Quick --- think back 35 years. What were you doing? Or better yet, go back to your college days: What were you doing then? Was there something you did that you have never done since, that you wish you hadn't or that you now feel was wrong? Have you lived an exemplary life since then, working hard, serving your community or better yet, your country, all while raising a family or maybe treating sick kids, some with neurological problems?
Personally, 35 years ago I was smoking lots of pot, eating the occasional funny mushroom and once in a while sniffing cocaine, all while having an affair with a married man if you must know. I was childless and had not yet met the man I would marry who would become the father of my only child.
Certainly I don't do any of those things today, and have not done them (except for a puff of pot which makes me dizzy because it interacts negatively with my blood pressure meds) since then. But if I chose to run for office, those things would surface and I would be thrown onto the Chris Matthews-Dana Bash-Gloria Borger-Anderson Cooper-Rachel Maddow-CNN-MSNBC-New York Times-Vanity Fair-New Yorker magazine trash heap to slowly rot, which is what's happening to Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam for the sin of having worn "blackface" in a college dance contest so many years ago, wherein he performed Michael Jackson's famous moonwalk. (Who knew that putting black shoe polish on your face means you are a racist? Live and learn.)
This is why we get and will continue to get woefully poor leaders. Nobody in their right mind would put themselves out there, only to have their entire life dissected under a microscope like a lab rat. And I do mean rat.
 |
| Painting by Manon Cleary (1942-2011) |
Certainly I don't do any of those things today, and have not done them (except for a puff of pot which makes me dizzy because it interacts negatively with my blood pressure meds) since then. But if I chose to run for office, those things would surface and I would be thrown onto the Chris Matthews-Dana Bash-Gloria Borger-Anderson Cooper-Rachel Maddow-CNN-MSNBC-New York Times-Vanity Fair-New Yorker magazine trash heap to slowly rot, which is what's happening to Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam for the sin of having worn "blackface" in a college dance contest so many years ago, wherein he performed Michael Jackson's famous moonwalk. (Who knew that putting black shoe polish on your face means you are a racist? Live and learn.)
This is why we get and will continue to get woefully poor leaders. Nobody in their right mind would put themselves out there, only to have their entire life dissected under a microscope like a lab rat. And I do mean rat.
No comments:
Post a Comment