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TechnoratiThe D. C. Madam's Public Service
This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there-with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.
- United States Senator David Vitter (R-LA), July 9, 2007
Thank goodness for my neighbor, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called "D. C. Madam." She has performed a singular public service by exposing the hypocrisy of yet another moralistic politician, Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. Vitter's phone number turned up on a phone list of Palfrey clients for what the Madam's lawyer Montgomery Blair Sibley euphemistically called "legal sexual services," but for which the Madam is being prosecuted.
Politically, Vitter is no libertarian, but a "family values" Republican and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's personal ambassador to the Christian Right. Sorry Rudy.
Last month, Vitter backed abstinence only education for "teaching teenagers that saving sex until marriage and remaining faithful is the best choice for health and happiness." During the debate on the "Protection of Marriage Amendment" last year, Vitter said that nothing was more important than banning gay marriage for "promoting that stable, loving, nurturing home environment that can avoid so many of the social ills we're dealing with today." He has strongly opposed a woman's right to choose safe and legal abortions.
As a Louisiana State Representative in 1998, Vitter advocated that President Clinton be "impeached and removed from office because he is morally unfit to govern."
A year later, when Vitter won a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives in a special election, a constituent "sick to death of the old-time politicians in Washington," wrote to the New Orleans Times-Picayune hailing the victory of "a real family man who believes in family values and high morals."
Ironies pile on ironies here. Vitter replaced Bob Livingston, the GOP's designated successor to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who resigned from Congress after admitting to adulterous affairs. Gingrich, of course, had himself fled Congress in part because of his own extra-marital affair.
In 2004, Vitter won election as the first Republican Senator from Louisiana in 120 years. He featured pro-family ads with his wife and children, called upon voters to stand up for "Louisiana values, not Massachusetts's values," and secured 76 percent of voters who cared most about moral issues. "We met Vitter, the dad who knows that it's family that really matters, not whether we are Republicans or Democrats," wrote Times-Picayune columnist James Gill.
Vitter's exposure comes hard on the heels of a recent scandal engulfing Rev. Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, one of America's oldest and most respected Christian Right groups. Haggard, also an outspoken opponent of abortion and gay marriage, resigned his presidency and ministry and entered long-term rehabilitation amid allegations that he had purchased drugs and the services of a male prostitute.
Vitter-style hypocrisy, however, extends deeply into the history of America's modern Right. Charles Lindbergh, the spokesman for America First in the 1940s secretly fathered a second family in Germany, unknown to his American wife and six children. Strom Thurmond, who campaigned for president in 1948 to preserve "the racial integrity and purity of the White race," concealed a mixed-race daughter for 75 years. Oil magnate H. L. Hunt, who spent millions to propagate Christian conservatism in the 1950s, was a gambler and multiple bigamist.
Terry Dolan, founder in the 1970s of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which joined the anti-gay fund-raising frenzy with a letter warning "our nation's moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement," was a closeted homosexual. Here in Maryland, conservative Representative Robert Bauman was arrested in 1980 for soliciting sex from a 16 year-old boy.
Vitter did not deny that he indulged in the D. C. Madam's juicy services. Rather, as shown above, he apologized and reported forgiveness from God and his family. He said that he will respect his family and keep the matter private. Fair enough, although you've got to wonder about a guy with the hubris to say he not only asked God for forgiveness but actually received forgiveness.
The bigger question is whether he is now willing to say that our choice of marriage partners or our reproductive decisions should be private matters between us, our family, and our God? Will he now propose that we now teach our children, not just abstinence, but safe sexual practice? It's time for politicians to extend to others the tolerance and privacy they reserve for themselves.
Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University in Washington, DC. This column originally appeared in the Montgomery Gazette, July 14, 2007
lichtman@american.edu
21 Comments so far
Show AllWow. If he talks to God maybe we should believe him. i bet God tells him to kill all thosse damn heathens over in Iraq. In fact why don't rid the whole damn world of heathens. Unless they're prostitutes that is!
Oh wat a minute, they already are.
l always thought we should take the hookers out of the hands of criminals and put them in the hands of the politicians.
Let's see the DC Madam's whole list of bums. All these "holier than thou" hypocritical ideologists were engaged in illicit sex while voting to go to war to have thousands of people killed. Kick 'em out of Congress and send them on a tour of duty in Iraq.
Self-righteous and moralistic people in general should be viewed with great scepticism. Careerists like the Wicked Vitter should be looked at with even greater cynicism. Politicians all over the world are this contemptible, but the USA, with its peculiar religiosity, shallow image-consciousness, and repressed sexuality seem to really breed bounders like this. No doubt Wicked Vitter is now in the doghouse with his wife and family. If they do not tell this shameless bastard to resign forthwith, the voters of Louisiana need to run a recall vote pronto.
I'm so tired of these right-wingers taking their inner battles public and stridently waging war against the very things that they themselves are guilty of. Please keep your weird attitudes toward sex to yourselves. Stop trying to create laws that will force the rest of us to follow the moral commandments that you yourselves can never keep.
I'm sick of all of you.
Tonkatsu wonders:
Given the way so many poliTICKians (Blood suckers, each and every one) seem to campaign publicly against the vices they practice in privacy, I find it amazing the national Supermarket Scandal Sheets, never bother to follow congresscritters around the way they do movie personalities.
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This is a great idea that will never happen because magazines depend on advertising for their survival and most of the advertisers are patrons of all those compromised politicians that about which enquiring minds would like to know more.
How bereft (of pure rib-tickling entertainment)the world would have been ,had it not been for these "American Idols".
