‘Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams is embroiled in a scandal where the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to promote No Child Left Behind. Democrat Rep. George Miller, who is on the House Education Committee, said the arrangement using taxpayer’s money was ‘probably illegal.’… As someone who has met the slippery Williams, I’m not the slightest bit surprised that he pawned his opinion to the highest bidder. A few years ago, I was on the Armstrong Williams show as a representative for the Human Rights Campaign. From the moment our eyes met, we clashed. He looked at me and scowled in disgust and I glared back at him. I immediately felt that Williams had more issues than a New York magazine stand and was a master phony that dripped with self-loathing hypocrisy. It wasn’t Williams’ right wing views that so rattled me. After all, I had debated many leading Neo-Puritans and actually found a few of them—such as Sean Hannity and Cal Thomas—pleasant and even courteous off the air. What unnerved me about Williams was that I felt he genuinely hated my guts because I was openly gay. This was no standard political disagreement, but a very personal one, where Williams seemed threatened by my very existence…. [It] is not entirely unexpected that a black, homophobic former protégé of the late Strom Thurmond and Clarence Thomas who is accused of fondling a man might sell his soul. No, the real crime is the Bush administration’s proliferation of propaganda in what is supposed to be a free country.’ — Activist and writer Wayne Besen.