TGIF 4/22/22

Who's on the good week and bad week lists today? Let's dive in. 

Ron DeSantis (R-Florida Man). You can put him on your good list, if you like banning math textbooks, having the work your legislators do get tossed out by your governor, and attacking a private corporation in the epitome of cancel culture. Obviously, I put him on the bad list.

Let's see... we've got Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R- I'm a liar but you can't prove...er, oops, never mind) saying he thought the impeachment would succeed in the Senate, or saying he would ask Trump to resign, or saying Trump bears responsibility for what he said and did related to January 6th. Oh, he denied saying that stuff - but this time? They've got him on tape.

Don't forget Sen. Mitch McConnell (R- Do They Have Me on Tape Too?). According to the NY Times folks who have McCarthy on tape, McConnell said "The Democrats are going to take care of the son-of-a-bitch for us. If this isn't impeachable, I don't know what is." 

The son-of-a-bitch in question? That would be Donald Trump, of course. He had a good week, I guess: he knows, officially now, what people thought of him back in January 2021, and he knows how willing they were to throw all of that away to curry favor with him. 

On the other hand, his future daughter-in-law Kimberly Guilfoyle, testified before the January 6th Committee. And, given her famous 'the best is yet to come!' speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020, it's only logical that Donny Jr. will soon be in the Committee's guest chair. That may or not make Daddy proud, depending on how forthcoming Donny is. Or isn't. 

I haven't yet figured out whether the NY Times had a good week or a bad week. While it was the paper's repauthors (reporters turned authors) who have the tapes, the Times itself is in hot water, IMO, for the perception that reporters are holding stuff for their books, instead of serving the public interest by publishing what they know. 

And this is not the first book written by their reporters on Trump, the Trump years, the Trump White House, the Trump Christmas decorations, the Trump Rose Garden... and yes, some of that's made up, but none of it is outside the realm of possibility. The Times is not alone, of course - there are television reporters who have done the same thing. 

And every time it happens, it chips away at the trust we should be able to have in the media.

TGIF, everyone. And happy Earth Day. Remember to be good to your Mother, today and every day.

I Did Not Have Sex with That Man

Just to set the record straight, I was not the brunette that allegedly had a dalliance with Tiger Woods earlier this year when he played at a charity tournament in our neighborhood. Not that I couldn’t have been – after all, it seems like Tiger was pretty available and indiscriminate about some aspects of his personal life.

Watching this whole saga unfold is really just so much déjà vu all over again. Tiger has joined a long list of folks who are apparently blinded by their own celebrity, addicted to what that celebrity brings, and now in the ranks of those tarnished by their ‘celebrity behavior’:

• Politicians including JFK, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Wilbur Mills (remember Fanne Fox?)
• Newt Gingrich famously taking divorce papers to his wife in the hospital, so he could marry his mistress.
• More recent flameouts like Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford.
• Wilt Chamberlain, who boasted that he had slept with 20,000 women.
• Kobe Bryant who bought his wife that huge apology diamond.
• Magic Johnson – enough said.
• David Letterman, who admitted sleeping with people who worked on his show.
• Any business leader with a trophy wife…any rock star with a groupie…any actor with a ‘sex addiction’…

So, what do all of these have in common? Well, other than men behaving badly, they all have women behaving badly too. For the most part --  maybe not in all cases but for the most part --  it seems the women were willing accomplices, not forced into what they did, as far as we know. And absent accomplices, whether amateurs or professionals (in Spitzer’s case, at least), these guys would have likely found something else to do. 

Instead of going to Vegas for the VIP clubs and the ‘hostesses’ that work at them, or the cocktail waitresses (Michael Phelps), they could have been gambling and helping the economy, for example. They could have been home with their families, or working at soup kitchens, or teaching kids to read or play basketball or golf or to tell funny jokes or sitting around watching the news or reading the tabloids, rather than being the news or tabloid fodder.

The more recent cases also have the public apology component in common. Press conferences, ‘mea culpa’ interviews (Hugh Grant’s on the Tonight Show was a great one), or in Tiger’s case, a statement on his web site, begging for forgiveness and privacy while the family works it out. 

After the apologies come the speculations: will they stay together? Will his career be ruined? Will the sponsors drop them (in the case of athletes, actors and musicians)?

They also have in common a public forgiveness component. For all their foibles, the majority of us are collectively eager to welcome them back after they come clean. We’ll continue to watch them, read them, listen to them, support them. We’ll continue to pay to see them do their jobs, whether it’s giving a speech or playing a game or writing a column or selling books or running for office, even as we study them and remember them for their failures.

The biggest problem for them is of their own making. The biggest problem for us is, why do we put these folks on a pedestal in the first place?