The Temptations of Saint Huckabee

Defenestration, installation by Brian Goggin, San Francisco 1997. Image via infoteli.

And speaking of floridly bad writing, here's Sir Charles C.W. (Constant Worry) Cooke, Bart., in the National Review:

No sooner had the word “libido” left Huckabee’s lips than all context, judgment, and verisimilitude were hastily defenestrated; Huckabee, who has not held public office since 2007, had been turned into the de facto spokesman for the entire Republican party; and the word had gone out across the Kingdom that there was a new monster at the gates....

I'm sure he felt old Mr. Buckley's portrait over the wine cabinet winking at him when he came up with that "defenestrated".

The difference between what Huckabee said and what Huckabee was accused of saying is the difference between the press’s reporting that Joe Biden had told a group of African Americans that the Republican party wanted to “put you all back in chains” and the press’s reporting “Biden to African Americans: I’m going to put you all back in chains.”

You mean it's like when Romney said President Obama "didn't want to talk about the economy" after Obama said "Republicans don't want to talk about the economy"?

Yes, totally, except for the part about not using a doctored tape to do it, and also the fact that the complaints about Huckabee's libido remarks didn't do that at all, though they did do something semantically related.

Because no one is claiming that Huckabee accused all women of being unable to control their libidos. He didn't. He clearly indicated that some women are unable to control their libidos, viz., those who believe that health insurance should cover a normal family planning regime. And when he

explicitly contended that “women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do”

he was referring to those who believe that family planning is unnecessary, at least for poor people. Such women, who simply abstain from sex if they are not in the mood to get pregnant, can control their libidos just like anybody else, i.e., like normal non-woman people such as, just for example, ex-Governor Huckabee. But that certain women, in Huckabee's view, are or affect to be helpless without Uncle Sugar, is pretty clear, and I wonder what women those might be, given the definition of Uncle Sugar as

Another word for Uncle Sam. The concept that Uncle Sam is everyon's pimp because he takes his share of your money before you get your share.

Yep, he is referring with that classic Republican smile of his to the wicked but enticing welfare whores that beckon at him in all his dreams.

The Temptation of Mike Hucka- er, St. Anthony, by Lovis Corinth, 1897; via cultured.com.

Also, Cookie, please note, since your editor seems unable to tell you, that in the U.S. "paraffin" does not mean "kerosene" as it does in your green and pleasant native isle but refers most frequently to paraffin wax,

a white or colourless soft solid that is used as a lubricant and for other applications 

or medicinal paraffin,

a very highly refined mineral oil used in cosmetics and for medical purposes

so that when you write, on the mobs rushing to attack the ex-governor, that

The pitchforks and the paraffin were already out

you are calling forth an imagery that may be quite different from what you had in mind—of pitchforks with waxed fruits, perhaps, in a pleasing rustic table centerpiece, or something.

Paraffin wax in a Parisian beauty treatment, 1936, pitchfork-free, via cosmeticsandskin.com.