During my grade school years we lived next to an Italian-American
family. Of course, then they were called Italians or they even referred
to themselves as “wops.” It was long before the days of hyphenation and
political correctness. Although they had several children, I can only
remember Bobby. He was my age and I learned from him the finer points
of playing baseball, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers and swimming
in the nearby river during the long lazy days of summer.
I also learned lots of dirty words. For a 9-year-old he had one of
the foulest mouths I have ever run across. Whenever I would bring home
a new “word,” my parents would severely chastise me and tell me not to
use it again. The first time I told Bobby what my parents said he
replied, “Oh, that’s OK. I just go to church on Sunday, tell the priest
that I have sinned, and then it’s OK with God.”
Watching last week as the Democrats embraced the devout Orthodox Jew,
Senator Joe Lieberman, I kept thinking of Bobby. Bobby had been going
to church every Sunday to get absolution, but did not change his sinful
ways. It appears the Democratic Party has embraced Bobby’s view of
redemption. Only this time they are trying to change their outward
appearance, while still hanging on to their hedonistic roots.
First it was the announcement of Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as
their vice presidential candidate. It seems that it’s okay for Joe to
invoke God 18 times when Al Gore introduced him in Nashville last week,
while the Democratic party supports excommunicating God from the
classroom and kicking him off the football field across the USA.
The hypocrisy has just begun. Joe Lieberman, who is being touted as
the standard bearer with religious and moral convictions, is now
reinventing himself to match the scripture according to Al Gore. While
the new moralistic Gore team has castigated and made Congresswoman
Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., persona non grata at the convention because
she scheduled a fund-raiser at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion, the
Clinton-Gore administration certainly has not returned those campaign
contributions from the master of the bunny house. Maybe they though
that no one would notice who signed the checks, after all Gore still
maintains that he went to a Buddhist temple function never knowing it
was a fund-raiser.
While Loretta was publicly spanked for her indiscretion, the leader
of Democratic morals, Sen. Lieberman, was the honored guest at a
Democratic fund-raiser at the home of the producer of the “Jenny Jones”
show. Yes, it is the same television talk show that Lieberman had
severely criticized in the past for its immoral subject matter. When
money talks, morality walks: tickets were priced from $5,000 to $25,000.
In the past Lieberman has been a vocal critic of the fund-raising
methodology of Clinton and Gore. According to Bill Sammon in the
Washington
Times Lieberman was deeply troubled that those invited to White House coffees were solicited afterwards for campaign contributions. He, like most Americans, understood what being invited to a White House coffee really meant. It was the equivalent of an invitation to your neighbor’s Tupperware party.
It doesn’t matter that one pays for the coffee or Tupperware later, everyone knows why one is asked to attend and opens their wallets accordingly. Gore, like Clinton, has taken to rationalizing that since no money was transferred at the “coffee,” the event was not really a fund-raiser. In 1977 Lieberman denounced that kind of event as well as Gore’s legalistic obfuscation. Now he has forgotten his being troubled by the White House’s questionable fund raising tactics and has adopted Gore’s legalistic evasive answers.
Ann Coulter in her column for Capitol Hill Blue calls the vice-presidential nominee the “The Hand-Wringing Hamlet From Hartford.” She recalls how “troubled” Lieberman was about the Monica affair, the accusations against Clarence Thomas, and the violence and “trash” on television. Yet, with every “troubling” event, he has somehow assuaged his conscience and voted to protect Democratic interests.
We saw it in his vote against Clarence Thomas. We saw it in his vote against the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Now we are seeing it in his relationships to his newfound friends in Hollywood. Like Tipper Gore who dropped her attacks against the filth and vulgarity in Hollywood and the television industry when Al became a vice presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman doesn’t seem to find it incongruous that he gave out “Silver Sewer” awards to the same people he now solicits for funds.
One of the major purposes of a religious education is to teach our children right from wrong. It was wrong of Bobby to seek absolution for his sins and then repeat them all over again as soon as church was over. But he was only a child. Adults are charged with the duty of teaching and reinforcing proper behavior. The way we teach is not by our words, but through our deeds. If the deeds were immoral yesterday, there is no absolution today even if they are accompanied by a sizeable campaign contribution.
