All aboard the Schadenfreude Express- "[Y]our hypocrisy takes center stage"
Threesomes for me, nay for thee
More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.
Glen Cook, Dreams of Steel
Sadly, as much as I’d hoped that Moms for Hypocrisy Liberty would disappear out of sheer embarrassment and shame, that’s proven to be a somewhat naïve wish. For one, Conservatives too often don’t feel and/or process shame. And, two, shameless tends to be the calling card of the American Taliban- “Do as I say, not as I do.”
So when one of the founders of Moms for Liberty- Bridget Ziegler- and her husband were revealed to have been involved in a three-way sexual relationship with another woman, the accusations of hypocrisy were loud, long…and accurate.
The accusations also include rape, as Mr. Ziegler was accused by the other woman of raping her when Bridget Ziegler had backed out of an encounter.
Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents.
So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.
“Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign.
Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms. Ziegler — and Moms for Liberty — at the meeting, an outcry that underscored the group’s prominence in the most contentious debates of the pandemic era.
I’d have to agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Sells. I don’t give a damn if the Zieglers entertain naked snake handlers (including the snakes) and the entire naked Swedish bikini team in the privacy of their bedroom. What happens between consenting adults should be no one’s concern save for the people involved…unless, of course, those people are Grade A hypocrites living a lifestyle they condemn in public. This is precisely the case with the Zieglers, who in public were clean-as-a-whistle Christians but behind closed doors were something else altogether.
Even before the Ziegler’s sexual hypocrisy became national headlines, the power and influence of Moms for Liberty appeared to be waning. The organization that had rocketed to power and influence during the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to show some cracks. And it had yet to show any ability to adapt to its changing circumstances.
Organizations built on rage, fear, and ignorance have that problem sometimes.
[A]s Moms for Liberty reels from the scandal surrounding the Zieglers, the group’s power seems to be fading. Candidates endorsed by the group lost a series of key school board races in 2023. The losses have prompted questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics….
John Fredericks, a Trump ally in Virginia, said the causes that Moms for Liberty became most known for supporting — policies banning books it deemed pornographic, curtailing the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and policing how race is taught in schools — had fallen far from many voters’ top concerns.
“You closed schools, and people were upset about that. Schools are open now,” he said. “The Moms for Liberty really have to aim their fire on math and science and reading, versus focusing on critical race theory and drag queen story hours.”
Now, Moms for Liberty has to get into the nuts and bolts of educational philosophy instead of demagoguing “issues” like critical race theory or gender identity. It turns out that fewer parents are willing to listen to demagogues; they want to know what their children are learning and how they’re going to be taught those subjects.
As John Fredericks added about the demagoguing, “It’s nonsense, all of it.”
He nailed it, didn’t he?
The two other founders of Moms for Liberty, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, have distanced themselves from Ms. Ziegler, saying she has not been an officer in the national organization since early 2021. Ms. Ziegler did not respond to a request for comment.
Though Ms. Descovich and Ms. Justice have attempted to put on a brave face and rise above the Stürm und Drang created by Ms. Ziegler’s hypocrisy, the fact is that Moms for Liberty has encountered some difficult times.
Ms. Ziegler’s sexual indiscretions, while they haven’t helped, are only part of the problem.
Nearly 60 percent of the 198 school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in contested races across 10 states were defeated in 2023, according to an analysis by the website Ballotpedia, which tracks elections.
The organization claims to operate 300 chapters in 48 states and to have about 130,000 members.
Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, found in a recent study that the group had an outsize presence in battleground and liberal counties. Yet in those areas, the policies championed by Moms For Liberty are broadly unpopular.
“The politics have flipped on the Moms for Liberty, and they’re turning more people to vote against them than for them,” Mr. Valant said.
This is what happens when you become known for being inflexibly extreme and unwilling to compromise. Moms for Liberty’s slash-and-burn political extremism makes few friends and creates a lot of political enemies- the sort of people who tend to want to go out of their way to strike back when the opportunity presents itself.
In November, the group announced that it had removed the chairwomen of two Kentucky chapters after they had posed in photos with members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. That came several months after a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Indiana quoted Adolf Hitler in its inaugural newsletter. The year before, Ms. Ziegler publicly denied links to the Proud Boys after she had posed for a photo with a member of the group at her election night victory party.
Come on, y’all…good people don’t quote Adolf Hitler. Nor do they pose with members of the Proud Boys. If you’re trying to prove your bona fides as a racist, homophobic, transphobic cabal of intolerant assholes…well, you pretty much stuck the landing.
Of course, the news of Moms for Liberty’s decline is accurate except for one place: Floriduh, where it’s as extreme and as inflexibly nightmarish as ever. Because…well, Floriduh, right?
In the rest of the country, though, Moms For Liberty is facing a challenge that may determine its political future. With any luck, the group will learn that it’s burned so many bridges that it’s topped itself out and has nowhere to go but down.
And it can thank Bridget Ziegler and her husband for accelerating that process…because no one likes to learn that they’ve been following a hypocrite- especially when it comes to sexual mores.
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"More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way."
-- There's an old saying that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing the world that he did not exist. That, of course, is utter balderdash. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing the world that he DID exist, because no one has done so much of the Devil's work as those self-righteous, self-anointed hypocrites who've elevated themselves to the uniquely privileged position of "defending" the world from the "Devil."