No Going Back!
What Is Special About Governor Sanford’s Affair?
Governor Sanford of South Carolina was missing for five days, and reported to be backpacking in Appalachia , but yesterday we all found out that the Governor was actually in Argentina with his mistress. Now affairs among people of money and/or power are not unusual. That President Kennedy had trysts in the White House is a widely accepted assumption. The indiscretions of President Clinton are undeniable. People in power have opportunities for sexual exploits and it is not unusual when they take advantage of their opportunities.
A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation. ~Adlai Stevenson
Now I don’t know about you, but it seems like there is a general feeling among the masses that what Sanford has done is slightly worse than just being unfaithful to his wife. I could be wrong about that, but I do sense that there is an edge of outrage towards Sanford and some of his fellow conservative republican hot-to-trot peers. When it comes to sexual peccadilloes it almost seems as if there is disapproval in some cases and outrage in other cases. Why? Looking back on these unfortunate incidents, we see that some politicians survive their scandals and continue in politics, while other’s are ruined.
I suggest that the majority of Americans will endure a political leader in a sex scandal if that political leader has not built his career on being a moral policeman to the world.
John Ensign, Senator from Nevada , confessed to an extramarital affair with a married staffer, claiming she was trying to extort him. But remember when Larry Craig Republican Senator for Idaho was arrested on July 11, 2007 , by plainclothes police officer in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men's room and was accused of attempting to have a homosexual tryst with that policeman? At the time this happened John Ensign said,
“I wouldn’t put myself, hopefully, in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do.”
Well, he is now in a similar situation and he is NOT resigning.
The sexual indiscretions of our elected leaders are bad. Actually, I disapprove of all sexual indiscretions, even among the unelected ordinary humans. But sexual indiscretions by someone who condemns others and then does the same stuff in private, well, that is just plain irksome.
How about Mark Foley, Republican Representative of Florida Sixteenth Congressional District. Foley resigned from office after trying to solicit sex from male congressional pages via an instant messenger program. The conversations included Representative Foley asking a sixteen-year-old " stud " whether his penis was erect and requesting that he take out and measure his penis.
I have said repeatedly that in this country we track library books better than we do sex offenders. ~Mark Foley
If you don’t want to evict the guy for bashing gays while being gay, surely you should want the guy out of office because he was stupid enough to write out his lustful indiscretions using a medium that is easily discovered by the entire world.
The cover-up involved Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner, Ohio Eighth Congressional District and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Illinois Fourteenth District.
Consider David Vitter, junior Senator from Louisiana , became one of the few high-profile politicians to be implicated as a client of " D.C. Madam " Deborah Jeane Palfrey. The Madam is quotes as saying:
[He] " . . . wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary with the girls, except that he was into a diaper fetish. . .”
The Republicans are all gung-ho about the defensive of marriage act, and yet seven out of 40 Republican senators have either had extramarital affairs, or have been divorced. That’s almost a 20% threshold. Can a party that claims to be defending marriage really be satisfied with a personal success rate of just over 80%?
I want to be both honest and cautious here. It is a little hypocritical for a human being to be all self-righteous in condemning hypocrisy. I feel certain that if you looked closely enough you would find lots of hypocrisy in my words and deeds.
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
As long as there are humans, and hormones and that evolutionary drive to perpetuate the species there is going to be sexual congress, and Congress is not exempt. We can get all offended and vent our umbrage, but it is silly. People have sex. Expecting elected leaders to not have sex is like expecting abstinence to stop teen pregnancy. It might work in theory, but it will never work in real life. I truly don’t care what people do in their personal lives, as long as they’re not breaking the law. It isn’t the sin, or the betrayal of one’s family that bugs me, it is this pretence that they have a handle on proper behavior and morality, that they have a right to meddle in the private lives of the citizenry, while the whole time they are doing what they so gleefully condemn in others.
Article submitted Thursday, June 25, 2009 & read 1122 times.
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» left by Matt Matty from Palm Springs, CA (2 years 220 days ago.)
very well put!! thank you for being so genuine about this and speaking common sense.» left by Anonymous (2 years 219 days ago.)
Thanks Matt: I am so honored that you read my article and took the time to comment. I wish you well. I hope, if you like to write, that you'll consider sounding of f here at Kerplop.
