While I always enjoyed living in Bloomington, I have to admit that, as time goes on, I am more and more glad that I no longer reside in the blasted nether-state that is Indiana, hovering as it does between North and South, East and West, the so-called Crossroads of America, perhaps more accurately described as the Rest Stop Bathroom of America.

Bloomington was an island of liberal collegiate hospitality, thinking, progress, science, good food and entertainment.. but it’s a pretty small island, seen from the perspective of Madison, which is 7 times the size and even more delightfully leftist. (We’re also harder-drinking, which I would have sworn to be impossible, outside of Ireland)

Still, with the Dark Carnival coming up, hotel room booked and confirmed, vacation time reserved, plans to meet with friends made, I might be tempted to gloss over the ugliness, much as I tune out the vast empty spaces of the Corn Belt I have to cross to get back in the first place.

Until I caught this excerpt of Indiana Congressman Mike Pence at the Values Voter conference-cum-cult meeting over the weekend:

Most creepy was Pence’s fetishization of America’s youth, a masturbatory need so great that he had to rush back home to indulge it: “I got on the plane and flew home to Indiana, went out to the Henry Country Fairgrounds for a Boy Scout Jamboree on a cold Saturday morning just about a year ago, and I’ll never forget it. You know the Boy Scout Jamboree situation. A bunch of little boys with their hair tousled, ties pulled to the side, one shirt tail out, standing in a row.” The Rude Pundit doesn’t know about you, but he probably couldn’t describe a row of scouts in such…loving detail.

From The Rude Pundit, obviously.

Wowser. That is one disturbed, creepy individual. I found myself wondering why people let him speak in public, whether or not he drools slightly as he contemplates tucking, or untucking, the shirts of little Midwestern boys… and whether the unfortunate residents of Indiana’s 6th district just send him to Congress so that he’ll be a thousand miles away from their elementary schools.

Uggh. I need to wash out my brain now.