Don't Make Me Come Up There!

I had hoped to avoid having to write about Anthony Weiner and Bob Filner. I cannot imagine that I could offer any new insights into the phenomenon of powerful men behaving like bare-assed baboons (and the women who let them) than those being offered by late night comics and Dr Phil. However, I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal today by Peggy Noonan (http://online.wsj.com/public/page/peggy-noonan.html) and once again was struck by how befuddling this whole sex-scandal-in-politics makes perfectly reasonable people feel. How do we feel? We are confused. We are annoyed. We cannot believe that normal people are actually discussing whether or not men who put women into headlocks and lick their faces or men who take pictures of their erect member and send them over the internet are fit to hold public office. We are scratching our heads in wonder that their ability to serve, to be any kind of authority (moral or not) for the cities they are supposed to lead is being debated. Even if you want to take the position that what a person does in their private life or how the dynamics of their marriage is their own personal business, that is not the question in either of these cases. If Anthony Weiner and Uma want to have an open marriage and raise their child in that kind of atmosphere then fine and dandy. Do whatever personal damage you want to do to each other and God be with you. If Bob Filner wants to live his life jumping out of corners onto unsuspecting women and grabbing their body parts or licking their faces, go ahead Buster, have at it and let the chips fall where they may. Don't expect ME to pay for it, to listen to you or to respect your opinion on foreign affairs, the size of soft drinks or the state of the working poor in America. Go get yourself a nice job and live your life. I do not want to have you doing any of that stuff on my dime. I happen to want people in office who will make a promise and keep it, and if they can't keep it it is because they are dead or they figured out it was a bad promise to make in the first place. I want people who will be up front about who and what they are and then do me the courtesy of deciding whether or not I want them to represent me in Congress, in the Mayor's Office or in the Rose Bowl Parade. I want people to stop pretending they care about the little guy, are worried about we-the-people when all they are really concerned with is whether or not the 22 year old prostitute on the other end of the smart phone will like the looks of their erect genitals in certain lighting. I am also up-to-here with these high powered super liberal women who put up with this crap for 20, 30 years. What the heck is WRONG with them? They cared more about expanding government subsidies than they cared about being pawed like a piece of meat by a bad dog? They obviously didn't give a flying crap about the other women that might run into this yahoo. Heck, let's be honest - when a high ranking Naval Officer thinks the best response to being slobbered over is to ask for men to protect her (never leave me alone with that guy again, ok?) then all their blah blah blah about empowering women is a big pile of manure. The sex scandals are nothing new. From Harding to Kennedy, men have plowed (literally) through the fields strewn with the bodies of women and the women who happen to share their last name have allowed them to do it because the pay off was great in terms of personal power. It is not the sex scandals that are shocking. What is shocking is that we tolerate this behavior and discuss the perpetrators as though they deserve our time and attention. What they need is the power of prayer. What we need to do as Catholics is reclaim the culture - not for those who just use the name 'Catholic' as a way to get votes. We need to reclaim the culture so that people are aware that the good news is for all of us - that allowing yourself to surrender to Love and turning your attention to how you can serve will lead to a life that is second to none. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Thankfully, many of the pundits of the day are now opening their eyes to the state of the world today. They are starting to see that what these two guys did is undermine their own credibility - a credibility that gives them a certain authority. And without Authority we are a ship without a rudder.