You know, the way this scandal is unfolding, I’m starting to worry. First there was Petraeus, whose actions pretty much convince the casual observer that you can’t trust any man (I mean, really, if you can’t rely on a straight arrow like that…). Then there’s Gen. Allen, a four-star Marine, which to me conjures a picture of a guy who would brook zero deviation from regulations, the kind of guy who’d send a flirty email to a woman only if he were ordered to do so. Then there’s the fact that it was all being investigated by an FBI agent who was sending shirtless photos of himself to the original complainant….
Then I put all that together with the fact that there are now going to be more women in the U.S. Senate than ever… Really! 20 of them! Which is like a majority, right? (I’m not sure. When I was learning that in school, there was a girl in my class in a leather miniskirt and spike heels, and I just don’t know what was said that day…)
I’m worried that one day, when all the male senators are out chasing skirts, they will push through a provision to deal with the problem once and for all. They’ll pass a bill “redefining marriage,” in this way: If a woman wants to adopt a man, she has to have him “fixed” first, just like getting a dog.
You don’t think it can happen? Well, I hope not. But just in case, come on, guys — take a cold shower or something. This is ridiculous…
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I mean, come on… I see Allen once commanded the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines — the same unit immortalized in Leon Uris’ classic novel, Battle Cry.
Would “Highpockets” Huxley have put up with such shenanigans as this? I certainly don’t think so. He’d have made the whole unit go on a surprise 50-mile hike with full packs, to make them too tired to send shirtless pictures to ANYbody. Drop your (blank)s and grab your socks, gyrenes…
Ha. Ha.
How about perpetuating more gender stereotypes, eh? Powerful people act out sexually. Dependent people, not so much.
Divorce lawyers will tell you that plenty of women fool around.
Speaking of gender stuff, here’s an interesting tidbit… I was just looking at The Washington Posts website, and you know how they’ll have direct links across the top, right under the nameplate, leading to top trending topics?
Here were the top topics:
Jill Kelley
Gaza airstrike
Nancy Pelosi
Susan Rice
‘Sexiest Man Alive’
Is that what it’s come to? A guy can only get a mention if he’s objectified as a sex object?
Self-restraint is an alien concept to many people. They need to learn to keep their pants on.
Give me Daniel Craig over Channing Tatum. (Seriously, give him to me!)
😉
As I tell my students every semester,one thing we learn from history is that power and adultery have always been fellow travelers.
I think what we will ultimately see out of this is a far different picture than what you posit.
1)General Petraeus will emerge as a pretty unlikable guy. My guess is his supposed gifts will be viewed as liabilities. He will emerge as a highly egotistical, even narcissistic personality. Witness his grooming of the fawning biographer, providing her unusual access that had his aides scratching their heads. The affair started after the book came out. As I read up on this, there are lots of references to his tone-deafness(forcing troops in Afganistan to watch him on a skype call at a black tie event in Tampa), creation of a cult of personality (50 people in his entourage? That moved with him to the CIA?), and an inability to adapt to the CIA culture, where people question each other, not follow orders blindly.
2)FBI agent. No one has seen the “topless” photo. It could easily be a group photo from a day at the beach. Reports are suggesting this.
3)General Allen. Probably collateral damage. We are reading about 30thousand pages. Not 30 thousand emails. That’s a couple dozen replies with “Read this”, followed by a long attachment. That said, he ain’t likely to move up the chain.
Overall, this will likely reflect what you posted regarding the book, The Generals. We have created a cult of warrior worship that makes these all to human people feel empowered and privileged in the lofty realms the generals occupy.
@ Kathryn – I’d like to hear more about these women, fooling around. Preferably binders of women, fooling around.
It takes two to tango…
Tell ’em we’ll be dancing,
Dancing til we drop,
Everybody wants to do the Horizontal Bop!
Dang Brad, seems like all your hero groups have a dark side. There’s the Marines, the FBI and Catholic priests. Maybe you should start idolizing pot smoking hippies instead. Now there’s a group who gets it. Just shed the whole discipline thing from the get-go, shed all the pretense and just let nature urges run their course. At least that way you don’t shatter your reputation since there’s nothing to shatter.
bud – you can go idolize Maynard G. Krebs on your own time!
You know who else needs to take a cold shower – Lindsey Graham and John McCain. All this bluster about the Benghazi incident, even to the point of calling for Watergate style investigations is just getting a bit tiresome. Yes the administration screwed up. But not in the way the Fox News tribe suggests. When reports came in that Libya was unstable and the consulate defenseless the thing should have been shut down and our folks brought home. That’s a mistake in judgement. But as far as a coverup by the administration that is ridiculous.
Still, whether it’s 30K emails or 30K pages you have to wonder when these generals had time to play army because they definitely were blazing past the pace of all the high-school set in terms of pounding on their phones in their determination to play house.
I know Bud was being facetious with that stuff about “heroes,” but the fact is, I don’t have many heroes. That’s a tough status to achieve with me.
And even those few heroes, of course, are flawed. As we all are.
Actually, I just realized something… Bud writes, “There’s the Marines, the FBI and Catholic priests.”
The first thing I ever wanted to be, as a very small child (roughly when I was 3, almost 4), was a United States Marine. My Dad was stationed here in Columbia doing recruiting duty at the time, and I think it was the posters in his workplace or something. One of the first songs I learned to sing — after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” — was the Marine Hymn.
Then, when I was about 9, I went on a tour of FBI headquarters in Washington, and decided I wanted to be an agent. That didn’t last all that long, but it was my ambition for a brief period.
There wasn’t ever any time when I remotely considered being a priest, though…
It’s amazing that us fellas get anything done.
@bud – So you’re saying just forget about Benghazi? US troops were repeatedly requesting support and the “administration” just let them die while The Chosen One wasn’t to be bothered with details and off partying with Jay Z and Beyonce.
Using your logic, we should have just left everyone in Vietnam too.
This story is getting old. Yes, it is about Petraeus’ self-inflicted downfall. But let’s not forget that at its heart we find a couple of groupies – at least “slightly” unhinged women – who have inserted themselves into a world that they found more exciting than their probably boring and brittle suburban lives.
I really don’t see what Gen. Allan has done to warrant censure in this mess. Maybe he richly deserves it; maybe he just wasn’t quit good enough at keeping the harpies at bay.
There is always a lot of blame to widely apportion in these circumstances.
Personally, I think Petraeus grew to believe his own press releases.
And Steven, many (most?) of those Republicans whining about Benghazi voted to cut over $450 million from State Department security accounts over the past two years. Seems smaller government isn’t always a good thing…
Steven,
What did the chosen one do in 1983 when 241 service men died in Beirut? Where was the intelligence then?
And where was the intelligence and GWB when “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S” in PDB on August 6, 2001?
Please, your selective memory is astounding or were you politically conscious then? Where were you during the Vietnam War? Romney was demonstrating for the war or so he said.