Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Hormones


A week away from Mason City and a half hour or more of NBC’s “Today” show each morning have turned my thoughts to adultery.

Interesting stuff, and I’d have watched more of Meredith and Matt, but a Des Moines hospital took to running animated advertisements for colon surgery. I don’t care if this does involve just three small incisions --- don’t want to see large intestines being snipped, clipped and ripped over breakfast. Reading‘s better for the digestion.

Oh, and I wasn’t thinking of committing, just of adultery as the possible basis for a new reality TV show --- and of hormones and the presidency.

Thinking back to notable adulterers --- and these are only the ones who come readily to mind:

Bill Clinton, the highest-ranking known adulterer in recent history.

The Rev. Ted Haggard and his male prostitute, Mike Jones.

The thwarted 2007 attempt of Idaho’s senior U.S. senator, Larry Craig, to hook up in a Minnesota restroom with a guy who unfortunately (for Craig) turned out to be a cop (that counts, just for effort, as half an adultery).

And what a wealth of adulters the last couple weeks produced, all spread out in living color on the “Today” show.

First New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his high-priced prostitutes. Come right down to it, Spitzer’s adultery was not half so surprising to an Iowan as the fact that he had committed it so expensively --- $1,000 an hour, up to $80,000 over the years. Land sakes alive!

Then just as soon as Spitzer resigns and his successor, David Paterson, is sworn in, both Paterson and his wife, Michelle, announce to the world that they’d both committed adultery, in his case serial adultery, during a “rough spot” in their marriage several years ago. Heavens to Betsy !

And on Tuesday, New Jersey’s McGreeveys crawl out from under their rocks.

You may remember Jim McGreevey, governor of New Jersey at the time, who announced in 2004 that he was a “gay American man.” He and his ex-wife, now Dina Matos, have been dueling ever since and he’s attending an Episcopal seminary in New York --- the high church equivalent to an evangelical caught with his pants down who, while zipping up, announces that he’s been born again.

Anyhow, after Dina Matos appeared one morning last week on the “Today” show to give her insights into the adultery of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson, out of the woodwork comes a former McGreevey aide, Ted Pedersen, alleging he and the ex-Mrs. McGreevey had a long history of sexual relations --- with Governor Jim as the audience. Land o’ Goshen!

Now I figure that on the raging hormones scale you get 10 points for full-fledged adultery and five points for alleged or thwarted.

So Bill Clinton and Haggard get 10 each and Craig, 5.

Moving on, it’s 10 points for Spitzer, 10 points each for both David and Michelle Paterson, 10 points for McGreevey for his original indiscretions and 5 points each for Jim, his ex-wife and the aide for the new allegations.

If I’ve got this figured out right, the men are ahead of the women 65 points to 15.

If you wonder where I’m going with this --- Hillary Rodham Clinton for president!

Good old boys used to claim women were unfit for leadership because of their hormones, but ya know that argument wasn’t valid then and I’ve just proved that it surely isn’t now. Honest I have.

And I don’t think we can afford any more raging male hormones in the White House right now (ponder George W. Bush, testosterone and the war in Iraq).

So as much as I relish the thought of Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House, I’ve got to go with the only hormonally safe choice.

The first photo atop this entry is Eliot Spitzer; the second, David Paterson.

1 comment:

hugh w said...

Hi, re"Spitzer/Paterson, as A person Trying to watch something other than the Paterson/Spitzer stuff I often felt over the last few weeks that the colon surgery ad would have been a welcome diversion from the coverage we got living within 10 miles of Albany NY . I wonder if the indignation about Spitzer had less to do with sex, and more to do with paying for it and even that had less to do with it than the fact he was highly unpopular, having many left over enemies from his days as Attorney General and his "presentation of self" Reporters seem obsessed in trying to find out even "better ugly stuff on both of them.