This is Lauren Boebert’s ugliest scandal yet
I was visiting Colorado back in the halcyon pre-9/11 days where I recall seeing a bumper sticker there that said “FOCUS ON YOUR OWN DAMNED FAMILY.” It was intended as a message to “Doctor” James Dobson, whose ultra conservative Christian evangelical organisation had just moved to Colorado Springs in 1991. His radio show, “Focus on the Family,” promoted neo-Republican “family values,” and rightwing, white-wing intolerance of anything not strictly fundamentalist evangelical.
I was recently reminded of how all that bloated, anal-retentive evangelical intolerance led to today’s Republican Party and the hypocrisy that is routinely found there. Take the case of Loren Boebert, her messy divorce and two recent 911 phone calls her son made.
In the first call Boebert’s son alleged that his dad (Jayson Boebert) was being physical and throwing him around. In the call the boy was very emotional and sounded genuinely terrified, saying “He does this so much,” between sobs.
Then there was the second phone call. In that call, made nine whole minutes after the first, the same boy, sounding robotic, recanted his claim that his father physically attacked him. You can hear Lauren Boebert in the background shouting at her son. Then Boebert herself comes on the line and repeats what her son was saying, that there was an argument only, that it wasn’t physical and that her son didn’t need any help from the police.
So one of two things is true. Either Boebert’s son illegally made a false report to law enforcement, which is a crime of course, or Lauren Boebert was helping to cover up her son’s physical abuse. If you listen to the 911 call, the unmistakable impression you get is that the Congresswoman was covering up and coaching her son’s recantation.
Clearly the boy was deeply distressed when he first called. His was this kind of emotion that is difficult to make up and sounds phoney when you try. Oddly, this incident has received very little mention in the press.
To me the whole thing sounded like the self-righteous “family values” congresswoman, who is constantly preaching about how other people should raise their families and making jokes about pronouns, is a hypocrite when it comes to her own family. Maybe she should stop acting as if she is some kind of role model. Clearly she is not.
One can only wonder how much worse it all could have turned out had someone in the Boebert household, in a moment of emotional extremity, had picked up one of Boebert’s many firearms. As is true with most Republicans, Boebert’s family is a mess and so is she. I for one refuse to take pompous, moral instructions from people like her, and instead suggest that they focus on their own damned family. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.