Persona non smarta

As a San Diegan I am all too used to the ramblings of Elaine Donnelly from the Center for Military Readiness. Following the Tailhook scandal, Donnelly was the female face the Union-Tribune editorial board turned to whose job it was to pooh-pooh it all away as an attempt by raging feminists intent upon sapping and impurifying our military’s precious bodily fluids.

Today Donnelly shot herself in the face more times than Dick Cheney hunting in a house of mirrors, as she took the  House Armed Services personnel subcommittee down the rabbit hole.

It wasn’t pretty:

Holding the first hearing in 15 years on the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, lawmakers invited a quartet of veterans to testify on the subject and also extended an invitation to Donnelly, who has been working for years to protect our fighting forces from the malign influence of women.

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

"We’re talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.

At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.

[...]

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement "just bonkers" and "dumb," and he called her claims about an HIV menace "inappropriate." Said Snyder: "By this analysis . . . we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country."

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a veteran of the war in Iraq, called Donnelly’s words "an insult to me and many of the soldiers" by saying they "aren’t professional enough to serve openly with gay troops while successfully completing their military mission."

Retorted Donnelly: "What would you say to Cynthia Yost, the woman on a training exercise assaulted by a group of lesbians?"

[...]

Donnelly returned to the case of "Cynthia Yost . . . assaulted by a group of lesbians." She neglected to mention that the incident was alleged to have occurred in 1974.

[...]

Then came Donnelly, severe in a black jacket with a flag pin on her lapel as she attacked the "San Francisco left who want to impose their agenda on the military." She spoke of the "devastating" effect gay soldiers would have on the military and said "people who do have religious convictions" would be driven out of the military by the "sexualized atmosphere."

[...]

…it was Donnelly, founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness, who amused lawmakers the most. Snyder asked Darrah about Donnelly’s reference to "passive-aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," saying, "I’m almost tempted to ask you to demonstrate."

I’ll stop right here to mention that it was probably at this moment when Donnelly’s sphincter clenched so tight she could have crushed a diamond.

Darrah was stumped. "Like a woman who is stared at, her breasts are stared at," Donnelly explained.

I guess that’s how lesbian eye babies are made.

I think we can add Donnelly to the long list of conservatives in the dock (including Lurita "Cookies" Doan, Alberto "Total Recall" Gonzales, Bradley "Funny Voice" Schlozman,  and Monica "Jesus Idiot Barbie" Goodling)   who have made the last seven years such an Alice in Wonderland experience for us all.

Alice: It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.