And no, to be clear, there really isn't a good side.
Last night, Rachel Maddow had a fascinating report how Democrat Kathy Hocul ended up as the next governor of New York as soon as Andrew Cuomo’s resignation is official. It’s a twisted tale that began with a particularly nasty sex scandal of Republican Congressman Mark Foley and overlapped with different ranges of sex scandals by Republican Congressman in her own district Tom Reynolds and Chris Lee, as well as Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert (who ended up having his own far-greater sex scandal) which lead to her running for the seat and winning. And then other lives intertwined with sex scandals by several Democrats, which led to investigations, various resignations, a particularly dark sex scandal of Republican Carl Palladino which resulted in his opponent – Andrew Cuomo – being elected governor of New York…and now-Lt. Governor Hocul on the verge of taking office as governor. Ignorant of all this history – not that it matters, since their ignorance was egregiously stupid on its own current level, even leaving history out of it – many Republicans were doing victory dances over Cuomo’s resignation. Of course, on its most basic level, this misguided joy ignores the recent history of them celebrating the sex scandal and resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman…which resulted in Letitia James being elected to fill that job, and she’s now opened up the investigation into Trump. So, y’know, the whole “Be careful what you wish for…” thing. But more than that is the total clueless, tone-deaf amnesia of what is today’s Republican Party. You don’t have to know history to be aware that it’s not a great idea to celebrate the resignation of a governor for sexual improprieties when the leader of your own party has 16 charges of sexual abuse, including rape, and was caught on tape reveling in how easy and great sexual abuse was, and you and your party enabled and protected him – whereas it was Cuuomo’s own Democratic Party that helped lead the aggressive effort to get him to resign – and never mind that Attorney General Letitia James, who conducted the investigation, is a Democrat. Further, in the sitting Congress, Republicans have Matt Gaetz under investigation for sex trafficking of minors, Madison Cawthorn who has had several charges of sexual abuse against him and Tom Reed, a New York congressman who is accused of sexual abuse of a 25-year-old female lobbyist, including and unhooking her bra while drunk in 2017. And then there’s Jim Jordan, not accused of sexual abuse himself, but accused of overlooking sexual abuse when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. And we can’t forget Roy Moore who ran for the Senate while accused of being a pedophile, and the GOP leader Trump endorsed him. Rather than, y’know, saying how sickened he was by the charges and aghast that Moore was running, rather than doing time in prison in Hell. And honestly, there may well be other current Republican officials in Congress and throughout the country, as well, who have sexual abuse charges against them, and I’m sure there are, but I just don’t have the heart to research any more. To be clear, I am sure there are such charges against Democratic officials around the country, but Democrats are the ones who investigated Andrew Cuomo and pushed him out of office, rather than enabled and protected him. So, they’re allowed to be pleased by the results without having “Pathetic Hypocrite” splashed over them. But the point of this all is not the various Republicans celebrating a sexual abuser being removed from office without any sense of self-awareness that their party (and likely they themselves) have a bushel of fellow GOP officials who they’ve blissfully protected. It’s about two particular Republicans whose level of shameless hypocrisy is so deep and personal and bizarre, it exists on almost another level. The first is Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) who took to Twitter to do a jig about getting a “pervert” out of government. While I believe that an individual’s personal family problems are private and separate from public issues, when people themselves cross the line to bring those personal matters to the table, they become part of the public discourse. And Ms. Boebert’s own husband actually plead guilty in a court of law to sexual abuse charges, including exposing himself to a minor – 18 months before Lauren Boebert married him. She is welcome to live her life as she sees fit. But what kind of a empty chowderhead celebrates the downfall of someone else, when you know – know – that the person you knowingly married was convicted of something arguably worse since it was with a minor and is on record as a crime. And should know – know – that his sex crime against a minor would be brought up publicly and prominently. And the other is Bill O’Reilly. Yes, really. While he was celebrating the resignation of Andrew Cuomo, he can’t have forgotten that he himself was fired from “Fox News” for sexual harassment and this company had to pay $10 million dollars to get him off the hook. And if he forgot this (and no, he didn’t) not many other people did. Not the people who despised him, and not the people who loved him, since they no doubt miss seeing him on the air. Being pleased when someone does something wrong, gets caught and pays a penalty for it is a natural reaction and a good one. Especially when you’re on the side of those making sure he got caught and paid a penalty. But when you’re on the side of enabling and protecting the sexual abuses of Trump, Gaetz, Cawthorn, Lee, Moore, your fellow coach, and your husband and yourself, and no doubt a lot more, every word you utter in pleasure on the subject only serves to draw attention to yourselves with a glaringly bright Klieg light only how you are actually a part – a big part – of the problem.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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