What We Talk About When We Talk About...

The least surprising column this Sunday had to have been Maureen Dowd's examination of the Mark Sanford affair. A quick summary: "Republican politician is having sex. Hyuck. Hyuck." And, it's - wait for it - a symbol of everything wrong with the GOP. A symbol, you say! Where did you get that idea? Genius In A Bottle

Sanford should give his piety a rest. He told his cabinet that the Psalms taught him humility. (There’s a chance that a younger Argentine boyfriend of Maria’s also taught him humility, by jealously hacking into her e-mail account and leaking the governor’s missives.)

Sanford can be truly humble only if he stops dictating to others, who also have desires and weaknesses, how to behave in their private lives.

The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced.

That's a confusing list. I get Sanford, Gingrich, Ensign, and Vitter (although Gingrich's adultery is 10 years old. Maureen, you need to freshen your material). What have Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin done? Is MoDo sitting on a Sarah Palin sex scandal that I am not aware of? I am confused.

Speaking of "hypocrisy," what about noisily tolerant liberals who demand respect and tolerance for sexual diversity out of one side of their mouths while chortling over ordinary heterosexual peccadillo's out of the other? We've been told Americans should be more sophisticated and nuanced about sex "like Europeans." Honestly, the more I hear about these sorts of middle-age affairs, the more I am overcome with a rueful sense of melancholy over the fleeting transience of human folly. Is that European enough?

More to the point, does Dowd honestly believe that the GOP is unique in not living up to its ideals? I know she went to Catholic school, but she wasn't literally raised in a convent. Dowd undoubtedly knows about the grubby "cash in envelopes" corruption that greases many of the wheels in the Democratic Party; but, if she had to acknowledge that, her world view (not to mention her status as "most emailed" columnist at the Times) would collapse. And, examples of "two faced" "sanctimonious" Dems abound. Why, just today, we have the following:

1.) Detroit Councilwoman Pleads Guilty to Accepting Bribes for votes

Monica Conyers, a City Council member and the wife of Representative John Conyers Jr., pleaded guilty on Friday to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit bribery and accepting cash-filled envelopes in exchange for her tie-breaking vote on a city contract

Huh, a Detroit councilwoman. Hasn't Detroit been in the news lately? Is this what Detroit's politicians have been doing with their time while their city dies? And, it says here that she's married to John Conyers, a senior member of the House of Representatives. That seems to escaped a lot of the eager "culture of corruption" monitors out there like MoDo.

2.) Then there's the John Edwards sex scandal, which is the gift that keeps giving: Aide's Tale of John Edwards Sex Tape

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal.

St. Martin’s Press just inked a deal with Young, who also says in his proposal that, contrary to his public statement last year, he is not the father of Hunter’s infant daughter — Edwards is. Edwards has denied that.

John Edwards? Wasn't he, like, the Dems' candidate for VP way back in 2004? And a strong candidate for President in 2008? In fact, wasn't he espousing the sort of populist lunch bucket politics that Dems always say is there raison d'etre? And - unlike Vitter, Ensign, and Sanford,who were all fairly obscrure pre-scandal - wasn't Edwards one of the Dems leading lights for several years? Sounds like he could symbolize a culture of corruption, if you are looking out for that sort of thing.

3.) And, in Illinois, there is a scandal involving the children of politically connected local Dems obtaining admittance to the University of Illinois Law School. University of Illinois College of Law Scandal: Now With Emails

This morning, we mentioned that the University of Illinois College of Law admission's scandal. It appears that former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich pressured University of Illinois Chancellor, Richard Herman, and Heidi Hurd -- former dean of the University of Illinois College of Law -- to admit under qualified students who were politically connected. In exchange for admitting those students, university officials attempted to obtain jobs for graduates of the College of Law.

The Chicago Tribune reports the results from its investigation of Illinois law school:

The documents show for the first time efforts to seek favors -- in this case, jobs -- for admissions, the most troubling evidence yet of how Illinois' entrenched system of patronage crept into the state's most prestigious public university.

They also detail the law school's system for handling "Special Admits," students backed by the politically connected, expanding the scope of a scandal prompted by a Chicago Tribune investigation.

Gee, aren't universities and law schools practically arms of the Democratic Party and progressive politics? And, isn't there perpetual controversy over affirmative action admissions which limits opportunities to normally qualified students? And, you say well connected Dems in Illinois (a Dem-dominated state) were allowed hundreds of "special admits" at the public university? It almost makes the whole system seem corrupt!

Heidi Hurd, the law school Dean who was at the center of all this, sent one email complaining about the demands of the special admits' proponents in which she complained, "Sheesh! It's enough to make one want to be a Republican!" Ho! Ho!

That is as pure an example of the sanctimonious false consciousness that lies at the heart of all good liberals. Hurd is undoubtedly all good things: progressive, feminist, pro-gay marriage, anti-Iraq War, etc. And, of course, "Republicans are evil." She, and the other sophisticates might want to look in the mirror before they bust a gut laughing.