Someone responded to my Baptists & bootleggers post by asking if I really had to mention the rape. The answer is “yes,” and not just because Wonkette started a trend of bloggers putting a sexual spin on all political news.
The Neil Goldschmidt story, including the statutory rape, is important because it shows how a Baptist became a bootlegger, and how everyone–the media, leading politicians, business leaders–continued to pretend he was a Baptist until the revelation of the rape came out. Only then did the media reveal to the public what a few had suspected all along: that all the stories of Portland’s light-rail utopia were merely a cover for a taxpayer-subsidized real-estate con.
