Dear Ex-Senator Stanley,
I admit, I find your desire to dwell on the circumstances that got you kicked out of office to be baffling. What, exactly, is it you say to yourself that makes you think, “If only people really got _________, they would see that, though I have some responsibility for my present circumstances, others also share the blame, perhaps even nefarious others?” Do you think there’s going to be some fact that undoes the truth that you fucked a gal you were not married to knowing that your wife thought you’d promised her you wouldn’t fuck other people?
Do you think that, if we all learn that a gal willing to run around with someone else’s husband is also willing to extort said husband, we’ll see how she’s to blame? Dude, guess what? A gal willing to run around with someone else’s husband? Someone old enough to be her dad? No one is surprised to learn she has ulterior motives. You found out the girl willing to help you do a very not-nice thing to your wife was capable of doing a very not-nice thing to you?
Not a surprise.
And yet, you still seem baffled–like it’s some unfair injustice that, when you started doing no-good things, you found no-good people to do them with.
You, sir, you fucked up. You knew you were married. You knew your wife didn’t know you had decided to change from monogamy to polyamory. And you, one of the most powerful men in the state was too stupid or egocentric to even consider that the person you might get up to nefarious things with might herself be nefarious.
And until I see some post from you that’s willing to look that dead in the face and come to terms with it, I’m going to assume that you continue to be a self-destructive idiot.
People ask me lots of questions about the issue, one of the most common being, “Do you believe you were set up?” Even my former spouse feels she knows the answer to this question. We talked about it as recently as last weekend. Until now I have only discussed the issue with close friends and family. In one sense it does not matter because the outcome is still the same.
I have to ask: why are you even putting this out there? Even dropping it into the world that you think there’s a chance you were set up?
Let me be very clear, in order for you to be set up, someone would have to know that you have a weakness. How would they know that? How would Morrison and Watts know, if they plotted to do this from before you started fucking her, that you’d be unable to resist a cute young thing, someone young enough to be your daughter, who put herself in your way?
You see what I’m getting at? How would they know that you wouldn’t bother to resist her?
Right now, people are just wondering how you could be so dumb as to make this one mistake. You really want people wondering if you’re angry because one of your mistakes got out of hand?
Dude, come on!
Chagrined,
B.
Tiny Cat Pants 
The human capacity for self delusion is simply amazing.
And somehow – at least when it comes to the inability to keep one’s pants zipped up – the far right seems to have more trouble with this than the rest of us. Maybe it just sticks out more – if you’ll pardon a semi-intended pun – because all their full-throated preaching about family values.
This used to be called a “honey trap” in John Le Carre novels about Cold War spies.
When the person fell for the bait, the trap would be sprung and blackmail ot other nefarious activity would ensue.
That this person fell into what was at most a one-person “trap” involving the woman who blackmailed him, rather than a wider conspiracy, does not help his case.
Well, I think everyone, on any side of the aisle, has the capacity to run around on one’s significant other, but it takes a special brand of stupid to argue about a plot against you in such a way that basically insinuates that the gal plotting against you knew you had a type.
I mean, if I cheated on my significant other and felt truly bad about it, I would not base my claims of victimization at the hands of my lover on the premise that my lover knew what kinds of folks I couldn’t resist, since, you know, that might also be very painful to my significant other to learn.
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It’s privilege blindness. He is operating on the standard assumption that men cannot be blamed for their cheatin’ ways; the dears can’t help themselves! It’s all the fault of those little hussies that throw themselves in their path, which renders all men helpless and blameless. This is the same logic the Taliban uses, logic that dictates even a glimpse of ankle or a woman’s shape drives men insane with lust and irresponsible for their actions.
His confusion is that everyone else doesn’t share his assumption, which to him runs as deep as the one about the sky being blue.
What emjaybee said.
For that matter, what all of you said.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people continue to make stupid and try to place blame for behavior like this. You are grown, you were not at gunpoint (oh, wait, that’ll be his next excuse, never mind), and you knew what you were doing was wrong. It’s not about parsing words and defining infidelity (yes, I’m looking @ both sides of the political aisle here); it’s the fact that you screwed around on your significant other without that person’s okay and now are trying to make yourself feel better about it. To paint yourself as a victim, and worse, to tell people that you’ve just about convinced your partner that you were a victim in all this, is reprehensible.
A good rule of thumb: If anyone other than a medical professional or your partner is handling your privates and you are in a committed relationship with no prior “understandings,” you are being unfaithful to your partner. The other party holds his or her own blame for knowingly screwing a married/committed person, because that just ain’t right. But the married/committed person ALWAYS is to blame.Why? Because you know what you have to lose. And trying to salvage it or get it back by creating stupid excuses just deepens the insult to your partner.
It also makes strangers mock you. ;o)
I repeat what I said on Twitter, Mr. Stanley. Go somewhere where people really have trouble not of their making, where there is death and destruction and devastation, and do some volunteer work. Look those people in the eye and understand what it’s really like to have your life turned upside down while you were just standing around minding your own business.
And then do some real good work, instead of trying to assuage your conscience.
(Please note, B., that all references to “you” and variations thereof are general and do not refer to You, our gracious hostess, in any way. You knew that, but I like to clarify for folks who might come in and think I was being an ungracious guest. xoxo)
(Also, BTW, Mr. Stanley, nobody wants to read your damn book. Unless you’re counting on serial adulterer Newt Gingrich getting into the White House and there being a run on jerks-tell-all books, I’d just save that document on the hard drive and do that volunteer work.)
You know thumpthin, people?
People always ask me, “Paul?” and I thay “Whut??!”
“Do you think you were thet up?”
WHOA-OA!
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