When Will They Ever Learn?

I was in Nashville for a long weekend with Alexa, visiting her mother. We arrived very late Wednesday night (or very early Thursday morning) and had a good time. Since I'd inflicted the "Tour D'Elliot" on Alexa back in December when we were in Boston, she did the same to me with the "Tour D'Alexa" on Thursday. Friday we went to Huntsville and visited the US Space and Rocket Center (overrated), and barbecued at her cousin's house. Saturday we left the house early and did a tour at Mammoth Cave National Park (awesome). So far so good, and we were going to be back in plenty of time for that night's fireworks show.

We'd have hoped other than a few jokes at Mark "The Lov Gov" Sanford's expense we'd hear little or nothing about phamous philanderers. So it was a bit of a punch to the gut to hear the radio report on the way home that retired Tennessee Titan QB Steve McNair had been shot, and the queasy feeling of illness started to follow when word got out about who he was with.

Why do they do it? Because they can? Because they don't think they'll get caught? Is it a show of power? Ego? Dissatisfaction?

I'm not going to claim the moral high ground here; I'm in no position to do so. But it boggles my mind at the ratio of people who moralize to the general public to those who get caught doing what they moralize about.

Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, David Vitter, Ted Haggard, John Ensign, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Jim McGreevey, Larry Craig, Jimmy Swaggert. Enough for you? Never mind the Shawn Kemps of the world, who seem to take the instruction to "go forth and multiply" to extremes.

A line I like to use is "Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself." If this article is any indication, some people are better at it than others. When you're a public figure, you have to know there is someone out there ready to knock you off the pedestal.

It's really quite simple: Don't engage in behavior that would cause your momma to swat you over the head with a rolling pin if she saw it on the news. In this day and age, there's a camera on every corner and people with dollar signs in their eyes willing to talk about what they saw you do and with who you did it.

Is it really that hard?