Schadenfreude

I just can't help it.

I just keep laughing.

I've searched out every salacious detail.

I just keep laughing!

The Ted Haggard news which has broken over the last four days has done more to lift my spirits than any other news lately. The cliche that the most homophobic boy on the playground is the one most enjoying his peers in the shower gets demonstrated here yet again. Here, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the organization which organized to pass anti-gay marriage amendments across the nation, finds himself caught with a drug pipe in his mouth and his pants down (dropped for his gay call-boy).

Surely a demon came upon him. ( A demon and half the male prostitutes in Denver)

The human part of me keeps whispering that I should show some degree of compassion. After all I denied my homosexuality for thirty-three years. But then the other side of me yells out that he devoted his life to hating himself and me and that even caught, he does not have the courage or grace or whatever virtue applies to come forth and admit who he is as a man. The yelling is winning so far and I'm just enjoying the spectacle. The deeper the schaden, the greater the freude.

I'm curious to know how the organizations with which he has so closely worked are going to respond. Did Bush call him with consolations saying that the nasty ol' prostitute should have just kept his mouth shut? Is Dobson going to lay hands upon him and declare him healed? The religious machine is going to do everything they can to spin this story in their favor (take a note from the Pharisees - there's not a stone big enough).

I'll continue to bask in the joy of Haggard's misery as I wait for the next homophobic bully to fall.

Schadenfreude. Big word. Bigger joy!