Things I believe #2

Things I believe #2

I believe that "Don't judge me," in addition  to becoming the refuge of scoundrels in the public arena  has morphed, over the last decade or so, into one of the current en vogue copouts for sketchy personal behavior at all levels. 

                We see the seemingly out of control mother screaming at her child in public, for who knows what reason and of course we judge that action.  We're  human and we have,  to varying degrees, certain thresholds of what we consider as acceptable behavior.  In the same sense, we have enacted laws to enforce what we consider to be acceptable human activity. Society judges murder and theft as wrong. It is natural and to be expected. Like it or not, any thought  process which critically analyzes actions of another and decides internally if one finds said activity acceptable or not is judging.

       Should one state their opinion of an activity which they find outside the bounds of proper social action, there are those ready, nay eager, to label it as judgmental. Well, of course it is, just as  the person rendering said statement is, in their turn, being judgmental.

        Recently I garnered a lot of approval, but a small amount of flak for being critical ("judgmental") of the announced selection  of  Callista Gingrich as US ambassador to the Vatican. In doing so I reflected upon what is simply in the public record. Had I been similarly critical of Hillary Clinton, for whom  I also have relatively little regard, there would have been no such charges, but in the current environment, it seems that the more outré  and bizarre the current administration's actions and appointments  become,  the harsher is the backlash when such bad behavior is pointed out. 

        In the case of Gingrich, we have a serial womanizer who during the same period made Bill Clinton look like a monk (ok, ok, maybe not a monk, but less venal than Gingrich). Gingrich has openly  acknowledged cheating on his second wife while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

        His extramarital track record is such that speaking of  an affair that he carried on with a volunteer during his first campaign in 1974, one of his aides said, “We’d have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her on the desk.”

        Also tucked into the mix was the episode where he went to the hospital where his wife was recovering from surgery and tried to get her to sign papers related to their divorce while she was still coming out of anesthesia          

        That hasn’t stopped him from claiming positions of moral loftiness, decrying the impending downfall of our society, and penning books arguing, “There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular effort to drive God out of America’s public life.” His second ex- wife, (the one he was cheating with before he divorced the first one) in a 2010 interview, however, flatly stated, “He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected. … If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president.”

        Newt Gingrich's affair with his future (still married to the second one!) third wife  and seven year's extramarital squeeze, Callista Bisek, at the time an aide in the office of Wisconsin Rep. Steve Gunderson, was in full bloom on the eve of the Republican Revolution that propelled Gingrich to become House Speaker, in 1994. "It was  common knowledge on the Hill," according to a former colleague of Callista's in Gunderson's office. Certainly in Republican circles it was widely known ."  The former colleague's comments shed new light on the out-in-the-open nature of the Gingrich affair — years before Gingrich would petition his second wife for an "open marriage" in 1999.

       Callista, whom the former colleague remembers and describes as a "small-town girl from Wisconsin" openly discussed  her relationship with Gingrich at the office. "She was not veiled about it," he says. Callista would say things like, "Obviously you're aware of the relationship I have", (referring to Gingrich" the ex-staffer recalls.

       So, here are a couple of  questions for all you "don't judge me" types, who often actually use the phrase to mean, "Don't criticize Republicans, but we hated Obama":

        Are you being non-judgmental when you discriminate against an individual because of their sexuality? Are my gay friends who have been faithful to one another for 30 several years in the face of innumerable societal  pressures, children of a lesser God?

        Were you being non-judgmental when you decided that the previous POTUS was bad and this one good because of pigmentation?  How about when you question the former's  character in an utter absence of reason to do so, yet ignore the fact that in 2008, three Republican candidates had 9 wives between them and only the Mormon was faithful to one?

        Are you being non-judgmental when you chide someone for a political point of view which you immediately translate into what you believe to be a lack of moral character, even though your new POTUS has only been to church since his confirmation to attend either his own serial marriages or those of his children?  

        And finally: How do you make the many daily decisions of your own prejudiced and discriminatory lives life in the absence of reasoned judgment? Did you get a divine message saying "Behold my child, these are the people who are OK and these others aren't?" or did you weigh their behavior against some standard and "judge" it? Of course you didn't, did you, because you're not judgmental, you're just a bigot.