{"id":1685,"date":"2008-12-15T13:29:29","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T18:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2008-12-15T13:36:24","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T18:36:24","slug":"a-defense-of-indiscretion-cont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1685","title":{"rendered":"A Defense of Indiscretion (cont.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/12\/11\/AR2008121102774_2.html\">[digg-reddit-me]Kathleen Parker<\/a>, who since breaking with Republican orthodoxy and criticizing Sarah Palin with her obvious flaws, has been a writer I pay attention to found time to comment on the <a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/?p=1634\">mini-scandal<\/a> of a former Holy Cross alum:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One day, Favreau was the golden boy of silken tongue. The next, he was just another dimwitted dude acting dumb&#8230;Feminists groups such as NOW and The New Agenda are outraged that Clinton &#8211; or at least her image &#8211; is being treated disrespectfully by the boys. Conservatives are outraged that there&#8217;s not enough outrage, as would be the case were the party boys Republicans&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Only Hillary Clinton has made light of the &#8220;incident,&#8221; hereinafter known as Night of BBB (Boys Being Boys). In an <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/the-trail\/2008\/12\/04\/one_more_question.html\">e-mail<\/a> to The Washington Post&#8217;s Al Kamen, a Clinton adviser wrote: &#8220;Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon&#8217;s obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hear, hear. Nipping nonsense in the bud is an essential skill for a secretary of state and Clinton used her shears deftly. If anyone recognizes a little harmless male sport, it would be the bride of President &#8220;Is.&#8221; One thing is harmful; another thing isn&#8217;t&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Puritans and prohibitionists would adore our brave new world of shutterbug infamy. The fact is, no one&#8217;s having fun anymore, especially in the nation&#8217;s capital, where one can&#8217;t afford to let the tongue slip or risk being caught in the cross hairs of a cell camera.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, Parker had the good sense to see Sarah Palin for what she was &#8211; a dazzling media phenomenon with little substance. People like Amy Siskind and Campbell Brown couldn&#8217;t see beyond Palin&#8217;s ovaries &#8211; defending her and blaming &#8220;the boys&#8221; in the McCain campaign for holding her back.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/blogs\/robert-schlesinger\/2008\/12\/12\/barack-obama-speechwriter-jon-favreau-the-hillary-clinton-grope-and-scenes-from-the-surveillance-republic.html\">Robert Schlesinger of <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report<\/em><\/a> manages to look beyond sexism to the more fundamental issues involved.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The trifecta of a lack of privacy, a disappearing sense of humor, and a zero-tolerance attitude regarding offenses real and perceived will leave us dysfunctional: We&#8217;re all human, after all, and make mistakes. Show me someone who has never in their life done something embarrassing, inappropriate, rude, or regrettable and I&#8217;ll show you someone either too inhuman to work in a position of power or someone who was fortunate that a camera phone wasn&#8217;t around when they erred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/?p=1634\">Amen<\/a>. That&#8217;s exactly the argument I made last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[digg-reddit-me]Kathleen Parker, who since breaking with Republican orthodoxy and criticizing Sarah Palin with her obvious flaws, has been a writer I pay attention to found time to comment on the mini-scandal of a former Holy Cross alum: One day, Favreau was the golden boy of silken tongue. The next, he was just another dimwitted dude [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,47,4,458],"tags":[141,1090,829,291],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-criticism","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-jon-favreau","tag-kathleen-parker","tag-washington-post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-rb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}