From Newsweek:
By now, Washington has grown accustomed to its sex scandals. In the capital, obsessed with Iraq and the coming presidential election, the news that Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter’s phone number had turned up in possession of a D.C. escort service created a relatively modest stir. The press dutifully pointed out Vitter’s hypocrisy; a devout Catholic who has been an outspoken moralist, he was a vocal crusader for President Clinton’s impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, accusing Clinton of draining “any sense of values left in our political culture.” Vitter swiftly copped to the transgression via an e-mail to the AP. After rumors of other dalliances began cropping up in the New Orleans papers (he denied them), Vitter grimly took to the microphone, his embattled wife by his side, and, in an all-too-familiar D.C. ritual, apologies for letting his wife, friends and supporters down, then told the world he was pressing on with the people’s business.
Please reference my comment #10 on the following thread about politicians finding “faith”:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/4473/#comments
[blockquote] 10. Jim the Puritan wrote:
Just to be clear, I have the same opinion of Republicans who put their religion on their sleeve. They’re all phonies. [/blockquote]
There must be something in the water in D. C. that causes otherwise sane, noble persons to forget who they are and stoop to the lowest of behaviors. And it affects all political parties equally, it seems.
I have concluded there is also some sort of cosmic ray barrier around the District that fries one’s neural synapses. So much of what’s being proposed these days by both sides of the aisle seems unbelievably stupid and out of touch with reality.
What is it about the very people who yell the loudest about values, that they so often fall the hardest. From Mr. Clinton to Mr. Bennett to Mr. Foley to Mr. Condit.
That said, I am unwilling to question their faith, as Jim the Puritan suggests. We all live in glass houses – the best we can do is help others pick up the broken glass.
libraryjim, I don’t think it’s DC–Vitter was misbehaving in Louisiana before he ever got to the District.
Bob, don’t lump Bill Bennet in with the others. He never preached against gambling and it’s hardly seen as a vice in catholic circles, so no hypocrisy was involved on his part. I myself play poker with the guys on occasion and can, due to phenomenally consistent bad hands lose up to fufty bucks in an evening. It’s not much more than I might pay for an evening’s entertainment but proportionally it might be more than Bennet lost in any day relative to his income.
As for philandering moralists on the left or right: I have no time for them. The sooner we can be rid of politicians who are so arrogant that they think the rules don’t apply to them or so stupid that they think it won’t catch up with them the better our body politic will be.
wow christopher – nice to know where your virtuous loophole is
Bennett’s $50,000 sermons and best-selling moral instruction manuals financed his multimillion dollar gambling habit.
In Bennett’s The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family, he writes about how Americans overvalue “unrestricted personal liberty” calling us to “enter judgments on a whole range of behaviors and attitudes.” I wonder what a person of his status & income means when they write that “wealth and luxury … often make it harder to deny the quest for instant gratification” because “the more we attain, the more we want.”
I, too, have little truck with politicians who are sexually active outside of marriage or preachers who get caught with prostitutes or sexual sins or other moral sins such as greed or pride.
However, we need to be careful of accusing a person just because his or her name was found in the rolodex or phonebook of a prostitute or madame. If I ran a call girl rign, I certainly would have the names and phone numbers of some prominent politicians, lawyers, Judges, and policemen in my phonebook – even if they weren’t customers. I would consider that “insurance.”
I also believe that leadership in a community is a red flag to the devil. He seems to target leaders because causing them to fall will lead others to fall without help. We all know of the turmoil that is caused in a congregation when the priest or someone on the vestry is caught is a special sin.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Last night’s Tonight Show skewered the pious politicians as similar to prostitutes. A politician is by definition and vocation a liar so why should we be scandalized by whatever they do? This morning I listened to a “pro-life” (uh-huh) congressman defend his vote against prohibiting dog-fighting on the the grounds that the legislation elevated dog-life over human life. Tell that to the people, children and babies, mauled and killed by pit-bulls. And besides, this bright light said, the federal government has no business regulating dog-fights. Yup, he’s pro-life. Every time one of these political paragons opens his mouth, I have to do all I can to suppress my gag reflex.
WE can assess vorrectly the depth of Vitter’s commitment to right behavior. And don’t give me a lot of flack about being judgmental. He’s has shown himself to be a rather commonplace political hypocrite. Common, we say, as dirt.
His defense buy the evangelical whathisfacethere, is even more discouraging. “We are fallen so we must expect people to do what is wrong. They confess. We forgive them.” Doesn’t this religious pablum feed many a sinner who wants to walk away from his sin? When do we get to the part where an individual is responsible for his own failures and is required to pay for them? When do we get to the part where patent hypocrisy is put in the pillory to remind it that just confessing doesn’t cut it? Let’s have a little judgmentalism here, can we? Are you really content to say to this politlcal sleaze, go and sin no more? And then believe that he will obey this command?
Mr. Vitter, meet Mr. Boyer. You are perfect company. We forgive you both and trust you will do better in the future.
Mr Vitter and Mr Boyer: This is what the whipping post is for, a device to remind you that bad acts have painful consequences. LM
Gee Bob, nice to know where your subjective judgmentalism is. Do you have any scripture to back you up or are you just coasting on your own infallible righteousness.
re: “just because his or her name was found in the rolodex or phonebook of a prostitute or madame.”
The current “DC Madam” case deals not with a “rolodex or phonebook” but rather with the actual phone call/ phone billing records. The calls were made; I think it’s safe to say it’s not an “insurance” scheme.