News I Can’t Use
Apparently the latest installment of Olympics, Inc. has begun. I can’t get excited as I never got into professional sports with the uniforms covered in logos.
Any resemblance to the 1936 Nazi extravaganza is purely genetic, the Chinese hired Albert Speer Jr. to oversee their production. Monumental architecture and nationalism never seemed to me to be a convincing stage for “friendly competition”.
John Edwards is in trouble because he had an affair a couple of years ago and the only person he admitted it to was his wife. I fail to see why this is any of my business. He isn’t a government licensed marriage counselor the last time I looked, and a private partnership agreement, like marriage, isn’t any of my concern.
The media say he lied about it. I wonder, if after 7½ years of the lies of the Hedgemony, the media would believe that anyone bothers to tell them the truth. They lied about Edwards in 2004 and when he was running for the Democratic nomination, so why should they expect he owed them the truth.
I don’t remember the media making a big deal out of Reagan being the first divorced President, or the escapades of John McCain, so why is this considered news?
2 comments
The Edwards thing is news, I have been assured time and again by Very Serious People (more properly described as Very Seriously Screwed-Up People or Very Serious Panty-Sniffers), because he might have been our candidate for the presidency, and the American people will not elect a liar or an adulterer to office. Any attempt to point out the tautological truth that “politician” is semantically and in all other respects equivalent to “liar” was ignored–as was the fact that we’ve had plenty of presidents (to say nothing of other elected leaders) who strayed from the paths of marital fidelity, and nobody ever batted an eyelid over their peccadilloes.
I really don’t get it. We say we’re devoted, as progressives, to the principle that what two or more consenting adults do in private is their own bloody business. But we still buy the tabloids who print as fact rumors about who is schtupping whom, and insist that we have some sacred right to know every last intimate detail of the personal lives of anyone we even suspect might be thinking about running for office–and then, when, as was inevitable, evidence turns up that s/he is in fact a human being and not perfect, we turn on that candidate and rend him/her limb from limb. Is it any wonder we’re stuck with the lame-ass candidates we’ve bemoaned for decades?
Most people refuse to admit their voyeurism and attempt to justify the faux outrage about such things.
Edwards violated his wife’s trust. Obama violated my civil rights by voting for the FISA amendment. I’ll save my outrage for those times when I get screwed.