By Don Klein
The turbulent combination of power and sex has ruined more political careers than oafish behavior or incompetence can ever hope to, but men of rank and authority never seem to be able to avoid an illicit fling when it presents itself.
They feel that because they are privileged people they have exceptional sexual entitlements.
In the last few weeks the cynics of the world were entertained by the ethical and professional demise of a United States senator, the marriage split of the former governor of the country’s largest state and most stunning, the arrest in New York of the head of the International Monetary Fund.
The hoi poloi could say good riddance to the bums but that would not be fair to all. The case against IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not yet been resolved and he deserves the judicial benefit of the assumption of innocence.
Not so in the cases of Senator John Ensign, of Nevada nor former Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, of California.
Ensign had to resign in order to avoid expulsion from the Senate on sexual harassment charges. This is a man who refused to resign until the very last minute after facing the Ethics Committee for the sordid circumstances following an affair he had with a staff associate who was the wife of a long-standing friend, chief of staff and political sidekick.
That’s not even chutzpah, that’s beyond misconduct, it’s repulsive. What little respect or loyalty was there for his closest friend if he would schtup his wife behind his back. She said she feared losing her job, and her husband’s, if she didn’t give in.
Good riddance, indeed.
Then we have the Schwartzenegger case. The body builder who became the bad actor who married a Kennedy and who eventually ascended to became perhaps the worst governor of that large state, admitted misbehaving. His life has been marked by two words: infidelity and incompetence.
As governor he exploited with bravado and ignorance the idea that governing was easy. The voters bought the message thinking that a muscle-bound Kennedy-in-law could muscle away California’s fiscal problems. He did just the opposite.
When he took office the state’s debt was $22 billion and its deficit was $14 billion. When he left office just months ago those negative figures had increased to $34.7 billion and $26.6 billion respectively. He was a colossal flop and the people will have to pay for his blundering in the years to come.
One must wonder about the absurdity of the voters electing him after being forewarned about the great Arnold’s sexual propensities. They knew he considered any woman near him fair game for groping or worse. Now we learn that he sired a son by one of his household employees before he ran for governor and kept it secret all these years. His marriage now is in shambles and his renewed film career in question.
Another good riddance.
We can go back further on this sex-power connection to many others, the most notable recently being John Edwards’ fathering a child out of wedlock during his campaign for president in 2008 while his wife was suffering from cancer and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street immorality, being caught in a Washington hotel room with a hooker.
Shameful hypocrites both.
All of those mentioned were personal acts of indiscretion and downright bad taste, but not criminal in any way. It falls in the category of what the French like to feel is their national credo -- a person’s private life is his concern and no one else’s. Political transparency is the only sustainable contrary argument
Now we come to what is probably the biggest fish of all. The man who was expected to become the next president of France – head of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He has been charged with seven counts of sexual assault.
Even the French are not calling this a private matter. They know the difference between privacy and felony. French society is split in two with the women seeming to want to hear the facts coming out of DSK’s trial and the men demanding that he receive special treatment and not be handled by police like any other criminal defendant.
The alleged attack of a housekeeper in a posh New York hotel is completely out of character for DSK, an acknowledged womanizer but a non-violent man. His previous sexual transgressions have been winked at by the French public since none of his female targets summoned the courage to file complaints.
The New York case is different. The housekeeper was quick to report the attack, police were called and DSK was eventually taken off a Paris-bound flight by detectives who traced him there. The second blow was when the judge refused to allow bail, considering him a wealthy man and the likelihood of him fleeing the country.
Perhaps the Roman Polanski incident played a role in this decision. Polanski was convicted of having illegal sex with a minor – a 13 year old girl -- and fled the country while on bail. He relocated to Paris and the French refused to extradite him to California as a fugitive. The N.Y..court would not want a repetition of that.
No matter, Strauss-Kahn’s political future is in the toilet. He will be replaced as managing director of IMF and he will never be president of France. Ensign’s political career is in ruins, Schwartenegger’s future is cloudy as is Edwards’ and only Spitzer seems on the rebound.
All because of the belief held by powerful men that they had special license that allows them to sexually exploit others.
Showing posts with label May 20. Show all posts
Showing posts with label May 20. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Pants on fire
By Don Klein
"Liar, liar, pants on fire." That is what a knowing secretary would whisper to me whenever the bosses at the Maryland Department of Transportation would promise us lowly workers something we all knew they couldn’t deliver. We would chuckle and then go about our daily routines.
