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Mother Jones
Senator David Vitter
Hurricane of Sex and
Hypocrisy
Posted by Jonathan
Stein, MotherJones.com/News/MoJoBLOG July 10, 2007
We might feel bad about blogging a
plain old sex scandal — I criticized FOX News for sucking at the teat of the
Anna Nicole story — but when a sex story comes buried under mountains of
hypocrisy, that's more than any blogger can resist.
First the basics: the infamous "DC madam" is a Heidi Fleiss clone who sent
call girls to DC's elite. Now that she’s being charged with racketeering
(not a particularly successful racket, by the way, netting her $2 million in 13
years), she’s on a helter-skelter campaign to generate media attention and make
money while she can — and sink a few semi-famous people along the way.
She put a list of clients' phone numbers on her website yesterday and Senator
David Vitter's number was on it. Vitter (R-LA), who is best known for
misleading the public in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and then criticizing
the feds response to the disaster, immediately owned up. "This was a very
serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," he
said in a statement to the press. He added that he has already made peace
with his wife and his God.
But let's get to the hypocrisy, shall we? In 2004, when Vitter was a
congressman running for a seat in the Senate, Vitter campaigned with a promise
of "protecting the sanctity of marriage." He went on to become a co-author
of the "Federal Marriage Act" that sought to prohibit courts from interpreting
same-sex marriage laws, and said of marriage, "I don't believe there's any issue
that's more important than this one."
Thought we were done? Nope. Vitter once compared same-sex marriage
to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The first line of his official biography
reads, "David Vitter is dedicated to making life better for his young family and
all Louisiana families."
But then, hypocrisy runs across Vitter's "young family." After
extramarital affairs by Louisiana rep and now-you-see-him-now-you-don't Speaker
of the House Bill Livingston were revealed, Vitter's wife was asked how she
would react if her husband had been caught in an affair, like Livingston and
Bill Clinton. "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary [Clinton],"
she said. "If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one
thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."
Whoa! David Vitter's wife is awesome, even though she doesn't stand by her
word. Actually, maybe she does and we just don't know about it. That
would mean Vitter has paid for this more dearly than any of us know...
Oh, and PS — Vitter is the Southern Regional Chair of Rudy Giuliani’s
presidential campaign. Man, Rudy is having a tough time down south.
Considering the man's own sordid past, I guess it comes as no surprise that they
aren't terribly serious about vetting people at his campaign.
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