It could happen to anyone

I have been unable to find San Diego’s Mayor Bob Filner’s full statement on resignation, and so have to piece it together with ellipses. But I thought it instructive as he tells us how it works in politics: Many are called, few are chosen. Anyone in office can be scandalized out of office. A scandal can be manufactured, or in this case blown out of proportion by a tooly media and persistent and nagging victims, probably paid off, who might have gotten unsolicited attention from “Pat McCann,” Car Talk’s sexual harassment counselor.

“The city should not have been put through this … my own personal failures were responsible.”

That’s required. Later, there’s a shocker, as he is supposed to meekly go away:

“I have never sexually harassed anyone.”

[In the process of] “trying to establish personal relationships, the combination of awkwardness and hubris, I think, led to behavior that many found offensive. Not one allegation … has ever been independently verified or proven in court. …But the hysteria that has been created … is the hysteria of a lynch mob. Rumors become allegations, allegations become facts, facts become evidence of sexual harassment which have led to demands for my resignation and recall.”

[Members of the media] “unleashed a monster. The hysteria ended up playing into the hands of those who wanted a political coup — the removal of a democratically elected mayor purely by rumor and innuendo.They found the weapons they needed in my own failures as a human being. …Well-organized interests …found … those weapons and they used them, in a bloody and vicious way.”

It’s important to emphasize that there was no scandal, but the media has the power to make one by emphasis, repetition, harping and going back to the same shrill ‘victims’ to repeat the story. All of this raises the level of indignation and makes small matters into big scandal. Members of the public, dependent on leaders in forming their opinions, soon get caught up in the hysteria.

The media, especially a local newspaper, is not an entity that reports news, but rather one that serves, protects and carries out the wishes of power. Publishers are usually well-entrenched in the local power structure, sitting at the same bar at the 19th hole with the local dons.

If you, the reader, can grasp this basic element of politics, you’ll have a better understanding of Watergate, or why Linda Tripp knew to do her Peeping Tom number on Monica. A silly blow job, one of likely thousands given in the oval office over the decades, almost brought down a president. Once you’re up to speed, I’ll fill you in on houses of ill repute that have secret passageways and cameras where a politicians are easily caught in flagrante delicto, or “in the fragrant delicatessen,” as a certain son of mine phrased it. This is why it is so easy, for me anyway, to understand why seemingly decent men and women turn corrupt once they go to DC. They are quickly caught in the deli, probably enticed and seduced, and thereafter compromised.

This is the manner in which J Edgar Hoover had the goods on anyone of prominence in DC, including JFK. But it gets funnier, as rumor has it that J Edgar himself was victim, with Chicago mobster Sam Giancano having film of him in the deli with his partner, Clyde Tolson. Consequently, J never went after the Mafia while in office (though Bobby Kennedy did).

I’ve noticed across the blogs that writers and commenters tend to take politics at face, which is an elementary mistake. It is the job of journalists to do so, but for most of us when a “scandal” erupts and someone powerful comes under fire, look deeper. Remember that thousands of scandals are going on all day every day in politics, but that few ever make it to the papers.