It was funny to us, but what is happening these days with our prominent
politicians in no joke. We are witnessing an imposing list of prevaricating notables. The number swells with congressmen, governors, mayors and even presidents – and to my chagrin, journalists – on the list. Ah for the good old days when you could depend on a man’s word.
Even idolized sports figures like Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palermo, O.J. Simpson and, God forgive us, the man-child of a drooling golf crowd, his worshipful Tiger Woods, can no longer be trusted.
Now comes Richard Blumenthal, the golden boy of New England politics. He tops them all. Forget Eliot Spitzer for attacking corruption in public while toying with a prostitute in private. No need to remember Hillary Clinton’s fairy tale about dogging bullets that never where fired upon her arrival in Bosnia years ago. We can even forget about John Edward for denying out-of-wedlock intimacies and an illegitimate paternity.
Ex-Governor Rod Blagoyevich’s exploits in denying he tried to sell a senatorial nomination while chief executive of Illinois, pales in comparison. Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, an odds on favorite as the successor to retiring Sen. Christopher Dodd, had the effrontery not only to lie about his military service in Vietnam, but almost as bad, he said he was once captain of the Harvard swim team, a team of which he never was even a member.
A phoney war hero and fake Harvard letter man. A man of double duplicity. How could anyone in public office who is about to ascend to an even higher level of public service expect to get away with that?
"I misspoke," he explained when caught in this fraud by The New York Times. That excuse would not be believed even if he hadn’t sought draft deferments five times during the war. Misspoke? That’s almost as bad as blaming the dog for eating your homework.
When he eventually decided to do "his duty" he took the cowardly George W. Bush route. He joined the reserves and worked on the dangerous domestic mission known as "toys for tots."
Nevertheless endless newspaper references to his background mentioned his combat duty in Vietnam and how badly he was treated as a war veteran. People even spat on him upon his return to the States, he told tearing gullible followers from time to time. He never picked up a phone to correct stories about his falsely-reported combat duty which actually amounted to pristine service as a Marine Corps Reservist.
Can you imagine what he would have done if some news stories had referred to him as a bronco-busting Texas rodeo star in his younger days. Or worse, as having served 18 months in prison for beating his grandmother. In either case the phone would instantly be in his hand demanding an immediate correction. Not so when he was being described as a war hero.
Blumenthal was considered a certainty in the upcoming general election. I doubt if that is any longer the case. As Don Meredith, the former Monday night sportscaster and football wit used to say, "Stick a fork in him, he’s done."
There is nothing more disgusting that a liar and nothing more unpardonable than being lied to. Blumenthal can make all the speeches he wants about his misspoken remarks and he can publicly embrace as many veterans he chooses to make amends, but he will never be believed again. He should never hold public office.
He has joined the ever-expanding pantheon of the mendacious along with such well know public figures – past and present -- as Mark Sanford, Kwame Kilpatrick, Newt Gingrich, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Donald Rumsfeld, Jesse Jackson, Oliver North, Carl Rowan, Richard Packwood, Henry Cisneros, Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.
All are members of the national Hall of Shame.
To some there might be a comparison between the lying Blumenthal and former president, Bill Clinton. But there is really no similarity. Clinton’s misstatement was the natural act of a man caught in an embarrassing extra-marital situation and telling what amounted to a big fib to cover-up his philandering. It is not unusual for a man to lie about his sex exploits, especially if he is notable and wedded.
Clinton’s lies were an effort to hide his very personal misbehavior and had no effect on government operations nor the public good. Also it was a subject that many believed was none of the business of an outrageously partisan Congress.
Blumenthal’s is very different . His lies were to magnify his image to the voters and to make him more attractive as a political entity. Clinton lied to coverup his own private sexual foibles with a White House intern. Bad as it was, it was excusable and the Senate exonerated him. Blumenthal’s lies were a deliberate attempt to broaden his appeal among the body politic for his personal ill-deserved gain.
In the end both held the belief that they were important enough to ignore normal rules and scorn the accepted morality of the nation. Both were wrong, but there is a difference. Clinton harmed no one but himself by acting like a tomcat in doing what he did with his doxy.
On the other hand, Blumenthal affronted everyone who was impressed by his dishonest resume and voted for him in the past and was thinking of voting for him again. He also insulted the millions of veterans who did serve.
Pants on fire, indeed.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire." That is what a knowing secretary would whisper to me whenever the bosses at the Maryland Department of Transportation would promise us lowly workers something we all knew they couldn’t deliver. We would chuckle and then go about our daily routines.
