8/22/00 2:15 p.m.
Begala's Gay-Slur Gala
It's okay to slander gay people — so long as you support a gay-rights agenda.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

t's okay to slander gay people — so long as you support a gay-rights agenda.

That's the lesson taught by Paul Begala's repeated use of the epithet "butt boy" on his MSNBC show Equal Time. Last Friday, he just couldn't get enough of this particular put down.

"Is there a position on which George Bush has stood up to moneyed corporate interests? On any issue? Ever? In his life?" asked Begala. "When has Bush ever stood up? He's a corporate butt boy. He's a pleasant butt boy, but George Bush is a corporate butt boy!"

Begala also used the term last May — he called Rick Lazio "a total butt boy for Gingrich the whole time he was in the Congress." At the time, NR called the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, for a comment. "He should have known better," said spokesman Wayne Besen. "Because of his stands in the past on our community, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But it was crass. He turned it into a locker-room joke. Something like that shouldn't be on television." (To read more about Begala's earlier remark, click here.

But there it was on television again Friday night--three times in a matter of seconds. So what does Besen have to say now? "It's an obnoxious phrase that he should reconsider, but he's been an ally and that's in stark contrast to Bush and Cheney."

Isn't this a double standard — the idea that people who support hate-crimes legislation can get away with gay slurs, but those who oppose it are branded homophobes if they make the same mistake?

"It's not a double standard because one clearly backs equality," explains Besen. "The Bush-Cheney record is way more offensive than anything Paul Begala says."

And that's putting politics ahead of common decency.

(Thanks to the Media Research Center for Friday's transcript.)