I wonder if Jon Stewart is sending royalty checks to Congressman Weiner? If not, he certainly should be: Stewart, like all the rest of comedians on TV, is having a field day writing jokes about the congressman. I don’t intend to write another Weiner Roast, but I do have a couple of comments on a different subject that the Weiner affair has forced upon us.
First (and this is a small point), why are we referring to this as Weinergate? Why is everything a “gate?” Richard Nixon committed multiple felonies and tried to subvert the democratic process. Anthony Weiner played with himself while sending juvenile messages to desperate women. That’s not much of a comparison. The Watergate Hotel is not that far away from The Dupont Circle Hotel. If the offices that Nixon had burgled had been located there, today we might be calling the Weiner scandal a Circle Jerk.
It is time to retire the references to Watergate when politicians act illegally or immorally. We need a new word, and I suggest we use TARD. Typical Activity of Representative Delegates. Repeat offenders can be Re-TARDS. We might as well assign new meanings to these terms as the previous definitions are no longer politically correct.
My second complaint is a little more complicated. Let me try and put Weiner into some historical context. Political scandals are hardly new. Former Vice President Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. President Jackson fought over a dozen duels--mostly over the fact that he had inadvertently married a woman before her divorce was final. Poor Jackson carried so many pistol balls in him that when he walked it was said he sounded like someone shaking a bag of marbles.
Nixon sanctioned illegal military activity in Cambodia and Laos and still had time to have the only true scandal worthy of calling a gate; Watergate. Right about the same time, Congressman Wilbur Mills was caught driving while intoxicated. When the police stopped his car, the local stripper he was having an affair with, Fanne Foxe, tried to escape the police by jumping into the Tidal Basin and swimming to safety.
Is it just me, or are our sex scandals getting a little tame? Not only are most of these peckerdillos tawdry and cheap, but they don’t even sound like much fun.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude. I have always had a sneaky suspicion that rich and powerful men could get laid. This might even be a good thing. Do we really want a man who can start a nuclear war feeling a little… I’m not exactly certain what word to use here, but I prefer this man to be relaxed.
And what are we, the public, getting so worked up over? Our reactions to what seems to be fairly normal, if absolutely tawdry, behavior is a little over the top. Jackson, Cleveland, and most of the rest of that list of men caught in sexual scandals ignored the press and went on to be either elected, reelected, or both.
I don’t want to vote for a leader who has never done anything in his life. Either we will elect a man who has so carefully covered up his past that we will have no idea who he really is, or we will have a leader who is hardly human.
First (and this is a small point), why are we referring to this as Weinergate? Why is everything a “gate?” Richard Nixon committed multiple felonies and tried to subvert the democratic process. Anthony Weiner played with himself while sending juvenile messages to desperate women. That’s not much of a comparison. The Watergate Hotel is not that far away from The Dupont Circle Hotel. If the offices that Nixon had burgled had been located there, today we might be calling the Weiner scandal a Circle Jerk.
It is time to retire the references to Watergate when politicians act illegally or immorally. We need a new word, and I suggest we use TARD. Typical Activity of Representative Delegates. Repeat offenders can be Re-TARDS. We might as well assign new meanings to these terms as the previous definitions are no longer politically correct.
My second complaint is a little more complicated. Let me try and put Weiner into some historical context. Political scandals are hardly new. Former Vice President Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. President Jackson fought over a dozen duels--mostly over the fact that he had inadvertently married a woman before her divorce was final. Poor Jackson carried so many pistol balls in him that when he walked it was said he sounded like someone shaking a bag of marbles.
President Grover Cleveland possibly fathered of a child with a prostitute. While several men might have been the true father, Cleveland did pay the woman child support and never denied his possible paternity.
Let’s skip over Presidents Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eisenhower to move right up to Kennedy. If we are to believe popular legend, Kennedy slept with Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, and according to one biographer, got a quickie from the wife of the French ambassador in the White House elevator. As sex scandals go, this is the gold standard.
Is it just me, or are our sex scandals getting a little tame? Not only are most of these peckerdillos tawdry and cheap, but they don’t even sound like much fun.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude. I have always had a sneaky suspicion that rich and powerful men could get laid. This might even be a good thing. Do we really want a man who can start a nuclear war feeling a little… I’m not exactly certain what word to use here, but I prefer this man to be relaxed.
And what are we, the public, getting so worked up over? Our reactions to what seems to be fairly normal, if absolutely tawdry, behavior is a little over the top. Jackson, Cleveland, and most of the rest of that list of men caught in sexual scandals ignored the press and went on to be either elected, reelected, or both.
I don’t want to vote for a leader who has never done anything in his life. Either we will elect a man who has so carefully covered up his past that we will have no idea who he really is, or we will have a leader who is hardly human.
haha Circle Jerk.... I think you should publish all of these blogs, if you get tired of Enema U history classes I'm quite sure that you could be a successful comedian.
ReplyDeleteOh, and what would you do if you walked into finals and there was a bottle of Laphroig sitting on the desk? Something tells me you would say something along the lines of "AHA! This will actually be fun for once! Good luck sons of bitches."
Student who never went to class: "It says ashurnasirpal II, did you mean Ashurbanipal?"
As to the Laphroaig, Scotch is not allowed on school grounds. I would have to confiscate it.
ReplyDelete