "hate crimes" hysterics would be baying for blood.

Not necessarily Salon. Talbot says he might be willing to publish such a piece from the right "if the writer did it with sufficient craft and wit."

That's not comforting. That's chilling.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 28, 2000.

I do not know about the rest of you but I consider this nothing more than a "biological terrorist attack". This Dan Savage with premeditation spread a viral agent with the intent of infecting and causing disease amongst innocent people. This is not a harmless virus either considering the number of elderly that were exposed and the potential morbidity of this flu. I am shocked that we have not heard anything from the FBI and Justice Department that has jurisdiction over this. I am not surprised by the silence though, considering the source of the attack and the Salon support.

-- PA Engineer (PA Engineer@longtimelurker.com), January 28, 2000.

If this is true, the man should be prosecuted just as they prosecute people who deliberately try to spread AIDS. Utterly repellent.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 29, 2000.

Licking doorknobs??? This man needs some therapy.

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.

Uh, guys 'n' gals? Read the Salon article: Link

Mr. Savage only considers (fantasizes, essentially, in a flu-induced delirium) doing the "bio-terrorism" thing of spreading nasty virii throughout Mr. Bauer's offices. He does not actually do so. While his revenge fantasy is more than a little crude, it ain't nohow actionable.

"What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?"

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 29, 2000.

Correction, and my sincere apologies. I had not read all the way to the end of the article. Mr. Savage does indeed set about intentionally trying to infect both the offices and Mr. Bauer himself.

Salon definitely has some explaining to do.

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 29, 2000.

You seem to be doing some creative reading.

Take it at face value, then read the corroborating information at http://www.nypost.com/01282000/commentary/23221.htm -- looks like Salon is taking it at face value too. So is the IA AG. Looks like spit-boy is in a world of used food.

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), January 29, 2000.

Sorry, I posted before your clarification appeared.

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), January 29, 2000.

and THEY say we are INTOLERANT?!!! hmmmmmm.... i can't recall the last right wing conspiracy to lick door knobs, pens, etc?

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 29, 2000.

Bathroom doorknobs? Obviously they *will* put anything in their mouths. Somebody send this guy a Winchester.....

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), January 29, 2000.

and just what does this have to do with Y2K and/or Computer Data Problems?

sheesh,

From the story, for those who just cant bear to actually read the damn thing, do any of you agree with Gary Bauer?:

On day three, still sick as a dog, I decided I had to get out of bed and do my job.
I had planned on following one of the loopy conservative Christian candidates around -- Bauer or Keyes -- and writing something insightful and humanizing about the candidate, his campaign and his supporters.

Then, from my deathbed, I caught Gary Bauer on MSNBC.
"Our society will be destroyed if we say it's OK for a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman," Bauer said.
Seeing Bauer go off about gay marriage reminded me of something he said back in December when the Vermont Supreme Court came out for same-sex marriage.
"I think what the Vermont Supreme Court did last week was in some ways worse than terrorism," Bauer told the Associated Press.

When Bauer tells people that gays and lesbians are a threat to families,
I take that personally. I feel I have a right to be angry.
And one day I'd like to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV and see someone point out that if anyone's threatening a family, it's Bauer -- he's threatening mine.

Or at least ask a Republican who asserts that gays and lesbians are a threat to families this obvious, though never asked, follow up question:

"Oh, really? How?"

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.