Dear Lord,
I want to thank and bless you for sending us prophets and messiahs in the form of prostitutes and madams. Through these your emissaries, you are helping us identify and cast out the hypocrites in our midst. First, there was Reverend Haggard who was exposed as a hypocrite who preached redemption for homosexuals through prayer and abstinence even though he himself repeatedly gave in to his own weakness for performing oral sex on a male prostitute (and lousily, according to the recepient of the Rev’s oral attentions).
Most recently, Randall Tobias, the president’s AIDS tsar had to step down after a certain Deborah Jeane Palfrey, proprietess of an escort and adult sexual fantasy business, revealed that she would be calling Ambassador Tobias, a client of hers, to testify on her behalf in the course of her criminal trial.
Dear God,
If it were not for these your emissaries, we would continue to be misled and hoodwinked by these hypocrites who sit in postions of power not practising what they preach. After all, Ambassador Tobias was hand-picked by the president to run not only national AIDS policy but also to oversee how aid, including contraception, was distributed to developing countries. Ambassador Tobias, echoing his patrons in the Bush Administration favored the ABC method of contraception then in vogue in Uganda. ABC stands for Abstinence, Be[ing] faithful, and Condoms, exactly in that order. So, people would be told that if they wanted to avoid contracting AIDS or getting pregnant they would have to abstain from sexual intercourse until they were in a committed relationship, such as marriage. Next, while in that marriage, they were to be faithful. Only finally, in cases where the first two steps can not be followed would condoms fit into Tobias’ pregnancy-/AIDS-prevention plan!! And the US gov’t made aid contingent on developing countries’ willingness to follow this ABC plan, despite its many flaws, not least of which is the assumption that a partner in a “committed relationship” or marriage is a) being faithful and b) HIV negative.
Now, thanks to Madam Palfrey, we know that Tobias himself had trouble following the A and B of the Bushies’ much-vaunted moral preventative plan. The only question remaining now is whether the Ambassador followed option C while he was receiving those “massages” from Madam Palfrey’s employees.
Dear Lord,
Unlike those “massages,” I pray this scandal does not have a happy ending for ex-Ambassador Tobias.
Amen!
T'ings 'n Times 