Meissen Model by Alaskan Dude (flickr)
Over at Balloon Juice, DougJ noticed that an incoherent New York Times thumbsucker on naughty public leaders and institutions had an illustration that showed Tiger Woods, John Edwards, David Paterson, a Toyota logo, and a generic picture of a headless someone raking in bucks behind a “FORECLOSURE” sign.
As DougJ says: “Is it really news that rich men like to have affairs?” But even if we accept the idea that we’re supposed to have national freakout sessions whenever rich men have affairs, why is there a decided double standard? As anticontrarian said: “Where are the pictures of John Ensign? Or David Vitter?”
Where, indeed?
I was chatting the other day with some random dittohead who was blathering on and on about what a creep Edwards was/is when I brought him up short by asking him “why is the media hammering away at a guy who retired from politics two years ago and hasn’t held an office for six years?”
He sputtered something to the effect that well, Edwards wanted to be president and he held himself up as so godly. To which I replied “You mean like Mark Sanford? That guy cheated on his wife too, and he held himself up as so godly — and he’s still considered a viable 2012 GOP candidate by some people. Oh, and he’s still a sitting governor.”
He didn’t have a reply to that.
But going back to issues of trust that are actually our business, and are actually important, DougJ also mentions the absence of Judy Miller’s picture from that Wall of Public Shaming.
You’d think that enabling the ambitions of Ahmad Chalabi — who as we’ve known for years was working hand-in-glove with Iran — to create a war that destroyed one nation, killed untold hundreds of thousands if not millions, and has seriously damaged America’s financial and moral standing, would be a mite worse of a crime than catting around on one’s spouse, even if the adulterer is an evil Democrat as opposed to nice Republican Mark Sanford. But maybe that’s just me.
Tags: ahmad chalabi, David Vitter, Iran, Iraq, John Edwards, Judy Miller, Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods
