In pondering politicians who recently took to the microphone and regaled us with ravings about sex and family and politics, I first settled on the similarities between our Marion Barry and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
Upon further consideration, I concluded Marion is better compared with Sarah Palin.
Both Barry and Sanford fell for another woman other than their wife. Each kept appearing before the press and talking about their private lives. The airwaves would go sweetly silent for a day or so until Barry or Sanford would summon reporters and tell us more than we needed or wanted to know about their inner souls — actually, their raging libidos.
We come to find out that Barry, our former mayor for life, has become a 73-year-old Lothario. He fell hard for Donna, 33 years his junior. But their relationship had the on and off pace of an episode of “NYC Prep.” It was off July 4 when Park Police arrested Barry for stalking her. Prosecutors dropped charges, but Barry has kept the story aflame with bizarre press events. He called reporters in the dead of night to give them Donna’s medical records, purportedly to prove she’s unstable. Huh?
Sanford had too much to say at the press conference where he first admitted having an affair with a “friend” from Argentina. Married with four boys, he kept talking about when their love affair “sparked.” A day or so later he summoned reporters to call his lover “a soul mate.” Which makes his wife, Jenny, what — chopped liver?
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had no salacious or otherwise indecent revelations about her private life. Palin dropped the bombshell that she’s quitting her job with a year and a half left in her term.
What I find so illuminating about Barry and Palin is how people react to them. Observers just scoff at Sanford; they either love or hate Palin and Barry. For the Alaskan and the D.C. pol, there is no middle ground.
Palin’s fans support her no matter what she does. She quits, she fails to explain why, she blames the media, she vows to fight for God and country — and her supporters send checks. The rest believe she’s a male chauvinist caricature of a babe without a brain who walks out on a job she was elected to do for four years — to be with her kids, and maybe run for office, and fish. She’s the perfect flaky broad.
Barry’s fans would love him if he were caught having sex with a chicken. They would blame the chicken — and “the man.” But in Barry’s easy drift into women and booze and drugs, white supremacists see their ideal, shiftless, black poster boy. He confirms their every stereotype of a weak black man who’s a slave to sex.
What the three errant politicians share is a reluctance to do their jobs. Sanford wants to pout and share; Barry wants to play the victim; Palin wants out of the chief executive chair. None deserve our attention.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
