On the Outs
Al Gore announced that he is "at peace" with his decision not to run for president in 2004, and probably evermore, too. It's a curious expression, since surely it wasn't cut-'n-dry, but (1) he made it, and (2) he didn't have to announce it when he did. What's the peace thing? Actually, it kinda underscores who Gore is. Gore could have been president, but he blew the election, snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory by presenting himself as someone other than who he was; hardly an unlikely fate for someone who was clueless as to his own real identity. He was his father's son, husband to Tipper, father to his daughters, and a man lost unto himself.
Trent "Empty" Lott is gonna read the writin' on the subway walls some time over the Christmas holidays and announce that he's decided to step down from the Senate Leader's position. He'll do it for party, and for the country, so that we can put this confusion behind us. Of course, he could hang in to lose by a vote, but that would be worse. He's been undercut by his Republican colleagues in the Senate, and the White House has made it clear that Bush was unhappy with his remarkable verbal misstep and subsequent inept apologia. But make no mistake. This isn't about Lott sounding racist -- it's a hallmark of the right (wing) -- but rather because (1) the GOP would like to garner more than a meager share of the black vote and this is at least a way to stem the loss, and (2) because they and the White House would like more of a firebrand in the Upper Chamber to prosecute their agenda over the next two years.
Bernard Law is reclusing himself to a monastery. The fallen cardinal, stumbling all over himself with airless apologies, resigned as chief of the Boston archdiocese after disastrously mishandling the dirty priest problem in the Northeast for thirty-plus years. Whether it was stupidity or venality -- two qualities that unfortunately mirror his boss' administration in Rome -- or simply an anachronistic consciousness that failed to see the sin, Law is no longer the law for hundreds of thousands of now-questioning worshipers. He leaves behind chaos in the church -- a good thing, certainly -- and many pedophelic victims, not a good thing. Regrettably too, he and his ilk have added to the lexicon the term "priest abuse survivor."
Gary Condit demonstrated how not to manage the media with his embarrassingly botched bungling of his account of his relationship with Chandra Levy. Despite fumbling every opportunity to avoid negative coverage, he almost won re-election to the House, and from a district where the people, mistakenly, think of themselves as morally superior to the rest of us. Not content after losing his last race to shrink off into the darkness of ignominy, Condit has filed suit against Dominick Dunne, claiming the writer defamed the fallen Congressional predator by saying "I don't think he killed her. I think he could have known it was going to happen." Um, probably not.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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