View From
The Middle
 
By Charles Rogers

Bill And Jesse — Didn’t The Fall Of Rome Start This Way?

Does it make you sick, or what? What can we possibly tell our children about our leaders that the leaders don’t just tear down with hypocrisy every time you turn around?

First of all, leader-and-now-ex-President Clinton gets off the hook bynot being indicted on the Paula Jones and/or Monica Lewensky affairs. All he has to do is admit he told a few fibs. Easy, huh?

And then the Rev. Jesse Jackson — that stalwart civil rights leader and, as a preacher and so-called man of God who would be an example to those growing up watching and supposedly admiring him — admits to an extra-marital affair with a 39-year-old ex-professor who headed Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition Washington office. As a result of their dalliance, a now-20-month old child was born.

The woman with whom Jackson had the affair moved from the Washington office to Los Angeles, a move that cost $40,000 and was reportedly paid for by the Rainbow office, according to a report in the Daily News last Friday. Child support monthly payments (in the four-figure range) are supposedly being handled personally by JacksIsn’t it a shame that these affairs are tolerated at all? These supposed leaders at this point — to paraphrase that old, worn and virtually battered-like-an-abused-spouse Bible — should have a millstone tied around their necks and be thrown into a river. After all, they are the people schoolkids are told to look up to. What’s next, the Bishop...the Pope?

Hey, I’m no angel; nor am I a prude (really). But I don’t have the title "President" before my name, or worse, "Reverend." I reserve the right, however, to let these officials have it with both barrels when it comes to their indiscretions. Clinton was the first president to be impeached as a result of this disgusting flaw in his character, and then he went on to lie about it, compounding the sin. Jackson, while admitting it (how could he do anything but?) exposed one of his big flaws too.

But there are those who are still trying to excuse Clinton by saying, aw, shucks, he’s only a man who succumbed to temptation. Hey, let him off the hook.

By the same rationale, there are those who are already saying the same about Jackson (ahem, I mean the Reverend Jackson). The guy’s only human, they’re saying. Let it go.

No. I’m sorry, but I won’t let it go! We’ve been letting too much of this stuff go lately and it’s leading to a lowering, lowering, lowering of standards as if we’re heading for a society, not unlike the Roman Empire, where debauchery will be treated as just a minor "flaw" that doesn’t mean a thing in the Grand Scheme of the future. If it keeps up, we’ll be too distracted by hedonism to see another power take us over or, perhaps, our own disintegration.

Sad, isn’t it, that those we wanted to most look up to — Like the Romans of old looked to Caesar — turned out to have less character than we thought.