Me & Ted Haggard

So: the Rev. Ted Haggard says: "There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

Well, that's one thing I have in common with him. And at lunchtime today, I left my workplace and gave in to my own Dark Side. As my first step to recovery, I need to simply be clear and honest and transparent about just exactly what it was that I did. I voted for Hayhurst.

Now, in an earlier post, I tried to get all cute and deceptive about this. I said that I wouldn't really be voting for Hayhurst, although the machine would probably think I did. What a laughable attempt at avoiding responsibility! I might as well have said, a la Haggard, that I'd gone to a hotel room with a sodomite prostitute for a "massage." Uh huh, oh yeah, a massage. I might as well have said, sure, I bought some crank, but only so I could throw it away. My trash cans always work better with some methamphetamine ballast, right?

No, I've got to get real. It's the only possible first step toward getting clean. I pushed the button on the ol' MicroVote next to the Hayhurst name. I saw the "X" show up onscreen, in the box adjoining his name. And, in due course, I pushed the big red "cast vote" button. And so, in the reality-based world, I voted for Hayhurst.

The shame, the shame. Damn.

Why did I do this? Have I bought into that "lesser of two evils" nonsense?

No, I have not. My real motivation is where that Haggardesque "dark side" comes in. In fact, I voted for Hayhurst because that's the closest I could come to smacking Marky-Mark Souder right across his triple chins. And that ain't very close. How cheaply I've sold my integrity!

There's one saving grace for me here. Hayhurst is not, in fact, going to win. Thus, I bear no responsibility for whatever it was that he might have done in office. (Continued the Iraq War, unless he was lying, which I doubt.)

OK, I'm off to rehab. Maybe I'll blog a little from there.