Politicians Lie?! OMGWTFBBQ!!1

Really, who wouldn’t want to have a juicy story about getting shot at while on a good-works USO mission in a war zone overseas? Hillary Clinton was caught in a lie (irony of ironies, by comedian Sinbad, who accompanied her on the trip), albeit a mostly trivial one, about her experiences once her plane (well, according to her, it was a chopper) landed in war-torn Bosnia in 1996. She and her team ran, heads down, through sniper fire, into waiting cars, all drama and speed.

According to Sinbad (who was later corroborated by reporters), disembarking from the plane was a decidedly more pleasant experience, topped off by a welcoming ceremony before being loaded into official transportation.

Was Hillary Clinton lying or was it an “honest mistake”? Do we even care?

I mean, sure, we’re supposed to deserve honesty (especially in historical account) from our public representatives, but in light of recent events (Eliot Spitzer and the mayor of Detroit immediately come to mind), we really shouldn’t hold our public opinion so high.

After all, they’re just politicians. Politicians philander, lie, cheat, steal, occasionally drive their girlfriends off bridges while intoxicated, and that’s okay.

Isn’t it?

A Speech You Need to Watch and Think About (in four acts)

In all four Youtubey parts. Enjoy!


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4

Hillary Clinton responds:

It’s Raining Men (Alternate Title: What Tangled Webs They Weave)

The politically fallen are, quite literally, raining down upon us.

Far be it from me to mention the obvious: NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, a.k.a. “Client No. 9″ resigned last week in the midst of the worst political sex scandal to hit Albany in a century… that is, if you think 6 years of shacking up with a prostitute while your pretty wife sleeps in your posh New York City pad and your two daughters go about life unaware is shocking. Surprisingly, many people don’t think so, anymore.


Eliot Spitzer’s departure

This icky situation was made only more bizarre when, mere hours after Lt. Gov David Paterson was sworn in as Governor, Paterson re-revealed his and his wife’s philandering history to the press to head off a developing news recycling of an old story that may have resulted in another resignation from the governorship if it hit the fan unchecked.

“Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old,” sings (preaches?) Baz Luhrmann in everyone’s favorite graduation ditty, “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)”. Now, Baz, I love the song, but I disagree heartily that we citizens of a democracy (shadowy as it may be) should resign ourselves to the mounting evidence that politicians, the faces we assign to represent us in the free world, are just naturally made of inferior moral stuff and are predisposed to infidelity.

We should not accept the credo that “men will be men” and we are not near-obligated to tolerate this need to have mistresses and prostitutes on the side. Thomas Jefferson did it. Dwight Eisenhower did it. JFK did it. MLK Jr. might have done it. Bill Clinton did it, more than once, and in one instance, was accused of rape.
And everybody knows about it, as if that ever made it “okay”.

But we should not just accept these moral failings as part of the politician’s personality description. I believe that the moral weakness of cheating on a spouse is indicative of moral weakness in other areas of life, and the public should not put itself at risk for that kind of self-centered personal fulfillment to metastasize in public life. Not all men are cheaters. Not all First Ladies are doormats. American voters deserve better than to be publicly shamed by the personal affairs of our statesmen. Believe it or not, the rest of the world does care and is politically-incorrect enough to judge the political character of the cheater on the same standards as the political character of the embezzler, the thief, the pedophile, or the abuser.

This is not private business. Being a public servant exacts a type of commitment not accorded to private citizens, therefore, their philandering is public business, because it is in this way (which is one of many) that they display (or tarnish) their honor and respectability.

When politicians can’t keep it in their pants (or female politicians can’t do the girlish equivalent of such), everyone loses.
And, just for a fun-filled foray into the absolutely revolting, a former aide for sacked NJ Governor Jim McGreevey claims that, contrary to Dina McGreevey’s claims during her divorce proceedings (which, inevitably, involve cash settlements), the former governor’s ex-wife was pristinely aware of her husband’s sexual proclivities because (cue: drum roll) the aide and the former First Couple of New Jersey engaged in sexual menage a trois routinely, and at Dina McGreevey’s request.

All together now: Ew…

Breaking Character to Rant About Detroit.

?Bigfoot?, Michael Specter’s be-nice-to-the-environment article in the New Yorker had me bouncing right along with the green rhetoric and the sweeping calls for environmental analysis of the vagrancies of our human carbon footprints. To put a conservative like me under this kind of spell isn’t easy, but Specter had me going until I stumbled over this line: ?Possessing an excessive carbon footprint is rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter.?

I could not disagree more.

Michael Schumacher and his Ferraris notwithstanding, America has the strongest speed tradition in the automotive world, a tradition exemplified by the magnificent big blocks, the 351, the Hemi, the Carroll Shelbys in the days of old (and their new inceptions in the 2000s). With its long highways and wide, flat plains, American car buyers are perceived by Detroit as horsepower junkies. Americans don?t respect the inline three-cylinder, the Smart Fortwo so popular in France, or the space-capsule-esque Honda Insight (the first off-the-line hybrid sold in America, which was phased out in 2006).

I?d buy a ?67 Shelby GT500 or a Dodge Charger SRT-8 over a Honda Civic any day, but as an adult who has to pay for her own gas, I?d leave my dream car in the garage more often than not.

With that in mind, I would just like to announce to everyone that gas prices as high as $5.39 have appeared in California.

There is no ?scarlet letter? in Detroit. Sure, every automaker ad these days makes some claim (and some that are real head-scratchers) about a car?s relative fuel economy compared to other cars in its class. Yet, Ford and Chevy still roll out their Excursions and Suburbans, and Cadillac?s Escalade is still a symbol of power and class. Why?!

What Detroit needs to know is that Americans want some change (no Barack, I’m not talking to you), and not the pennies they get from dropping a 10-spot on gas every couple of days to get them from A to B. Given the immense popularity of BMW?s Mini Cooper (particularly the Cooper S, which is still a gas-sipper), the waiting lists for Toyota?s Prius and Honda?s Civic hybrids, and the anticipation awaiting the 2008 Volvo C30 (only inches longer than the Mini), there is an enormous market for economical compact cars that fit snugly into the parking spaces in New York but still pack just enough punch for the open road. For example, the ~250 hp C30 delivers up to 32 mpg highway. Let me tell you how much not-highway my 200-hp 2003 Intrepid delivers, sitting on the longest chassis of any production American car made in the last 5 years, weighing in at 3,318 pounds.

The problem is that Detroit is too invested in the legacy of the American sports cars and the luxurious Cadillacs and Lincolns to see the writing on the wall. Daimler-Chrysler’s Smart Fortwo (with 71 hp and an inline 3-cyl) may not hit the jackpot across the pond, but Americans are tired of being ripped off every time they open up the throttle.

Oh Roger Chillingworth, where are you?