We don’t have alot to add. By all accounts, a man, his family and another woman are entangled in an affair of the heart. The children are always the most vulnerable. We generally encourage such sad episodes to remain private and avoid joining the political circuses. But following Ensign, it’s hard to deny that ‘family values’ joins ‘small government’, ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘civil liberties’ on the Wing Nut Wall Of Hypocrisy.
Sanford ensured his affair is public theater with a truly bizarre, performance art-like news conference. Following an equally astonishing 5 day vanishing act. Naturally, Tweety saw the whole thing as a statement of Sanford’s manliness (he didn’t allow some ‘damn staffer’ (Tweety’s self loathing once again) to prepare his remarks). Tweety remains one of our most reliable contrary indicators today.
Obama’s ongoing timidity despite an avalanche of Rightist ‘Family Values’ posing crumbling on national TV remains a puzzle. It makes one wonder what would ever galvanize him to action. Exactly what form of political seppuku must the Republican Party give him before he dares a mere twitch beyond rhetorical flourishes.
sglover says
I suspect that there’s no real puzzle to Obama’s timidity: He’s just the latest, most photogenic iteration of the self-dealing politician, Dem sub-variant. Look, if you’re **really** after hope’n’change, are you gonna choose hack dinosaurs like Biden and Clinton?!?! Anyway, after reading even his initial campaign promises (an extra 100,000 soldiers? because our Pentagon-centric “foreign policy” is such a success?!?!), it seemed pretty clear that he never represented anything better than a slightly better-managed status quo.
Hey, I voted for the guy, because he wasn’t in the Republican wing of the Unified Corporate Party, which is batshit crazy (as you guys put it so well, the Movement symbiont has chewed through its frontal lobes). But watch how health-care “reform” plays out: The same insurance “industry” conglomerates that benefit from the current system will end up designing the “reform” measures, and Obama won’t lift a goddam finger to stop it.
If Obama had ever been serious, he would have used his inaugural speech to declare open conflict on the FIRE sector. He would have painted that sector as the enemy of the American democracy and prosperity — because it is. Instead, we got Summers and little Timmy Geithner.
Expect a helluva wave of disappointment and dismay round about 2010-11.
Comment says
The Gov is probably not the only hypocrite in S. Carolina politics and so he was probably relying on some form of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) to keep things cool.
Alex – as always makes a good point. Who be da heavy? Biden not much game.
Desargues says
If the emailed they leaked are accurate, the man began his affair almost a year ago. If he didn’t care about how the psychotic sky-god in which he allegedly believes may view such a protracted transgression, perhaps he should have had the basic human decency to come clean much earlier about this to his wife. It’s not just his piety is a sham — it often is with the morons and crooks who do religion. But he has no character; that is inexcusable, no matter how “human” his mumbling press conference made him look.
Hunter says
re: the chickenhawk bit, by chance when I loaded the page the quote machine threw up John Roberts on Marshall/Jefferson:
“Some have speculated that the real root of Marshall’s ill feeling to Jefferson was that Jefferson was not at Valley Forge, was not in the fight, and had what Marshall might regard as a somewhat precious attachment to ideas for the sake of ideas, while Marshall was more personally invested in the success of the American experiment.”
That’s synchronicity!
Alex says
Letting them tear themselves apart in an undignified and public manner is a very valid strategy; leaping in to the ruck to run up the score risks being over-identified with their problems – “they’re all the same”, etc.
You forget the fundamentally cool (in every sense, including the McLuhan one) memetics of Obama. On the off-beat. Let the try-hards and never-willbes sweat and make a spectacle of themselves.
The alternative – the punk/gonzo/dancefloor aesthetic of plunging right in there and Really Getting Into It, validation through effort and public commitment – is harder than everyone thinks to carry off without looking a fool, and also cheaper. Any fool can hop around like a maniac. The ones we remember stand out for their rarity.
Ideally, this is something which is resolved by a team effort – you need a Marcel Desailly to go with your Zinedine Zidane, or as we say in the other game, you need someone to carry the piano and someone to play it. Who in the administration will carry up the piano? Take on the role of official team thug? Never appreciated by the priesthood, but the fans know and appreciate them.
Comment says
Leo – you left the whole chickenhawk phenom, which is definately a variety of the gop hypocracy machine – Chickenhawkery is such a part of the culture that they want to proclaim the word out of bounds and unfair. It’s worse in many ways than the endless adultry scandals because it’s just raw cynicism and cowardice rather than love and sex.
Dr Leo Strauss says
True, although given our collective body of work here with our merry little band, we sorta waved it in as a given. But you make a good point. They count on our boredom and exhaustion to prevail.
Comment says
Interesting that Tweety was pretty harsh against Clinton over his Monica thing (and he took it out on Gore) – but usually he is an apologist for wTomanizing pols like JFK. He’s probably divided on this – He longs for the guys clubs atmosphere of old Hill days, with the occassional Margaret Chase Smith or what have you. You know Jack and Marylin and all that jazz. Tweety missed out on that era of finger snapping rat packery. He feels threatned by the new pundit class – you can see his hostility from time to time and his shock at Stewart’s brilliant scorning of him
Comment says
There’s just a lot of delusion in the GOP = Sanford’s idea of principle ie rejecting federal money for his high poverty state – just one example. Lindsey Graham – a dim bulb imo – is often the brightest guy at GOP meetings these days. re Tweety – we picked up on that self loathing comment too. That was weird. Yeah – a real doofus. Ofcourse, Sanford was irresponsible – so Tweety found otherwise. Btw, hypocracy has become so over the top in the GOP that it has become a bore to notice it. The rectory doesn’t even match the gop/