More than a few corporate CEOs who draw nine figure salaries are sleeping a little easier this week. Thanks to the combination of an indiscretion on the part of a former presidential candidate, his clumsy attempts to cover it up, and some dogged investigative reporting by several employees of the National Enquirer, there’s virtually no chance anyone will be uttering the phrase “Attorney General John Edwards” at this time next year, regardless of who is ensconced in the White House.
Edwards’s extramarital dalliance is merely the latest evidence that at their core politicians are, despite the gravity of their jobs, human beings with human failings. Certain shortcomings are far more likely to surface in men or women who are famous, powerful, attractive, and spend lots of time on the road, and on those counts Mr. Edwards was four for four. To put such a person on a pedestal encourages a certain sense of entitlement, and exponentially increases the risk of others being let down when the individual they fervently believe in turns out to have feet of clay. Opportunities to exercise poor judgment are far more plentiful for athletes, entertainers, and politicians than they are for the rest of us. How many of those excoriating the former senator have closets so free of skeletons that their past would stand up to scrutiny from a ravenous and increasingly competitive tabloid press? It’s not easy being a celebrity; the Edwards scandal serves as a stark reminder of that. His poor decisions and hypocrisy have cost him his reputation and subjected him to deserved public scorn. Instead of being seen as a visionary whose goal was to end poverty in America, for the foreseeable future his name will be synonymous with self-indulgence and insincerity.
This latest example of a politician both unable to resist temptation and egotistical enough to think he can get away with it is reminiscent of a similar affair (pun intended) that took place 21 years ago. Gary Hart was the acknowledged early front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination and a media darling even before he officially announced his candidacy on April 13, 1987. Shortly thereafter rumors began floating that the youthful-looking 50 year old Colorado senator was involved in an extramarital affair. In an interview published in the May 3, 1987 edition of the New York Times, Hart remarked, "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." Unfortunately for him, two reporters from the Miami Herald had been doing just that for quite some time. The very day the interview was published the Herald ran a story about an attractive young woman seen emerging from the Senator’s townhouse the previous evening. Two days later the Herald got a tip that Hart had spent a night docked on a Bahamian island aboard a yacht named, appropriately enough, Monkey Business. Photos of Hart aboard the boat with a curvaceous actress/model sitting in his lap were subsequently published by –surprise!- the National Enquirer, and less than a week later Hart was an ex-candidate.
A co-worker of mine who had been enthusiastically backing the senator vehemently changed his tune shortly after the scandal broke, but not because of his infidelity.
“Who cares if he cheated on his wife?” he said at the time. “We need a smart president, and any intelligent man seeking public office who is under suspicion of running around should NOT tell the media, 'Hey, there's nothing to these rumors. If you don't believe it, follow me around for awhile. I'm just another dull guy.' Then two days later they catch him aboard Monkey Business playing houseboat with some woman half his age. I don't care if Hart is an adulterer, but the last thing we need in the White House is an arrogant, stupid president!”
He was right about that. For the past seven and a half years we’ve been learning just how disastrous that scenario is.
It would be nice if the mainstream media worked as hard at reporting on issues like the environment, the economy, costly foreign wars and affordable health care as they do trying to dig up dirt on the rich and famous, including John McCain, Barack Obama, and their associates. For that to happen though, Americans will first have to curb their voyeuristic fascination with celebrity, which would mean shutting off the TV and no longer buying the ragazines that get snatched up at supermarket checkout counters nearly as quickly as the semi-literate scandalmongers producing them can put them out.
The United States is a nation built on capitalism. Big Media will start to educate rather than titillate when and only when the fiscal habits of a significant majority of our citizens indicate beyond all doubt that there’s more money to be made examining real issues in depth than there is in learning who’s sleeping with whom.
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