Friday, May 02, 2008

Barbara, Brooke, and Barack (and, what the hell, Roger and Mindy too)

or We're So Liberal Elite We Might As Well Just Move to France and Be Done With It

S thinks it's great that Barbara Walters had an affair with Edward Brooke. I think it's fine, really none of anyone's business, especially given that he was separated from his wife at the time, but I question the timing of Walters' revelation--well, really I question her revelation altogether...why does anyone need to know she had an affair with Edward Brooke? Oh yes, to sell books. I mean, she is Barbara Walters, queen of the money-making confessional, albeit so far with other subjects, but why not make some more of that money for herself? Especially if, assuming she's a Hillary supporter, which I am (yes, it's another lazy linkless post, so if you don't know what I'm talking about, especially when I get to Roger and Mindy, you just have to google for yourself), she can also help to bring down Obama along the way.

K tells me that a Clinton supporter set up Reverend Wright's speech at the National Press Club. Now Reverend Wright has done himself in, and the filicide rivals the matricide supposedly being committed by young feminists against Hillary, but that's another post. I've never been all about Obama (the other day I realized that my big problem is that I'm incapable of being a true believer--in anything besides books and Wilco--but then I looked at the title of my blog and thought, well, duh, that's no realization), but the lynching--word chosen purposefully--that the Clintons and their minions are conducting is just appalling. And to tarnish the image of the first elected Black senator is so obviously to tarnish by association the first Black senator running seriously for president (and by this morning I was reading articles that made the connection--not my conspiracy plot connection, but the Brooke-Obama connection).

But the thing is, I don't think anyone's tarnished here--at least by their past actions; Walters' disclosure is another story. So two consenting adults had an affair in the 70s? Fine. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I start counting infidelities amongst my near and dear, well, I run out of fingers pretty quickly. And just to be consistent, I don't particularly care if Roger Clemens had an affair with Mindy McCready. That she was 15? Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I can count quite a few of my friends who in their teens were involved with men in their 20s (he was 28), and they all turned out fine. Not that Mindy McCready turned out fine, but somehow I don't think Roger Clemens was at fault--she seems to have been her own problem. HOWEVER--and you knew there would be a however, and if you're making predictions, yes, it's the predictable however--for Roger Clemens to preen about his high morality and devotion to his family...well, I'd say it's open season on him, but it has been for a while.

Anyway, all this--Reverend Wright, infidelity, lynching--proves that I am hopelessly out-of-step with America (don't even get me started on American flag lapel pins) and should probably move to France where they're down with Black people (so long as they're American and from the 1920s or 60s) (I said Black people, not brown people) and infidelity. Luckily, my husband feels the same way about all these things, and he loves France to boot. Much more than I do, in fact.

(And, yes, I'm paying attention to election news in London and Zimbabwe, though I wish I wasn't.)

1 comment:

Libby said...

me, too, both on being a true believer (alas, not even Wilco for me, though there's probably someone!) and on being out of step. And yet I still find myself surprised at HOW out of step I am, since my conclusions always seem so rational.

(I'm not entirely sure the teenagers who had affairs with men in their twenties all turned out fine, but that, too, is mostly beside the point.)