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Commenting on Barney Frank’s conflict of interest, serving on the House Banking Committee while his partner worked at Fannie Mae, JammieWearingFool wonders if the media (save Bill Sammon who broke the story) has been ignoring this because Frank is gay.
Building on JMF’s point, Glenn Reynolds wonders if “Is this the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations?’ Or is it just, you know, a case of convenient political correctness?”
Soft bigotry of low expectations? They have lower expectations of gay relationships than they do of straight marriage? Is that why the media have not picked up on the story? Do the media assume that our relationships not subject us to the same conflicts of interest as straight ones? Because that is the assumption they are making if they continue to ignore this story.
It’s not just the mainstream media. It’s also the gay media. And indeed gay organizations. If they do not call attention to Barney’s Frank’s conflict of interest in this matter, they are saying we should not treat gay relationships the same as straight ones. It’s that simple.
Or are they unwilling to look at the flaws of an openly gay Democratic Member of Congress? But, in not looking at his flaws, they establish a double standard, a double standard which downgrades gay relationships.
I think the media’s treatment of Michael Rogers, McCain’s gay chief of staff, points to the real reason they ignore Barney’s gay life…..HE IS ONE OF THEM…..
Someone that works for McCain can’t possibly be worth promoting as an intelligent representative of the gay community.
The Dems and the MSM show their bias in case after case, this being one of the most recent examples. He must be ignorant and/or brainwashed.
But then we as gay conservatives are too often pushed aside. I was practically forced to wear an Obama button today at brunch. When i refused the “Obama pusher” looked at me like he smelled something bad.
My friends were actually protective of my position for a
change. Athough each one wore the Obama button…..
Reminds me of when Kramer refused to wear the ribbon!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??
Jeb
I just saw 60 Minutes “in depth” reporting on this issue in a mere 18 minutes. All the blame is placed on Wall Street. No light is shined on the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Congressional legislation that dictated that loans were to made to people who did not have the necessary income to make the payments.
As part of its effort to court supporters on Capitol Hill several years ago, mortgage giant Freddie Mac hired Mark Buse as a lobbyist. Buse was a longtime confidant of Sen. John McCain, and at the time, Freddie Mac feared that the senator was too outspoken on executive pay, an issue of intense concern for the highly-compensated chiefs at Freddie, The Post’s Matthew Mosk and David S. Hilzenrath report.
Buse is now chief of staff at McCain’s Senate office. In 2003, Buse reportedly was given credit inside Freddie when McCain, as chairman of the commerce committee, declined to pursue legislation addressing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, another mortgage giant, saying that the panel lacked jurisdiction. McCain aides say that the hiring of Buse had no influence on the senator’s decision-making. They point out that McCain co-sponsored a bill to overhaul regulation of Fannie and Freddie in September 2003 and again in 2006.
Over the past decade, Freddie Mac spent more than $95 million on lobbying, and its efforts were emblematic of the interconnections among Fannie, Freddie and the lawmakers whose support was critical for their business.
Buse led the Republican commerce committee staff in the late 1990s and early 2000s (and, at one time, was the chief liasion between McCain and the Bush administration), and was a lobbyist for ML Strategies, representing eBay, Goldman Sachs Group, Cablevision, Tenneco and Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
Buse’s lobbying connections have come under scrutiny before.
THE WASHINGTON POST http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/10/buse_led_the_republican_commer.html
Conflicts of interest in the media. Gwen Ifill and her book that is coming out on January 20th comes to mind. And, the fact that a number of talking heads in the mainstream media are married to others who have are active in politics and the media……..but, they don’t disclose these connections.
Rusty, this issue is only relevant if the Commerce Committee under prior chairmen held hearings or considered legislation relating to Fannie and Freddie. Now, will the rest of you, please stay on topic & address the issue of media silence and double standards.
You have a point, rusty… the whole of DC is a cesspool of unethical behavior (at the least).
Nevertheless, being in a relationship with a guy who’s a big shot at a “company” your committee is supposed to oversee and then portraying yourself as an unwilling dupe stinks even by Washington standards. It will be interesting to see how attentive the WaPo and the rest of the drive-by media is.
Do you remember the orgy of media coverage about Mark Foley, Larry Craig, and George “Macaca” Allen? None of their reported peccadillos cost us a trillion dollars nor brought the global economy to near collapse.
