Musing's musings

This just in: Politicians are human beings

ZOMFG, I cannot believe the orgies of self-righteousness that are flooding Left Blogistan (and, for all I know or care, Right Blogistan as well) at the news that John Edwards has admitted to having an affair. I may well stay offline for the next few days, just to avoid the inevitable nausea and the concomitant rise in my blood pressure these discussions are likely to bring.

Hypocrisy abounds. The lefties are all propping themselves up on their fainting couches and declaring, breathlessly, their undying satisfaction that the voters had pushed John Edwards off the stage before this revelation of the cheesy was made public. This despite the fact that progressives are normally in favor of letting consenting adults make up their own minds about what they may do--and with whom, and in what circumstances--in private. Apparently that principle doesn't apply to anyone seeking public office, lest his peccadilloes (or hers) should cost us electoral victory--as if winning an election really matters when you've already sold your soul to get it. And the righties, I'm sure, are gloating and chortling to themselves at the thought of yet another liberal's demonstrating how little they care for the family values the Republicans all claim to love and honor--even as they are driven to their next appointment with their dominatrix, or sidling off to the nearest airport bathroom for yet another furtive tryst.

I would ask at what point Americans had lost their minds if it weren't for the sad fact that, at least as far as sex and related matters are concerned, we've never been compos mentis in all of our history--at least as far as I can determine. Historically, we've always been a randy bunch--with the doors closed, anyway. Publicly, on the other hand, we've always liked to think of ourselves as upright and moral--though the image that more readily comes to mind is that of the tight-lipped priss and the finger-wagging Puritan, � la Lord and Lady Whiteadder.

I don't presume to know what promises John and Elizabeth Edwards have made to one another, and neither is it my place to sit in judgement on what those promises might have been, or how they might have changed over the years. As long as they were mutually agreeable and agreeably mutual, I have no quarrel with them. Suppose, for argument's sake, that John Edwards did sneak behind his terminally ill wife's back to have sex with another woman whom, he says, he did not really love. That would certainly make him a cad, a boor, and would represent a serious failing on his part.

But show me, anywhere, any human being who hasn't made at least one major fuck-up in the course of his or her life. I'm reminded of something Jack Shea said some years back, talking about the need for forgiveness. He said, as best I remember it off the top of my head, that if we don't forgive one another we hold one another fast to that one mistake, that one flaw, that one failing. As long as I hold on to the mistake that you (or I) made, I can't get away from it and neither can you. That's not to say that forgiveness entails forgetting or ignoring an offense, or that it implies an attitude of "It's OK" toward the flaw, the mistake, or the failure. What it does, to quote Alice Camille and Paul Boudreau (The Forgiveness Book, ACTA), is to let the other off the hook, to create new life, and to move toward goodness. That was also, I thought, what it meant to be a progressive.

Obama on gay rights: Just what HAS he done?

I've been involved with a number of discussions online about which of the Democratic candidates is best on the question of gay rights. That discussion has come back into prominence this week when a prominent conservative minister, one of Bush the Younger's "spiritual advisers" and a supporter of "reparative therapy" for gay and lesbian people announced he was endorsing Obama and inquired about making appearances on the candidate's behalf. Caveat: The announcement in question came from the minister in question and not from the Obama campaign. Calls made yesterday to the Obama campaign disavowed any knowledge of the minister's announcement or of any plans to have him campaign on Obama's behalf.

The general consensus of opinion among Obama supporters is that Obama is clearly the best of the Democratic candidates. They will enthusiastically proclaim, usually without any documentation, that Obama has "done the most" for gay rights of all the Democratic candidates. They point with pride to his sponsorship of the Illinois law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and his fine words about what he wants to do if elected president.

The trouble is, those words aren't backed up by much in the way of concrete action--and what action there has been from Obama can at best be described as ambivalent. There is a curious disinterest, among Obama's supporters (whether gay or not) to discuss what I've come to think of as the "McClurkin Incident." When I bring it up, however, I am usually told that I'm just dredging up old news from the past in an attempt to smear the best candidate in the field.

After another lengthy discursus on the question at Big Orange yesterday, I decided to do a little digging. What I found, I think, gives credence to my initial position--to wit, that Obama's record on gay rights is little better (or worse) than either Clinton's or Edwards's. Follow me below the fold for the details.

General quarters! General quarters!

We're still sorting out just exactly who is running for the presidency in 2008, and the S.S. John Edwards has already taken a torpedo forward and is down by the head with water coming in. I refer, of course, to the great Blogger Controversy of 2007.

As I wrote last week, the Edwards campaign was taking heat from über-Catholic and soi-disant protector of the faith William Donohue (hell, no, I'm not linking to any site of his: Google his name if you must, but I recommend a prophylactic dose of holy water first, and a thorough exorcism of your computer afterward). The flap was over some of the sentiments expressed by newly hired Edwards campaign staffers Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister: sentiments that were, in Donohue's opinion, defamatory to Catholicism and dismissive of Catholics. Never mind that the women in question were not employees of the Edwards campaign at the time they made those statements, nor that they were made on their own respective blogs and not on any site affiliated with the campaign. They made the statements and, in Donohue's warped and twisted world, that meant that Edwards was personally responsible for them, just as if he had made them himself.

That view is, of course, pure bullshit. And if Edwards and his campaign people had been smart, that would have been their first line of "defense" against this contretemps. The second should have been to find some of Donohue's more inflammatory statements about people of other faiths (not hard to do; just pick up any press release he's written in the last couple of decades) and ask him when he had decided to stop being a racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobe. The third line could have been to dig up some of the more salacious comments made by some of the people Donohue hangs out with (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, et aliae all spring readily to mind) and demand that Donohue immediately cease supporting them.