On Lou Pearlman, His Ponzi Scheming and Being Mad About the Boys in the Boy Bands

Lou Pearlman's plethora of sins finally caught up with him when he was busted and subsequently extraditied back to the U.S. on charges he bilked 2,000 investors out of $317 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme dating back fifteen years. But the paper trail of defrauded investors and money-making schemes was nothing compared to what was later revealed, for as a scathing Vanity Fair expose by Bryan Burrough reveals, Pearlman was also a sexual predator -- a Fagin-like pedarist with a paticular fondness for young boys. This revelation led a respondent to the blog to omment, "Being in a boy band would be agony enough without having to submit to Jabba the Pearlman's gropings on top of it all."

And blogger Howie Klein provides yet another embarrassing revelation at Down With Tyrrany, where he reveals that Pearlman "donated thousands of dollars to his Republican opponent who won the election and promptly dropped the case against his campaign contributor." Klein goes on to add, "The Republican Attorney General, Charlie Crist, by the way, was outed as yet another GOP closet case!

This revelation led Milt Shook to comment, "It's really amazing, isn't it? The GOP features draft dodgers as warmongers, perverts posing as prudes, and homosexuals behaving as homophobes. Hard (should I have said "difficult"? I don't want to get Denny Hastert excited.) to believe that these people are supposed to be the political paragons of virtue.

As for Hastert, it's not a huge secret that Hastert's gay. Denny, a former high school boys wrestling coach, lived with his Chief of Staff (pardon the pun) for 20 years in a "bachelor pad," and when his wife, a former gym teacher, comes to visit, she stays in a hotel, while Denny stays in his apartment with his Chief of Staff.

And as you know, I don't care what anyone does in private. I don't even care if they "pretend" to be straight. What pisses me off is the way they use their position to work against gay rights. I can handle fakes; can't handle hypocrites.

In my personal opinion, Pearlman is a sad, pathetic closet case who used his dubiously-obtained show-biz credentials to prey on impressionable young boys trying to make it in the music business. There is no doubt in my mind that members of the Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC, among others, were intimately aware of Pearlman's numerous sexual pecadilloes and used it as leverage to free themselves from his oppressive grasp. Once deprived of his cash cows, it was all downhill from there. Everything in this still-unfolding story reeks of hubris, and Pearlman's fall from grace was long overdue.

Remember what happened to Jabba the Butt in the end?