I admit to not reading the quote in context because I don’t have time just now, and I am fairly unfamiliar with Barney Frank except for his relationship to the Fannie/Freddie Regulation hearings (didn’t even know he was gay).
I read it immediately as meaning that there were low expectations for Democrats to have moral scruples or standards. I didn’t attribute it to having anything to do with his sexual orientation.
Just my two lyra’s worth.
p.s. I went ahead and read clicked through just in case my note sounded to ignorant (so much for homework time), and I’m not even seeing where Glyn Reynolds comes up with “soft bigotry” bit. Seems like everybody’s avoiding it because he’s a D not because he’s Gay, which reinforces for me that the low expectations apply to democrats, and refusing to address the relationship would only apply to the P.C. sentence.
the whole of DC is a cesspool of unethical behavior (at the least).
Who was it that prommised to “drain the swamp” just a few years ago? And yet they still have their jobs.
Foley, DeLay, Cunningham etc. Gond.
Pelosi, Reid, Jefferson, Frank, Dodd, Obama etc. Still serving.
Worse than that, Jefferson is campaigning to keep his job. As Pete says ‘hypocrisy, thy name is liberalism”.
Gone, rather.
We cannot have a “Frank” discussion in this climate unfortunately. He and his partner (along with the other guilty Dems (and yes some Republicans) are safe, nothing to discuss, time to move on…
Just blame it on those greedy guys on Wall Street (but not Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae).
Yes, if a gay relationship is not “real” in this situation, how can it be considered in other situations? This is sad. This is a huge step back.
Well, at least Barney’s new man isn’t turning tricks out of his bedroom.
Paul Wolfowitz got in trouble because his girl friend got a salary boost.
That was a Big Thing. Was that because he was, A, straight, or, B, republican?
As much as some would like for this to be about Frank’s sexuality, it is nothing of the sort.
Because if he were a gay Republican, he’d have been drawn and quartered by the drive-bys for not merely allowing, but CAUSING the collapse of the FMs.
It’s all about the ‘D’.
The media are so in the tank for the Democratic party, and so unconcerned with the impact that it will have on their relevance, that they’ve abandoned any pretense of objectivity.
Barney Frank had a prostitution ring being run out of his campaign office and he “had no idea”, and was on O’Reilly the other night looking befuddled that anyone would be thinking that he’s in part responsible for this huge financial mess we’re in. I have no idea if this conflict of interest because of his highly placed lover at Freddie Mac, but it sure would be nice if the media reported on it. But they won’t. Barney Frank, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd, and all the rest, ought to be the next Ken Lays: Remember when that idiot was a household name and Enron was the poster child for economic excess? I sure do.
But the media won’t portray it in the same manner as they did Enron, even though that was a bug bite compared to the killer bee swarm that’s descending upon the worldwide global economy. Why? Because telling the true story will destroy liberal myth making about what works and what doesn’t. And we can’t have that.
But the MSM never dug too deeply into the insanity of Jim McGreevey’s scandal either: there, it was indeed the sensationalism of a gay man cheating on his wife. But the REAL story to me was that he hired an incompetent to head up New Jersey’s DHS so he could have him in close proximity for discreet lovemaking. That this happened in the sobering days after 9/11, when the people were relying on their elected officials to start being serious, adds a pathetic punctuation to the whole thing.
The MSM is nothing but a racket to protect the left side of the political spectrum, whether it is its personalities (Barney Frank, Barack Obama, Harry Reid) or its ideologies (liberalism, leftism, big government).
Oh, and sorry, to be more on point with your blog post: Of course you’re right. It’s obvious to anyone who gives it a few minutes reflection and who has been paying attention. But the fact that you’re the only one discussing it is pretty sad. This should be conventional wisdom, but it’s not.
I give up. They’ve won. 🙁
Sorry, folks, but I hate to disappoint you. This has nada to do with who is gay or who is straight. But it is all about the media’s love affair with a tall, dark handsome man.
“I am fairly unfamiliar with Barney Frank except for his relationship to the Fannie/Freddie Regulation hearings (didn’t even know he was gay).”
I don’t mean to be or sound rude but what alternative universe do you live in? Frank has been openly out as gay since at least the 1980s
I really think that it’s Frank’s membership in the Democratic party that is responsible for the media’s willful ignorance of his role in the mortgage crisis, along with this potential conflict of interest. After all, Chris Dodd is getting the same treament, and as far as I know, his relationship with FNMA was purely financial. (#1 recipient of fannie/freddie campaign contributions.)
