{"id":4119,"date":"2010-07-24T21:05:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T02:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=4119"},"modified":"2010-07-25T19:17:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T00:17:17","slug":"a-mystery-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=4119","title":{"rendered":"A mystery explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love the Washington Monthly’s blog (Political Animal). I consider it required reading, and I think Steven Benen does some great reporting. Still, I marvel that a guy who has been following politics so long seems constantly mystified at the fact that neither the press nor politicians behave rationally; that politicians so often say things that are demonstrably untrue and the press so often covers stories with a mixture of ignorance and bias. Here’s the latest example:<\/p>\n

\n

I continue to marvel at this scandal. Here we have John Ensign, a “family values” conservative Republican, who had an extra-marital sexual relationship with his friend’s wife, while condemning others’ moral failings. Ensign’s parents offered to pay hush-money. He ignored ethics laws and tried to use his office to arrange lobbying jobs for his mistress’ husband. The likelihood of Ensign being indicted seems fairly high. <\/p>\n

And yet, there’s no media frenzy. No reporters staked out in front of Ensign’s home. No op-eds speculating about the need for Ensign to resign in disgrace. Instead, the media’s fascinated<\/em> with Charlie Rangel. <\/p>\n

Rangel is facing a probe from the House ethics committee, while Ensign is under scrutiny from the FBI<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Why would Rangel “tarnish his whole party” in an election year, while Ensign’s sex-ethics-corruption scandal be deemed irrelevant to the Republican Party? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The answer to Benen’s question is really quite simple. Rangel is black. Rangel is a Democrat. Or, we might express it as follows: there is an unwritten, but rigidly observed rule: It’s (especially hypocrisy) okay if you’re a Republican.<\/p>\n


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I love the Washington Monthly’s blog (Political Animal). I consider it required reading, and I think Steven Benen does some great reporting. Still, I marvel that a guy who has been following politics so long seems constantly mystified at the fact that neither the press nor politicians behave rationally; that politicians so often say things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republicans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4121,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions\/4121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}