Political
Party Allegiance Warps Common Sense
By Gary Gerard, for
dumbhoosier.com
It’s odd what allegiance to a political party does to a
person.
Ever since I started looking at Facebook, I’ve noticed
this strange
phenomenon. Intelligent people apply the most dubious,
ridiculous
double standards based on political affiliation.
What I mean is, they deride a Democrat for a certain
behavior or
policy, but then when a Republican does the very same
thing, they make
excuses.
It’s crazy.
Some of my liberal friends absolutely hated George Bush
because of many
of the provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act. Mostly, the
warrantless
wiretapping and such. They claimed, and rightly so, I
think, that this
runs afoul of the Constitution.
Then-Senator Obama also expressed grave reservations about
those
provisions in a speech on the Senate floor.
Yet when President Obama happily went along with all those
provisions,
those same liberal friends of mine said things, like,
“Well, I think
you get a different perspective when you’re president” or
“Presidents
are privy to a lot of sensitive info we don’t get, some of
which
probably makes them appreciate the use of the Patriot Act
more than we
realize.”
Really? These guys were rabid when Bush signed the same
damn document.
Of course, the converse is true.
Republicans who were happy when Bush signed the law are
criticizing
Obama.
See that’s the thing I don’t get about politics. It’s how
people are so
willing to cash in some of their core principles just
because of party
affiliation.
It’s absurd.
Fear mongering is another thing that drives me nuts in
politics. One
side is always accusing the other side of fear mongering.
But both
sides do it all the time.
Republicans scare people into thinking they won’t be safe
from
terrorists unless they vote for Republicans.
Democrats scare people into thinking there won’t be any
Medicare or
Social Security unless they vote for Democrats.
Both propositions are ludicrous, but that’s politics.
I guess maybe I must be some wild-eyed dreamer, but it
would seem that
right-minded people could look at a certain set of facts
and determine
the truth of an issue.
Certainly, there are always going to be diverse opinions,
but facts are
facts.
Take Congressman Anthony Weiner’s predicament.
Here are the facts as reported by the Associated Press:
A lewd photo was sent from the Congressman’s Twitter
account to a coed
in Portland.
The photo was of a man from the waste down clad in bulging
underpants.
The photo was sent to a female college student in
Portland.
Weiner says he absolutely did not send the photo. It was
sent by a
hacker.
Weiner says he can’t say for sure whether he is the man in
the photo.
Weiner has some 50,000 followers on Twitter.
Weiner only follows about 200 people on Twitter, mostly
young females.
Alright, those are facts.
Now, on politico.com Friday there was a story I’ll
excerpt. I can’t say
if this stuff is factual, but it’s pretty darn
interesting.
The young woman who was sent a lewd photo from the Twitter
account of
Rep. Anthony Weiner says she doesn’t think the New York
Democrat was
hacked, but that he may have been trying to send it to a
porn star with
a similar name.
Gennette Cordova, a 21-year-old college student from
Seattle, posed for
a photo shoot with The New York Post on Thursday and
shared her side of
the story with the paper.
“Her name is Ginger — it makes sense he might have mixed
us up,”
Cordova said, referring to Ginger Lee, a stripper and porn
star who
follows Weiner on Twitter.
In March, Lee tweeted about wanting “sexual relations”
with Weiner and,
less than two weeks later, she wrote that she’d received a
private
direct message from the congressman. Weiner had also
followed Lee on
Twitter but said he stopped doing so when he found out who
she was.
Weiner said in an interview with CNN earlier this week
that he thinks
his note to Lee was a “fairly pro forma thing that goes
out” to people
who follow him on Twitter.
What? Pro forma? Porn star? See, to me this is just sordid
and bizarre.
I mean, how come this Congressman mainly follows only
young females –
and an occasional porn star – on Twitter?
And how come he can’t say whether he’s the guy in the
photo?
I’m pretty sure, under any circumstances, I could identify
a photo of
myself from the waste down in a pair of underwear.
“Yup. That’s me” or “No way. That’s not me” would be
uttered in about
the first two seconds after I saw the photo.
And it’s odd the Congressman isn’t trying really hard to
get to the
bottom of it. He hasn’t called for the FBI to investigate,
even though
the hacking of a Congressman’s Twitter account would seem
to be fairly
serious.
But then again, it’s OK to lie to the media. That’s not
against the
law. But lying to the FBI is a different story. Maybe in
Weiner’s case,
he figures the best way to avoid perjury and obstruction
of justice is
to avoid talking to the feds and just to let the whole
mess blow over.
But here’s the thing.
Presented with the same set of facts, lots of people will
paint the
Congressman as some innocent victim of some evil plot,
when, clearly,
there is a bit of tomfoolery going on here.
You’re a Congressman. Don’t follow a bunch of coeds – and
a porn star –
on Twitter.
Weiner happens to be a Democrat, but party affiliation
really has
nothing to do with the right or wrong of the issue.
Can’t we just all agree the guy’s a bit of a creepster?
Lots of things should transcend politics, but very few
things ever do.
And I just think that’s sad.
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