Jack Ryan: Just Another Family-Values Republican

Lesson of the day: If you're planning to run for public office, you might not want to marry a famous actress, take her to S&M clubs and try to get her to perform sex acts on you while other people watch, and then get a messy divorce from her. Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan, of Illinois, may have learned that lesson the hard way. Court documents the couple has fought to keep private contain allegations by his ex, actress Jeri Lynn Ryan ("Boston Public," "Star Trek: Voyager") -- made during a hearing about the custody of the couple's young son -- that Ryan demanded that she accompany him to sex clubs in New Orleans, New York and Paris. The New York club, she said, had "cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling." Ryan admitted only that he did take his wife to "one avant-garde nightclub in Paris which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return." Despite controversy over the allegations, Ryan says he'll continue his run for Senate. (Associated Press)

C: Wow. I had no idea Illinois politics was so interesting. I guess Ryan is just another typical "Family Values" Republican.

E: That'd be ILL politics....

My favorite bit was that Jack Ryan referred to the swingin' sex establishments (S&M dungeons for repressed Republicans) as ‘avant-garde’ clubs. I was just discussing the concept of the avant-garde in class on Monday, & will have to bring up Ryan's recent attempt at resignification. (I wonder if he considered the anonymous voyeures, who were invited to watch him and his wife go at it , to be in the position of the vanguard?)

Heh, heh... It's not schadenfreude if the people who get their comeuppance were hypocrites, right?

I hope this incident means that the Illinois senate seat is Obama's come November. Obama, to his credit, has refused to comment on Ryan's sexual past. When asked, he simply responds that the issues he wants to address in the campaign do not involve Ryan's personal character, but are about issues that effect the pubic, such as poverty, health care, etc. Classy.