Beautiful Horizons

The Madness Continues

As the media could not get enough of Bill Clegg's masturbatory (in some cases literally) memoir, the New York Times Sunday Style Section decided to devote far more coverage than deserved as I wrote about here.

What really annoys me is this:

And magnifying those secrets, at least in his mind, were deep-seated insecurities about making it in a city where everyone seemed richer, Ivy-educated and better bred. “I never got the handbook,” says Mr. Clegg, who grew up in rural Connecticut the son of a TWA pilot and enrolled at, he reluctantly admits, Washington College, a small institution in Maryland. “Everybody’s godfather was like some famous editor. Or they spent summers in Maine with famous writers.”

Boo-frigging hoo. Then there's this:

He recalls visiting New York City a few times in his early 20s and feeling out of his league. “We were so unsophisticated,” he says. “We would eat Chinese food in like Murray Hill and think it was the most glamorous thing that had ever happened to us.”

I have a friend who's from Brazil. Her great-grandfather was a slave. She is in her forties and has lost both parents, her stepmother, her only sibling (a brother), a cousin who was practically a sister to her. The worst came for her when she lost her husband eight and a half years ago with no life insurance and a three-year-old son to raise. She came to this country with fair English, which she worked hard to improve, got an education and has an excellent career in the financial services industry. She has dealt with far more genuine adversity than this guy has and done a much better job of handling it.

I'm glad that Bill Clegg has turned his life around. I'm just sorry to see that he's making himself very wealthy by showing the world that he was a monstrous ass for a long time.

Who Cares?

Honestly, who cares other than his friends and family? This clown had a great career, lots of money and his life ahead of him. His raging id could not be controlled, however, and he ended up blowing his career and his relationships through the end of a crack pipe.

Meanwhile, millions of people have been going to work every day, living on significantly less than this man, raising families and being productive and not getting the attention of this drug-addled, self-absorbed cretin. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

Wow

One can always be astounded by the lacunae in Sean Hannity's soul. Here.

Hat tip to Eric Martin.

Failing to See the Big Picture

I'm thrilled to see Bishop Oscar Romero receiving the attention and respect he deserves on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. I'm especially gratified to see at long last, the government of El Salvador sharing in that recognition.

Unfortunately, the likes of Bishop Romero are getting harder to find in the Roman Catholic Church. I write this as a regular mass-attending Roman Catholic and am simply disgusted by the Vatican's response to the continually unfolding scandals that are spreading across Europe, to the point where the official response is to smear the media reporting on the matter or this bit of tu quoque nonsense:

Earlier in the week, New York's archbishop, Timothy Dolan, used his blog to dismiss the New York Times' reports and defend the pontiff's record by arguing that authorities outside the church also are culpable. Stories about sexual abuse by priests were "fair" if "unending," he wrote. But he condemned the media for portraying child sexual abuse "as a tragedy unique to the church alone. That, of course, is malarkey."

Sadly, this latest everybody-is-responsible-so-nobody-is-to-blame defense is of a piece with a little-noticed section of Benedict's letter to the Irish church in which he seemed to blame the crisis, in part, on "new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society."

Let me dumb this down for the hierarchy at the Vatican: you are hemorrhaging members of your flock. You are desperate to recruit new priests. Without parishioners, you have no church. You're men first and right now, you appear to be a bunch of weak man busily covering your glutei to protect yourselves. Shame on you.

My Neighborhood Comes to Its Senses - Updated

Thank God Hiram Monserrate is no longer representing my community in the New York State Senate. This is a man who still believes that the rules don't exist for him:

Mr. Monserrate, meanwhile, stopped at a senior citizens’ center in Corona that served as a polling site. Apparently ignoring election rules that prohibit candidates from campaigning within 100 feet of polling stations, he walked in, shook hands with the men, hugged the women and danced salsa with students taking a class until the center’s director persuaded him to leave.

He also refuses to take responsibility for his behavior:

Hiram Monserrate is fully aware that there are a lot of people who wished that his failure to regain his old State Senate seat in a special election in Queens on Tuesday would seal his political career. And he really doesn’t care.

“A lot of this reaction is based on just ignorance, on not knowing the facts, not dealing really with the issues,” he said. “There’s a lot of emotional hysteria out there.”

How very patronizing of him. He also has some delusions:

“Clearly, I will continue to serve the community and the public in one capacity or the other,” he said.

But what capacity? Might his future be outside of politics?

“That requires some reflection,” he said. “I’m not ruling anything out. Everything is on the table. What I know is that I’ll continue to be a voice for the little guy.”

Might I be so bold as to offer a suggestion? Why not volunteer at a battered women's shelter? Perhaps then he can learn why so many of us found his behavior so repellent.

UPDATE:

Oh my God. He's worse than I thought! He has the woman whose face he slashed and who he dragged by the hair to make a thirty minute drive to a hospital to avoid being recognized at the hospital three blocks away make a hostage video show of support for him!

For the Castellano impaired, she's saying "Hi! My name is Karla Giraldo and I'm here supporting my fiancé, Hiram Monserrate with your help in having him elected as state senator from Queens again.  Yes we can!"

Doesn't the enthusiasm just ooze from her?