Since Andrew Sullivan is quite clearly in a steep decline, I'll take it upon myself to begin giving out various awards for stupidity in public life.

My first award is the Bill Clinton Award. I will give this award to public figures who obnoxiously and solipsistically cast life-and-death, or at least extraodinarily important, public policy issues in terms of how those issues might affect them personally. This award is nicknamed "It's All About Me" prize.

Envolope please...? Ah. A surprise. The first winner of the Bill Clinton Award for Insufferable Narcissism as Regards an Important National Issue is...

Andrew Sullivan.

How fitting.

Andrew Sullivan wins this award for stopping in mid-thought to explain to us how extraordinarily courageous he is, and how much additional "heart-ache" he will suffer for that courage. Here's a little clip of his award-winning statement:

Time reports on the deepening mystery of what really happened at Abu Ghraib. We are getting information that electrocution of genitals, rape and murder are also part of the "coercive interrogation techniques" allowed at Saddam's former torture-palace. All the more reason to find out if these methods were approved by higher-ups, all the way to the secretary of defense. I will be harangued for continuing to write about this. But it is a huge deal if torture has been sanctioned by this administration in secret and on the authority of only the president, against U.S. and international law.

Emphasis added, of course.

But I'm giving out a second award tonight. The second award is the Howard Dean Award for the Most Credulous Repetition of an Inflammatory and Patently Ludicrous Anti-Bush Allegation.

And the winner is...

Why, look at this! It's Andrew Sullivan again, winning his second award tonight, and for the very same post.

That Time article Andrew places such stock in? That Time article with unskeptically repeats uncorroborated and utterly ridiculous charges from an anonymous terrorist?

Check out this key charge. The charge that Andy vaguely reports as "rape":

One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention. In another session, Neisef claims, he was held down by two men while a uniformed woman forced him to have sex with her. "I was crying," said Neisef, 28. "I felt like my whole manhood was gone."

Hmmmm... two men forced this poor man down, while a woman forced him to have sex with her.

This is a Penthouse Forum fantasy, not a credible fucking charge. This is the sort of fantasy concocted by a sexually-repressed Islamoretard who believes such things are possible in the decadent US

We should be so lucky.

Dear Penthouse Forum,

I had been unjustly taken prisoner for attempting to give chocolates and flowers to an infidel occupier. On my third day of captivity, a woman interrogator demanded I strip off my clothes and begin caressing her breasts. She called herself "Sasha," and she seemed to be a Jew kaffir. Although she was the degenerate offspring of pigs and apes, Allah have mercy, she also had the juiciest 38DD Kasabah melons and an ass like a two-year-old colt donkey...

Riiiiiiight.

How many forcible genital rapes of men -- by women -- occur each year?

How about each fucking decade?

How about in all of recorded human history?

Woman occasionally, but rarely, commit sex offenses at all. They commit statutory rape on rare occasions. On even rarer occasions, they might sodomize another person -- male or female -- with a digit or object.

But forcing a man to have actual genital-to-genital sex-- against his will? How many women are so hard-up they need to rape a dirty, filthy terrorist prisoner?

Let me get this straight: This woman couldn't get voluntary sex from a man... in the United States Armed Forces.

Talk about not being able to get laid in women's prison with a fistful of pardons. Talk about not being able to get your leg humped in a kennel with your pockets filled with lunchmeat and chew-toys.

If it's true that this woman couldn't manage to get voluntary sex from 135,000 horny, sexually-deprived soldiers and therfore raped a dirty, stinking prisoner, then I'd say right there is your reason why we can't allow any additional gay men in the military.

Why, look at the tragic results! If only one man stationed in Iraq had been attracted to the female sex, all of this ugliness might have been avoided.

And how the hell does the man maintain an erection during this "violation"?

I don't say this is impossible. I will say it is so unlikely to be laugh-out-loud ludicrous, especially without serious corroborating evidence.

But I'm not surprised that the very objective Time magazine reports this, nor that the very independent, still-deciding-between-Bush-and-Kerry Randy Andy cites this article as a damning indictment.

PS: While I was away at the beatuiful Mount Airy Lodge, I was abducted and chain-raped by a gang of buxom Catholic high-school cheerleaders.

And yes, I know I will be harrangued for continuing to write about my violation.

But I won't let that stop me. I will soldier on bravely, and see if I can't interest Cinemax in filming my sordid story, which I've tentatively titled Man-Handled: The Greatest Fucking Thing That Ever Fucking Happened to Me In My Entire Fucking Life.

The Next Story Andrew Sullivan Will Trumpet: Since Andrew's taken to reporting wildly-implausible hot woman-on-man rape tales, I'm sure he'll be interested in this Ace of Spades HQ flashback, The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!

Content warning. But what isn't on this site lately? Like Leopold "Butters" Scotch, I've really got to get my behavior under control.