By: Keli Goff
When people think of really great parties—you know the kind where someone ends up dancing on tabletops and the following morning 80% of the crowd can’t remember what happened—one rarely thinks of conservative types. But if this summer is any indication conservative Republicans may just throw the best parties. In fact between the hookers and bathroom hookups they might just be able to give the Playboy Mansion a run for its money. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/washington/01craig.html
These days it takes a lot, an awful lot, to shock the media and most Americans. For a while now our standards for what constitutes outlandish or unacceptable behavior from our leaders have been pushed lower and lower.
A candidate caught in a little white lie?
Please. What else is new?
A Congressman addicted to painkillers or booze?
Well they are both legal. Who hasn’t had one drink too many every now and then?
A Senator having an affair with a low-level aide?
Gimme a break. As long as she (or he) is over 18 that’s barely enough to make me glance up from my morning paper.
After all, in a world in which releasing a sex tape has become a normal pathway to stardom it’s easy to become desensitized to caring about the behavior of those in the public eye. This isn’t all a bad thing. In fact, in some ways this thinking demonstrates a maturing of Americans. We’re finally getting to a place in which we’ve begun to evolve beyond our puritanical sensibilities and accept that we are all human including our public officials. And this means that if we make the criteria for public service perfection, we will miss out on a lot of great and gifted people.
That being said, while most of us have matured to some measure of tolerance and acceptance, there is one flaw that we still universally abhor: hypocrisy.
Democrats are not perfect. Neither are Republicans. No one is. But when politicians choose to publicly condemn and legislate the morality of others they are choosing to provoke the wrath of the sleeping giant known as the judgmental American.
Dallying with a hooker, and attempting to hookup in public were not the crimes that convicted Republican Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig in the public conscious.
It was hypocrisy that earned them a conviction in the minds of most Americans.
www.keligoff.com
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Perhaps the Republican Nat’l Convention should be held in the Men’s Bathroom at Grand Central Station.
Well said! Although I’m left wondering if this roused giant will be clubbed over the head by the troll known as the hypocritical american.
The former senator had a very real reason for standing against equality: fear. While I don’t condone his reasoning, I can understand it. I’m sure his psyche followed the classic closeted mantra, “I need to distance myself as far as possible from all things gay so people won’t find that’s what I am. Oh, and where’s the nearest glory hole?” It in no way lessens his hypocrisy, it just frames it.
However, your typical middle-american suburbanite, who champions the american way and all the freedoms and liberties it provides can be just as hypocritical. Yet while fear of the uknown may frame their hypocrisy, I think it’s all too often civic and mental lethargy. While almost every american gives lip service to the great constitutional guarantees of equal treatment and protection for all, many of these people still agree with the former senator’s stance on marriage equality.
While they signed that petition protesting the firing of their school’s lesbian teacher, and while they can’t wait to see the pictures Steven, their office-mate, took from his Provincetown vacation, and while they simply adored ‘Will & Grace,’ they’re still perfectly fine supporting second-class citizenry. And all this because they passively accept what they’re told by the Karl Roves of the world, or because they find the thought of what two people do in bed icky, or because their local priest, rabbi, minister, deacon, whatever told them to “Vote your conscience… and by the way, two women getting married is a sin and you and your children will go to hell if you support it.”
That, I fear, is a hypocrisy that can’t be exposed by moronic dalliances in a bathroom stall, it’s far more subtle than that. And I have no idea how to open people’s eyes on that one, let me know if you’ve figured out a way…
Appreciate your frank candor. Too much sex inuendos that have no public value, except satisfying vourirism. Kep writing. Thank You. Rich Holcomb, Omaha, NE.
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