John Montgomery Presents This Week's	January 27, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Jesse Jackson
	I'm a Rabble Rouser? Yeah, I Aroused Her!

The Reverend Jesse Jackson has always caused me problems. On those rare occasions when I espouse a point of view that there are some noisy people on the right-most side of the political fence who could possibly be seen as loudmouthed, dung-slinging gasbags, someone will always hit me with a one-line rejoinder: "Oh yeah?  What about Jesse Jackson, you liberal, commie-loving muff-diver?" I usually respond with a lame reminder that there really is racism in the world and somebody needs to monitor it, but my heart isn't in it.

Jesse is as much a loudmouthed, dung-slinging gasbag as any Republican. He takes a smoldering situation and floods it with huge barrels of gasoline until it's a blazing inferno, at which time he usually slinks out of town towards the next racism sighting and throng of TV cameras. Whether it's the recent election fiasco in Florida, the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas, the ebonics controversy in California, or the pissing off of my good friends in Decatur, Illinois during the high school rumble expulsion mess, whenever I hear about Jesse being involved in something new, I can only think of Slim Pickens' immortal line in the cinema classic, Blazing Saddles: "What'll that asshole think of next?"

Well, if that silver tongued mouth of Jesse's has led him into a lot of trouble, now he and the rest of us all know he should have stuck to that part of his body. Last week, which Jesse had dubbed a "week of moral outrage" because of George W. Bush's inauguration and John Ashcroft's nomination as attorney general, Jesse admitted fathering a girl, who's now 20 months old, with a former employee, Karin Stanford. The Good Reverend, who's been married for 38 years and has five other kids, made his admission several days in advance of a National Enquirer article on that subject. Mathematicians were quick to point out that the age of Jesse's young bundle of joy made it clear he'd been playing hide-the-salami with Karin at the same time he was playing Infidelity Counselor to Bill Clinton, who'd recently been caught with his own pants down.

At first it looked like Jesse was going to handle this embarrassing revelation like a man. "This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis," he said in a statement. "I will be taking some time off to revive my spirit and reconnect with my family before I return to my public ministry."

Evidently, Jesse's a quick reviver. Only a few days later, he changed his mind about taking time off, blaming the new president and a shift "from a tail wind to a head wind ... Our mandate is to go forward." More likely, his wife ordered him to get his cheatin' black ass out of the house.

As you might expect, the usual right-wing blowhards jumped all over Jesse and then had to go out and buy mass quantities of Depends because they were peeing their pants in gloating glee. The White House was going to release a statement calling Jesse a Witless, Whacked-out Wanker, but had to change plans at the last minute when they discovered their computer keyboards are all missing the "W" keys.

But of course, these conservative paragons of virtue are justified in their righteous moral outrage. Jesse needs an Infidelity Counselor of his own, and not one from the Godless heathens in the Democrat party. No, in the new spirit of unity, Jesse needs to be counseled by someone from the Party of Family Values. Someone above reproach like Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth, Bob Livingston, Matthew Glavin, Rudy Giuliani, or my personal favorite, Dan "Scumbag" Burton.

I get really nostalgic for the good old days of innocence when the most offensive sexual behavior by a politician was Bob Dole doing Viagra commercials.