Ted Haggard, you're done!

Haggard told the congregation that a sexual incident with a man when he was 7 years old may be related to the scandal involving a male prostitute and crystal meth use that cost him his job two years ago.

"My dad was pretty successful," Haggard said. "He had a lot of workers. One of those workers had a sexual experience with me. I was 7 years old."

Haggard said that incident stayed with him throughout his life.

"There I was, 50 years old, a conservative Republican, loving the word of God, an evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled, charismatic, all those things," he said. "But some of the things that were buried in the depths of the sea from when I was in the second grade started to rage in my heart and mind."

...

Haggard then issued an emotional critique of church leaders for not using his scandal to present Christian love.

"I believe that he [God] gives us opportunities every couple of years to communicate the gospel worldwide through secular media and we consistently blow it," he said. "A congressman in trouble, that's the time. A family member gets himself in horrible trouble, that's the time. A preacher gets himself in awful trouble, that's the time."

Oh, Ted. Ted Ted Ted. (Haggard, I mean, for those of you just tuning in.) So you've come out today with your latest excuse for, after years of hypocritically posing as a greal moral religious leader, finally being revealed as a drug-abusing, adulterous, whoremongering sodomite. And it's that old standby, "I was abused as a child."

Sure, I suppose this could have happened. After all, so many children, especially those in extremely rigid religious environments, are horribly abused, sexually and otherwise. But here's the problem. Or problems.

One: You are, or were, a high-profile public figure whose fame and influence was tied to maintaining and cultivating a carefully manicured image of righteousness. That wasn't merely tarnished, it took a direct hit from a nuke. So it's natural you would be highly motivated to repair and restore that image any way you can. How better to do this than by...

Two: ...playing the victim. See, religionists have a really bad habit of doing this when they have, in fact, been shown to be in the wrong. Why, we've experienced it here firsthand. (coughYomincough) Playing upon emotions is what you, as a preacher, have spent your entire career doing. It's become such a part of your personal lexicon you probably do it reflexively, without having to rehearse or even give the act much thought at all. Guilt, fear, anxiety...all the ingredients of the religion-toolkit all designed to lead the poor sinner back to that coveted moment of redemption. Come on, Ted, the whole schtick is your stock in trade! Who wouldn't expect you to claim something like this as an excuse for your acts? The only surprise is you didn't do it sooner.

Three: Your whole "confession" here is an insult to gays, though as a self-denying homophobe, you probably don't care. See, Ted, it's a fact that people abused as children do sometimes grow up to commit violent criminal acts. But you weren't caught at that, dude! You weren't found doing the Catholic priest thing of diddling a choirboy, or smacking the hell out of your wife and family. You were just found to be a closeted homosexual carrying on an affair. Okay, granted, you somehow stupidly chose a male prostitute for your extracurricular dalliances instead of just, you know, picking some fellow up at a bar or online. And you also bought meth from him. And those two things are illegal acts, sure. But they aren't crimes of violence. And while violent crimes in adulthood can often be traced to an abusive childhood, plain old homosexuality cannot. (Then again, you aren't a normal gay man either, so your situation could be different.)

Four: finally, don't presume that any of us, apart from a few of the still-brainwashed rubes from your former church, gives a shit. Really, your situation may have been a life-demolishing trauma and disgrace for you. But for the rest of us, who have spent years watching the decline and fall of the Bakkers and Tiltons and Swaggarts and Popoffs and all the rest of you charlatan SOB's... well, to us, it was just another instance of "Oh look, another evangelist has been found to be a dishonest sleazebag." In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning.

So, yeah...ho hum, Ted. Maybe you were horribly abused as a poor little waif, or maybe you're just lying to save whatever tatters of your reputation are left. But who cares? Seriously, who cares? You're done.