Monica, We Need You Now
by Joan Chittister
Published on Saturday, December 31, 2005 by the National Catholic ReporterChristmas parties for board members can be very uncomfortable, if not downright difficult. Nobody knows anyone very well. Once you've approved the budget for the year, what's left to talk about that's safe enough to risk in a mixed crowd? Finding something familiar enough to generate real conversation among people who come from so many different backgrounds and walks of life is no small feat. Better usually just to swig the tiny glass of sherry, finish the strange-tasting canapé politely and suddenly remember that you have to leave early to get to the store before it closes.
But not at the party this year.
At this Christmas party everyone -- whoever they were, wherever they were from -- began talking about the latest breaking news story on the latest White House scandal. Surprisingly enough, though, the overall tone of the conversation, unlike most political discussion in mixed company these days, was not argumentative. Instead, the general response was a kind of quiet dismay. Faulty intelligence, misinterpreted intelligence -- exaggerated, insufficient, decades-old intelligence -- was one thing. Spying on the American public in sweeping, unspecified, unmonitored fishing expeditions, however, was entirely another.
One woman put it this way: "Where is Monica Lewinsky when we need her?" Nobody laughed. The comment made the point: There are scandals and then there are scandals.
It's one kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for sexual satisfaction. What the moral theologians have traditionally called "the sins of the flesh" -- as in "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" -- most often carries an overtone of human weakness, a lack of personal discipline or emotional maturity or psychological control of sexual impulses.
It's another kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for power. Deceit, spuriousness, pride and calculated dishonesty fall into the category of "sins of the spirit." These are not confined to private or personal sexual behaviors. "Sins of the spirit" have to do with intellectual malice, with the cultivation of behavior and attitudes that attack the very ideals of the human community and pollute a whole way of being alive. This day's scandal yielded no ordinary political conversation. The group wrestled with the problem. Didn't the attack on the World Trade Center demand a more intense kind of intelligence gathering? Didn't the president have the responsibility to do this? Wasn't it imperative that it be done?
Yes, yes, and yes. The answers came easily, it seemed. Then what was the problem? A continuing discomfort hung in the air; something begged to be said yet. People put their eyes down and bit at the inside of their lips.
Then a woman dared the breach: "We may need to do this kind of thing -- but not like this. Not without legal permission, not without the approval of the Congress. Not in the United States of America. We elected a president. Not a king."
The idea may bear remembering.
cont..........http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1231-03.htmIn considering Shrub's sins with respect to his pResidency, it might be wise to remember that, in addition to all of his criminal behavior, it has also been rumored that there is something going on between The Vampire and himself which, according to the GOP's handling of the Clinton-Lewinski indiscretion, is a more grievious sin.
In a speech a while back, Condi inadvertently referred to Shrub as her "husband;" and I thought at the time that, perhaps, it might be wise to launch an investigation into that relationship, because the American public gets much more excited about an alleged sex scandal than it seemingly does about actual criminal behavior such as we've witnessed during Shrub's "regime" thus far.
Of course, these are just the "musings" of an old lady and nothing remarkable.
Regards,
RJnAbbysNana
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