Creep of the Week: Ted Haggard

Guess who's back, back again? Shady's back, tell a friend…
While I'm sure Eminem never intended to write Ted Haggard's comeback theme, I simply can't help but think of Haggard singing Eminem's song "Without Me" as I read about Haggard's return to public life: "Now this looks like a job for me, so everybody just follow me,'cause we need a little controversy, 'cause it feels so empty without me."
Uh, maybe to you, Ted. But the rest of us were doing fine without you.
No time like the second anniversary of the "gay sex with hookers on meth" scandal that brought you down to make your re-entrance into the spotlight. Which is exactly what Haggard did last month when he hopped onto the pulpit to share his, uh, "truth" with the people of Open Bible Fellowship in Illinois.
His first order of business: acknowledging that he did a bad, bad thing. "The first thing I want you to know is that I sinned. I really did sin. And I'm very, very sorry that I sinned," he began.
But hey, it wasn't really his fault. It was, rather, the fault of one of his dad's employees. "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 seven years old."
See? Obviously Haggard, like all homosexuals, was damaged, and as he got older, that experience "started to produce fruit," whatever the hell that means.
"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."
And that rage could only be quelled with a good lay from a hot pay-to-play stud and some sweet God-made crystal meth.
As anyone who has studied psychology knows, all victims of molestation do this. It's part of the healing process. They simply cannot be blamed.
They can, however, be sorry. And Haggard certainly is that.
"I'm very, very sorry that I sinned," he said. "My wife – all my sin and shame fell on her. People treated her as if she had fallen. And my children – they all went through carrying my shame."
So Haggard is doing what anyone who has made his family suffer and wants to protect them from further embarrassment would do: shouting his sorry ass story from the rooftops. Because a man like Haggard needs attention.
Besides, while he certainly messed up, what he was really doing was giving the church a Hail Mary pass from God. And they fumbled.
"I believe that (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."
So you see? Haggard was only trying to help. And you can't fault a man for that.