It was funny to us, but what is happening these days with our prominent
politicians in no joke. We are witnessing an imposing list of prevaricating notables. The number swells with congressmen, governors, mayors and even presidents – and to my chagrin, journalists – on the list. Ah for the good old days when you could depend on a man’s word.
Even idolized sports figures like Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palermo, O.J. Simpson and, God forgive us, the man-child of a drooling golf crowd, his worshipful Tiger Woods, can no longer be trusted.
Now comes Richard Blumenthal, the golden boy of New England politics. He tops them all. Forget Eliot Spitzer for attacking corruption in public while toying with a prostitute in private. No need to remember Hillary Clinton’s fairy tale about dogging bullets that never where fired upon her arrival in Bosnia years ago. We can even forget about John Edward for denying out-of-wedlock intimacies and an illegitimate paternity.
Ex-Governor Rod Blagoyevich’s exploits in denying he tried to sell a senatorial nomination while chief executive of Illinois, pales in comparison. Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, an odds on favorite as the successor to retiring Sen. Christopher Dodd, had the effrontery not only to lie about his military service in Vietnam, but almost as bad, he said he was once captain of the Harvard swim team, a team of which he never was even a member.
A phoney war hero and fake Harvard letter man. A man of double duplicity. How could anyone in public office who is about to ascend to an even higher level of public service expect to get away with that?
"I misspoke," he explained when caught in this fraud by The New York Times. That excuse would not be believed even if he hadn’t sought draft deferments five times during the war. Misspoke? That’s almost as bad as blaming the dog for eating your homework.
When he eventually decided to do "his duty" he took the cowardly George W. Bush route. He joined the reserves and worked on the dangerous domestic mission known as "toys for tots."
Nevertheless endless newspaper references to his background mentioned his combat duty in Vietnam and how badly he was treated as a war veteran. People even spat on him upon his return to the States, he told tearing gullible followers from time to time. He never picked up a phone to correct stories about his falsely-reported combat duty which actually amounted to pristine service as a Marine Corps Reservist.
Can you imagine what he would have done if some news stories had referred to him as a bronco-busting Texas rodeo star in his younger days. Or worse, as having served 18 months in prison for beating his grandmother. In either case the phone would instantly be in his hand demanding an immediate correction. Not so when he was being described as a war hero.
Blumenthal was considered a certainty in the upcoming general election. I doubt if that is any longer the case. As Don Meredith, the former Monday night sportscaster and football wit used to say, "Stick a fork in him, he’s done."
There is nothing more disgusting that a liar and nothing more unpardonable than being lied to. Blumenthal can make all the speeches he wants about his misspoken remarks and he can publicly embrace as many veterans he chooses to make amends, but he will never be believed again. He should never hold public office.
He has joined the ever-expanding pantheon of the mendacious along with such well know public figures – past and present -- as Mark Sanford, Kwame Kilpatrick, Newt Gingrich, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Donald Rumsfeld, Jesse Jackson, Oliver North, Carl Rowan, Richard Packwood, Henry Cisneros, Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.
All are members of the national Hall of Shame.
To some there might be a comparison between the lying Blumenthal and former president, Bill Clinton. But there is really no similarity. Clinton’s misstatement was the natural act of a man caught in an embarrassing extra-marital situation and telling what amounted to a big fib to cover-up his philandering. It is not unusual for a man to lie about his sex exploits, especially if he is notable and wedded.
Clinton’s lies were an effort to hide his very personal misbehavior and had no effect on government operations nor the public good. Also it was a subject that many believed was none of the business of an outrageously partisan Congress.
Blumenthal’s is very different . His lies were to magnify his image to the voters and to make him more attractive as a political entity. Clinton lied to coverup his own private sexual foibles with a White House intern. Bad as it was, it was excusable and the Senate exonerated him. Blumenthal’s lies were a deliberate attempt to broaden his appeal among the body politic for his personal ill-deserved gain.
In the end both held the belief that they were important enough to ignore normal rules and scorn the accepted morality of the nation. Both were wrong, but there is a difference. Clinton harmed no one but himself by acting like a tomcat in doing what he did with his doxy.
On the other hand, Blumenthal affronted everyone who was impressed by his dishonest resume and voted for him in the past and was thinking of voting for him again. He also insulted the millions of veterans who did serve.
Pants on fire, indeed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
