Moral
High Horses and Selective Disgust
Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 16, 2016
It
was James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, who pressed the
campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
That slogan was code for “Let the Republicans have the abortion issue
and any other issue that’s not economy-related.”
Republicans, fearing Carville’s strategy,
urged presidential candidates Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney to ignore
the social issues. All three candidates
played down their platform’s pro-life stance and Planned Parenthood’s hand in
the federal cookie jar.
“Character issues,” Carville argued,
are a matter of personal belief. Bill
Clinton’s character was inconsequential.
Job performance was what mattered.
After Bill Clinton was impeached,
members of his cabinet and White House staff assembled on the White House lawn
to assure reporters and the nation that they were still OK with their man. Monica
Lewinski and the Arkansas women who had accused Clinton of sexual assault
didn’t matter. They were placed within
the category of Carville’s other verbal flourish: “Drag a 5-dollar bill through
a trailer park and there’s no telling what you’ll get.”
So here we are in a season of déjà
vu all over again. Suddenly we’re back
to character matters. It matters because
we need something to hold over Donald Trump’s head. It now
matters to the networks even though 24 years ago they ignored Paula Jones, Kathleen
Willy and Juanita Broderick when they first revealed that Clinton assaulted
them.
Offensive, repulsive words are one
thing. Vile acts are another. Vile though Clinton’s acts were, he didn’t
pay for them, unless one thinks the $850,000 he paid to settle with Paula Jones
was enough.
The word “apologize” wasn’t blurted
from the lips of very many people in 1992.
Nobody, certainly not Republicans, was demanding that Clinton
apologize. Remember, character and
morality didn’t matter. Hillary Clinton’s treatment of her husband’s
victims didn’t matter either.
So why the sudden concern for moral
standards in speech, namely Donald Trump’s? Historically, wrongdoing is what we punish
people for, not wrong thoughts (“hate crimes”) or words. The case before us in the presidential race
is a candidate who said some things and a former president and his candidate
wife who did some things. The
ex-president and his wife are getting off scot free. The Republican candidate is being raked over
the coals.
Neither
did the media “out” JFK. He was their
boy as well.
Trump’s media critics have no basis
for their feigned moral outrage. They
themselves are amoral. Yet on their
moral high horses they are giving “freaking out” a new name. They react in horror to Trump but are hunky
dory with the likes of Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, the aging Madonna, the lyrics of too
many rock singers to count, and all the other cultural icons who have turned
entertainment into a moral cesspool in which our youth are awash.
The New York Times recently
“reported” that “Trump has made gutter attacks on women.” Get this weekend’s issue of the NYT and take
a peep at its Arts, Movies, and Entertainment section. See the ads the NYT is willing to take money
for. Browse a few pages of “50 Shades of
Gray” and you’ll see what millions of suburban women (they who supposedly are
most offended by Trump’s video) are reading.
Why is the NYT surprised that the decadent culture it has helped spawn
has spawned a presidential candidate?
The network that out-ed Trump’s
salacious video is a purveyor of the very thing for which it criticizes
Trump. The networks push and sell sex
virtually every hour of the day, and they do show men groping women.
So let’s call it selective
disgust. JFK and Clinton were not disgusting. Trump is.
JFK and Clinton committed actions and are still championed. Trump spoke words and is lacerated.
During the Clinton era we were
supposed to shut up about the Ten Commandments,
Judeo-Christian values, and character.
All of that is personal belief.
From the 70s through the 90s social conservatives tried to challenge the
culture. They lost the culture war, but
don’t despair. Now we can decide for
ourselves if we are male or female.
That’s nice, I guess.
As for the Republicans who are
jumping ship, does anyone think they would be doing so if Trump’s poll numbers
had been 8 or 9 points ahead of Hillary when his video came out? I do not.
The Democratic Party is the party of
secularism and abortion, and suddenly it is concerned about crude words. Abortion versus crude words. Ponder that one.
Our
presidential choice is clear, and Bernie Marcus put it best. “It’s 4 years of Trump or 25 plus years of
liberal Supreme Court justices.”
Roger
Hines
10/12/16
Clinton and JFK were disgusting.
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