I guess it's my long inurement to Republican hypocrisy that rendered me rather startled by all the attention given to the (really)-extended-family hobbies of that family-values devotee, Senator David Vitter.
After all, having suffered the moralistic fulminations of such revealed cheats and charlatans as Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Bob Livingston, Mark Foley and Henry Hyde, in addition to their debauching, pulpit-pounding, ideological retainers of Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggart and Jimmy Bakker, what's one more inevitable story of sinful seediness by one more inevitable Republican hypocrite?
But I was also rather conflicted over the public thrashing of the pious senator for his gross impieties, since, well before Bill Clinton's detestable lynching for similar deeds, I was in solid agreement with the supreme tolerance of 16th-century essayist Michel de Montaigne, who said of his "contract" with domestic servants:
I never inquire, when I am to take a footman, if he be chaste, but if he be diligent; and am not solicitous if my muleteer be given to gaming, as if he be strong and able; or if my cook be a swearer, if he be a good cook. I do not take upon me to direct what other men should do in the government of their families, there are plenty that meddle enough with that.
I asked no more of politicians. I cared not if they were chaste, only diligent -- comingled, if at all possible, with a trifle competence.
Yet there, at the end of Montaigne's mild admonition, is the rub, of course, regarding Louisiana's public servant, Mr. Vitter.
He has always spearheaded that which would "meddle" with "what other men should do in the government of their families." Indeed, he has always spearheaded that which presumes to define and establish the boundaries of "family" -- for everyone, even for those of much purer heart and choosier genitals than married patrons of prostitution.
Nevertheless, trying my damndest to be of consistent mind, I mostly gave Mr. Vitter a pass.
Until now, which is to say, until he went and did a silly thing -- that is, until he apologized. Because a guileless apology it decidedly was not.
It was, rather, an attack; tawdry political offense, defiantly played at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong audience.
True, the senator did "offer my deep, sincere apologies to all those I have let down and disappointed," and he was "so very, very sorry." I bet.
But he also conflated an antagonistic defense against additional allegations with his apology for the vastly more-than-just-alleged, thereby turning the thrust of his statement into a broadside against "longtime political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation."
He should have clammed up when he was ahead. He should have said, simply, "So sorry; it appears I'm an insufferable hypocrite and gee aren't we all from time to time," and then scurried off the platform like a chastened puppy.
But no, he couldn't resist the Nixonian impulse of coming clean by dishing dirt -- of offering an apology dishonorably upended by underhanded table-turning.
And for that, Senator, you deserve every bit of public scorn that you're getting.