Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 19, 2009 / 27 Sivan 5769

Congress refines the perp walk

By Wesley Pruden


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Edwin Edwards - not to be confused with John Edwards - is still in prison, serving six years for taking a bribe, but John Ensign should have called him for advice before he confessed at needless length to adultery, which in certain precincts is still a more grievous crime than stealing.


Mr. Edwards, the one-time governor of the "gret stet of Louisiana," famously boasted that he would never be brought down "unless they catch me in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." That was before the feds brought him down for a crime involving only a bag of cash. Louisiana is notoriously forgiving of its politicians, in part because voters there have had a lot of practice, and in part because fun on the bayou, naughty and not, is fun: "Laissez le bon temps rouler." Let the good times roll. If the Edwards formula once worked in New Orleans, you might think it would work in Nevada, since Las Vegas is not necessarily where you should start the search if you're looking for a moral value.


More recently a junior senator from Louisiana was the object of considerable sport in his home state after his name appeared in a Washington madam's little black book. He was censured not so much for betraying his wife but that with all the talent available on Capitol Hill the senator had employed the services of a madam. Other members of Congress rarely look beyond their office suites for forbidden sweets; why should their senator be so backward in the pursuit of amours? He made the home folks look bad.


Mr. Ensign's misfortune inevitably becomes grist for the capital's gossip mills and Washington jokesmiths, such as they are. The correspondents, columnists and the freelance pundits of the blogosphere are of course shocked - shocked! - that Mr. Ensign, who scolded Bill Clinton for running a crib off the Oval Office and Sen. Larry Craig for his men's room ablutions, should have so easily succumbed to the temptations of feminine favors to which he was not entitled, either by law or moral custom. This was proof of hypocrisy, the highest crime and the most evil misdemeanor that a Washington journalist, being the closest approximation we have to a figure of perfect character and unsullied virtue, can imagine.


Washington journalists love nothing better than a scandal with a whiff of the boudoir (even if the boudoir is a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport), and most of them grade on a steep curve of moral equivalence. Not everybody is an expert on politics, but everybody is an authority, if not necessarily an expert, on matters of sex.


Congressional Democrats are more likely to grant a pass for naughty conduct than Republicans. This is not necessarily driven by political ideology. Republicans are no less likely to fall to temptation, but are more likely to understand that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Republicans generally pay a dearer price to their constituents. Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Robert Livingston of Louisiana each had to give up the position of Speaker of the House when caught in embarrassing indiscretions. When Rep. Barney Frank got caught allowing his live-in male lover to run a whorehouse in their apartment, the House censured him (though calling it a "reprimand") and his constituents in starchy Massachusetts continued to return him to Washington by wide margins.


There's nothing particularly sordid in the Ensign affair. His friendship with an employee in his office developed into something more intimate while he was separated from his wife. He described what he had done, at greater length than he need have. He stood up like a man in the way that other congressional miscreants before him did not do. He did it alone; the usual congressional perp walk includes the offended wife, who tries to put a smile on a teary face and pretend eagerness to get on with a life with the man who done her wrong.


This has become an honored Washington ritual, like the grim procession to the Tyburn gallows in 17th century London, with townspeople taunting the condemned on his way to the torture of the damned. The irony is that we should expect anything better from "our only native criminal class," as Mark Twain described Congress. But Congress, after all, is only a reflection of a culture saturated by deception, knavery and violence. The popular entertainment is a catalog of sexual guile. Anything goes. A popular comedian makes a joke about the rape of a child and the national argument is not about who should horsewhip the comedian, but about whether he owed anyone an apology. We all live in Las Vegas now. Uh, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Wesley Pruden Archives

© 2007 Wesley Pruden

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works