They give a whole new meaning to 'feet of dung' and rank hippocrisy .Opening up dimensions that one could never ,in one's wildest dreams ,have even dreamed of.
They wallow /luxuriate in utter secrecy ( or so they believe) in every vice imaginable. Then ,when caught out ,they spew the most sanctimonious mea-culpas ever .About hot-lines to an ever-forgiving, ever-indulgent God.( They must surely be testing the very limits of God's forgiveness. )
What next - one of 'our' political 'nobility' being caught in the act of pederasty -(or still better) of cannibalism.One waits ,with bated breath.
Last time I spoke to god, she explained that something is only a sin if it harms others,
and that sins of the flesh generally rate as negligible.
She asked me to relay to Senator David Vitter that it is OK for him to keep
having sex with Deborah Jeane Palfrey, particularly if Deborah needs the money.
Senator Vitter will burn hell for a very long time for pushing the war in Iraq
and it will make no difference whatsoever who he has sex with.
Given the way so many poliTICKians (Blood suckers, each and every one) seem to campaign publicly against the vices they practice in privacy, I find it amazing the national Supermarket Scandal Sheets, never bother to follow congresscritters around the way they do movie personalities. Forget crotch shots of Paris Hilton, get a few juicy Senators and White House officials in the paparazzi lenses.
It seems to me that there are Ever so many more juicy targets in Washington DC than in Beverly Hills...
The real DC Madam's Pelosi; selling out her country for Bush. Public disservice personified.
It should not be surprising that these people are hypocrites; their style of bigotry uniquely comes from hating something about themselves (and being hated for that.) It is the same way with Hitler who grew up in an anti-semitic society where his suspected jewish grandfather was a source of extreme anxiety, and so everyone was punished if they had jewish roots back to the third generation.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
Do you think now we could begin an honest discussion to legalize prostitution in this country once and for all? Christians who actually practice what they preach could opt out of course. It would create less women being beaten and left for dead by pimps and such...ad once fand for remove this ridiculous conversation from our politics and back into the bedroom...
Speaking for all us prostitutes (I used to be a public school teacher) The "big boys" can't live without us and while they can have any one of us killed at any time they can't kill all of us. We should form a union.
gawd i can't wait till the whole list is pub'd, and dickless cheney & co get exposed. why are my or anyone's sexual pecadillos more relevant than corporate rape of the environment, military waste of trillions of dollars and countless lives, etc., etc. thank jeebus all of these right wing loonies still have libidos or even more amerikkkans would believe their bull shit.
thou dost protesteth too much -- -- William Shakespeare
Well, well, well, Mr Vitter, you're no good, like the rest of your gang, whether they are preachers of morality or miserable creatures promoting wars. Your "sin" is between you, your wife, and your god, but for your hypocrisy, you must answer to the people. Your "sin" may screw up your family life, but being a lawmaker, your hypocrisy affects the entire nation. Scum like you should have already resigned, have you?
I dunno about that forgiveness thing -- last time I talked to her (God, that is) She told ME that She was still pretty pissed off at him.
Hahahahaha... I apologize... (gasping for air) Bwahahahaha... Ahem, ahem..
Thank you so much for this short list of Republican, conservative "saints" who know the value of Christian demagoguery sprayed "liberally" on the religiously anal, well-indoctrinated quite large group of those Americans who faithfully don't think for themselves. It was fun reading on a Sunday morning, well, fun until one realizes that hypocrites like Vitter, Haggard, Hunt, Gingrich, Mr. "Virtue" himself - gambling William Bennett, etc., are influencing legislation that impacts the lives of the rest of the American people and the rest of the world (think Africa and the HIV crisis there - promoting abstinence policy instead of providing safe sex information and condoms).
It is absolutely sick to see these scumbags retreat into "god has forgiven me" mantra right after they are caught, and make no mistake, had they not been caught or outed, they would have continued till the end of their pathetic lives. As a matter of fact, I now believe that any of the "morally pure" who preach "abstinence" or advocate punishment for "sins" probably in secret do exactly what they fight against. Maybe they are so ashamed of themselves internally that they have to bring the rest of us into their sickness by enforcing outwardly against the kind of "sin" that tortures them inside. And speaking of torture, does than mean that Cheney and Bush are so tortured on the inside that they have to order others be tortured or killed in order for them to feel less pain in their twisted, evil souls?
As for the hope that politicians would "extend to others the tolerance and privacy they reserve for themselves," one would have to seriously doubt that. If men like Strom Thurmond and Charles Lindbergh could not acknowledge even the existence of children of their own flesh and blood, what else could impress upon these disturbed souls to do the right and truly moral thing instead of the very public display of mea culpa drenched in copious crocodile tears (Jimmy Swaggart, anyone?) when exposed?
It is not up to the benevolence of the sick politician to become "just" and deliver, but up to the educated voter to cut through the bull and put in office decent people who will not mistake their constituency and laws benefiting all of us for cheap therapy to rid them of their inner shame.
Didn't we all hear "Don't do as I do, Do as I say"? Hypocrisy seems to be running rampant in Washington. Not only is it rampant, it appears to be the Norm. The entire government seems to be saying one thing and doing another, all with a satisfying smirk, saying, "Got'cha!"
"The bigger question is whether he is now willing to say that our choice of marriage partners or our reproductive decisions should be private matters between us, our family, and our God?"
In fact, that may be the only question. I want to
hear the answer. Though don't expect anything other
than side-stepping, hemming, hawing, and hypocrisy.