Dirty Little Secrets, A Bad, Bad Thing
Will someone who can tell the truth please stand up? Not you, John Edwards. Who were you again? Time just slips away and a new batch of heathens takes center stage. Let’s be clear on this. Dirty little secrets cross political lines and go straight to an off-sides and a bogie in the sports arena. Why, I am quite sure that there are dirty little secrets in most neighborhoods. We won’t speak of those ’cause I don’t want to get sued, and I don’t watch that TV program that fictionally takes place on Wisteria Lane. We have enough to contend with in the real world.
The first one that boils my blood is Democrat and until recently, a candidate for Chris Dodd‘s former Senate seat, Richard Blumenthal. This guy had the chutzpah to claim, or lead many to believe, that he had served in Vietnam. Well, he did no such thing. Actually, he did all he could to obtain deferments to avoid going to Vietnam. Finally, in 1970 when he had run out of favors and things weren’t looking so good for him, he joined a Washington Marine Reserve unit. While there he was involved in drills and exercise and fixed playgrounds. That was as close to action as he got.
In 2003, while addressing a rally of military families who were gathered to show support for our troops, Blumenthal told the crowd, ” When we returned, we saw nothing like this. Let’s do better by this generation of man and women.” Then at a 2008 ceremony in front of the Veterans War Memorial Building in Shelton he said, “I served in the Vietnam era. I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.” Now that the truth has been outed, Blumenthal says he misspoke. Nothing like a sin of omission, I always say. He did a bad, bad thing.
The second scoundrel of the day is none other than Republican Representative Mark Souder, a self-proclaimed (are ya ready?) Evangelical Christian, forced to resign because of an extramarital affair with a part-time staffer. Well, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition blanks! The old coot just could not maintain his own family values and traditional marriage. Souder, you did a bad, bad thing.
Now let’s leave the political exploits and look at a tag-team match consisting of Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger. We all know (sort of) what they did. Since I am from Pittsburgh, my chagrin is doubled. For the most part traditional values are upheld in our city. We’re old-fashioned that way. I cannot speak to what goes on in the Wisteria Lanes here, but I do know we expect better behavior than Big Ben has demonstrated. For the last few years, anywhere you went you saw people, young and old, wearing Steeler jerseys with the number 7 on it in honor of Big Ben. According to Brian O’Neill in an article in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, those sales have dwindled big time. According to O’Neill, the hottest selling T-shirts are the ones that read “Dumb and Dumber” and have images of Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger on them. They both did bad, bad things.
So you see, those dirty little secrets have a way of creeping out and sooner or later you get caught. It’s time for truth and consequences. Let me sign off with this little video:
—cher
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Co’mon now Cher, you know telling the truth is not very high on most peoples agendas. only a few of us put great stock in it. but then again, sooner or later people are gonna get tired of this constant lying about everything. a good example of that is the mess in the gulf right now.. with BP Lying about how much oil is spewing out for the past month.
yeah. where is Dick Cheney since you’re calling out Liars.
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It never ceases to amaze me, that seemingly intelligent men destroy themselves so sadly and stupidly. I hesitated to use the pronoun, men, but it is men who seem so capable on this point.(go ahead, smile Cher) The case of John Edwards is just a classic case of arrogant stupidity, not much to say when men can be so stupid. They deserve what they get.
The hypocritical Mark Souders deserve loud condemnation and rebuke, good for these bastards. Their level of audacity places them at the bottom of the ranks of what it means to be decent and human.
Sadly there are the costly sexual scandles to both the public and public figure. The case of Elliot Spitzer is a case in point. There should have been an outcry by the American public to keep this man in his job, but due to a corporate media, what this man was doing was not well known. Elliot Spitzer was politically chopped off at the knees. Elliot Spitzer and two or three States Attorney Generals were trying to hold the Bush administration accountable for the fraud in the home mortgage market. After all this is the major cause of the crashing of the world’s economies. I am sure Elliot’s wife, family and friends could put a hell of a tail drag on this man for his transgressions. We lost one of the best and to our detriment.
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RE,
Lying seems to be a way of life for far too many people, especially in politics. To lie about one’s service to their country during Vietnam is particularly heinous given so many whose lives were lost or shattered during that era.
As for Cheney, I have called him out many times and there is only so much to put in one post. But you are right about BP. They have tap-danced around the truth for a month now and the Gulf will take an untold amount of time to recover. BP has had a non-toxic product just sitting unused that would have been a better disbursement than what they have used to date. Who is holding them accountable?
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KAK,
Even people who otherwise do good can cause havoc by lying. Spitzer brought about his own political demise by using bad judgment and cheating on his wife. It is my contention that people who hold a public office should be held to a higher level of accountability. There is an old quote which says, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
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Well I must say I like your examples. But not telling the truth is what politicians almost always do. In my opinion everyone likes to have few secrets, dirty little secrets. And almost always someone discovers them. Politicians seems don’t have much problem with that, they have no shame of being caught in their lies.
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NewsMeBack,
Unfortunately you are right in that most politicians don’t feel shame. They keep it up until they are caught and then make some sorrowful comments at a press conference. Most seem disingenuous.
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“Even people who otherwise do good can cause havoc by lying. Spitzer brought about his own political demise by using bad judgment and cheating on his wife. It is my contention that people who hold a public office should be held to a higher level of accountability.”…Cher, I do not disagree with this statement at all, you are absolutely right……..But we are at a time in the American political spectrum where what we would normally be concidered an absolute has to be rethought. I do not mean it has to be accepted in the sense that we let it change our values but to be prudent in trying times I think personal transgressions take a back seat to the public interest. Of course I refer to Elliot Spitzer, I sense a disagreement between us on that one. I do hate to disagree with someone who I know takes most of the positions as I but I think we have to discuss these points and hopefully both come to the conclusion that what is good for the salvation of this economy and this American public is reason enough to cut some slack to what I will call our discrased American heros.
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KAK,
Out of respect for you, I will give this more thought. I suppose my fear is, where do you draw the line? If we cut slack to Spitzer, should we then cut slack to others like Souder who allegedly paid his mistress for superfluous duties? John Edwards paid his mistress as a staffer as well. The bigger question is, what funds are used by politicians who create jobs for a mistress? If there are public funds involved then it is compounds the moral relevance.
If people are elected to serve this country, I really believe they need to do only that and mind their own actions so that we do not have to have such conversations. Again, Kevin, out of respect for you, I will consider your side. There may be some merit to it.
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I only say this in the case of Elliot Spitzer, so we are perfectly clear. The public has cut it’s own throat and that benefits no one. These are special times, deviations from our norms along any lines is going to be our path out of this. That may be an over statement but at least we must see that we are not shackled by our norms.
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The hypocrisy gets to people as much as the lying, maybe more. Spitzer and Souder are only the two most recent examples of men aggressively taking everyone else to task for the very thing they themselves do – and then lying about it.
I’m not sure how “Do as I say, but not as I do” helps any country.
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