Random Acts of Writing: Not cool at all

By Craig Carter
Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:57 PM PDT

Recently, former presidential candidate John Edwards admitted to ABC News that he had an affair on his wife while she was battling cancer.

Once again, the hippie freak, free love liberals shake our heads and roll our eyes at the mouth-breathing, other side of the George W. Bush-coin liberals.

You see, a lot of folks assume from our title that we hippie freak, free love liberals have no problem with a man cheating on his wife. A lot of folks would be sorely mistaken. Not that we have a problem with sex. We like it. We like it a lot. In fact, we like it so much, we’ve written songs, sonnets, poems (and now a newspaper column) in praise of the funnest thing you can do with your clothes off.

However, hippie freak, free love liberals believe if a man makes a promise to God to stay faithful to his hot mama, he should stick by his word. Not hit the sexual search trail when she’s literally in the fight of her life. That’s just mean, dude. I mean, it’s something that’s already been done by Newt Gingrich, dude. Do you really want to act like Newt Gingrich?

Which is not to say Gingrich having an affair with his secretary and subsequently dumping his wife who was battling cancer excuses Edwards’ actions. Both are slimebag moves and an affront to anyone and everyone who ever looked into their lovely wife’s gorgeous eyes and made the for better/worse, for richer/poorer pledge. It’s just if you want to position yourself as one of the good guys, you don’t go out of your way to act like the bad guys.

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And seriously, haven’t both Democrats and Republicans had enough of this kind of thing? If politicians aren’t cheating on spouses they’re cruising men’s rooms, peeking at interns’ underpants, offering money and a sex act or generally sinking into sexual depravity.

Hippie freak, free love liberals don’t like sexual depravity, and, in that regard, we’re very much like our wound tight, go to church conservative brethren. Which is not to be confused with the wound tight, go to church just for show, holier than thou conservatives who, like the mouth-breathing liberals, are a completely different wing (or should we say wing nut) of the belief system.

When you get right down to it, you’d think the majority of the American people would be absolutely sick and tired of this sort of thing, but if you go by the ratings, the sales of tabloids and just the general way the American public decides to show interest in any given issue, the vast majority of the American people love this kind of crap. They eat it up like candy. Which is why a lot more coverage was given to the Edwards thing the day after than things like a relative of an American volleyball coach being murdered in Beijing and an escalating conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Which probably explains why I wasn’t overly surprised that bastion of journalistic ethics and truth, the National Enquirer, broke the Edwards story. And it’s why the “serious” news people are now interviewing the sleaze bag paparazzi dolts at the Enquirer as if they should be considered colleagues. There’s no end to the sleaze at play here, boys and girls, and we hippie freak, free love liberals may be accepting and empathetic, but we simply will not abide sleaze of this magnitude.

So, as we did with the underpants peeker and any other prominent politician who does incredibly slimy stuff, we hippie freak, free love liberals shake our heads, roll our eyes and say, “Dude. That is not cool. Not cool at all.”� � 

We apologize for harshing your presidential politics buzz and all, but really. That just ain’t cool at all.

Craig Carter, an Ontario resident, writes a bi-weekly column for the Argus Observer. Comments or questions for Mr. Carter can be directed to: Craig Carter, Argus Observer Newsroom; 1160 S.W. Fourth St., Ontario OR, 97914