I’m with anonnemo and Dandaman. Rep. Frank’s sexual orientation is one possible explanation of the media’s silence on this; but it’s not the only explanation, as far as I’m concerned. There does seem to be a fair bit of “Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of A Democrat In Print, Lest His Obamaness Be Defeated Because Of Rampant American Racism” going on. (Remember the media silence on John Edwards? I doubt it would have been that blatant in a non-election year.)
That having been said: I would not be surprised if anti-homophobia played some sort of role in this as well.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
If there is any hesitation to cover the story due to bias regarding homosexuals, it’s not, IMO, a bias for or against gay couples (that ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ thing), it’s a lack of precendent. They would have to know the relationship, the extent of it, they might feel they’d have to explain it, and … Oh hell, that’s just too complicated, let’s skip it.
On the other hand, Frank’s a Democrat. That gets you a free pass. Ockham’s razor my friends.
Number 18:
Possibly the under 30 one? My experience with graduate students is that they really don’t pay attention to gay/straight or skin color much. Now that is in the sciences so I can’t say what the liberals arts do. But it does seem that the college aged and younger generation are more blind on those issues than others.
I vote it the D rather than gay too. A gay non-democrat would be smeared all over the front page.
There’s a term in the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) world that refers to someone who is no longer employable, given their implication with a catastrophe caused by a complete lack of ethics and responsible governance: ENRON ACCOUNTANT. So many from those institutions (e.g. Enron, Worldcom) were so stained that they either were forced to practice in the anonymous small business world, or changed professions.
Increasingly, today’s mainstream media journalists and editors are racing to being tagged with a similar label. Fannie & Freddie, Social Security and the underfunded pension nightmare are all products of a media complicit in the power arrangement with the left. Ethics are long gone and objectivity nonexistent. Should this mess continue to spiral out of control, those in the media profession will also be permanently stained and be unemployable in the trade. Who wants to be a Frank’s Fannie journalist?
22/Kevin: You mean like in comment number 3
I am gay but I am not a Democrat largely because I came to the US already as an adult and unaware of the political and cultural conventions of the various American ethnic and sexual identities.
In the beginning, I have often identified with some ideas from either the Republicans or the Democrats without feeling a bit wrong about it. But the more I became aware of the conventional political alliances, the more I learned that to be insufficiently Democrat is to be a Republican.
Last week, I thought Biden won the debate. Two weeks ago, I thought McCain won. For that, I lost 2 friends.
Up to now, I still could not believe the anger my opinion provoked. I was called a traitor and a self-hating homosexual and minority because I wasn’t pro-Obama enough.
I can’t imagine the abuse you must be getting for your political views. I do not envy your situation at all but our community is better served when we have representation in both parties. I hope you’ll always find the courage to speak your mind and follow what you believe to be good and true.
It’s not that he’s gay. It’s much simpler.
Side issues like this waste our attention on a completed narrative. Part 1 is done – they’ve told us “it’s lax government and insufficient regulation and rich fat-cat Repub CEOs – oh, and BUSH!” who caused all the trouble, leaving them only needing to close the sale with the “nothing to see here, we already told you who to hate, please move on” ending. Dealing with this new issue would disrupt their timing, and they’d rather we simply fastened their story into our tiny little heads, drew the correct conclusions, and moved on. They have other reasons that we should hate Bush, and the time for our edumacation is getting short.
“I don’t mean to be or sound rude but what alternative universe do you live in? Frank has been openly out as gay since at least the 1980s.”
– – –
Who cares?
Really. Seriously. We should pay attention and remember if someone researches the issues and comes and tells us that, say, McCain likes Hondas? That Stephanopolous eats bagels with no cream cheese? That Reid has had a long-lasting friendship with a couple of Taiwanese descent? That I’ve always gone for trim, athletic women over the voluptous type?
I’m guessing that, if sexual orientation strikes one as being of little or no interest unless one is trying to date someone, or if one thinks the entire subject to be as acceptable for polite public discussion as “do you lick up, or across?”, then the various announcements of who is, who isn’t, who wanted to be but couldn’t, and who got all weepy and apologetic when their mom asked them about it holds no interest, and is unlikely to leave any lasting impression.