What about their spouses?
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his 1926 story, The Rich Boy, that the rich “are different from you and me.” Yeah, they have more money, Ernest Hemingway cracked. I think of politicians this way. 
They’re very different than you and me; they have no shame.
Lately I’ve been thinking of their spouses. How, I ask myself, having spouted the lies and half-truths they daily spout, can they face their spouses at the end of the day? How can their spouses stomach them?
Fitzgerald and Hemingway are famous for their fiction, but they both told more truth than the average politician. About the only similarity between them and politicians is in their prejudices. Fitzgerald, for example, who is widely quoted, often gets a pass for the ugly anti-Semitism in The Great Gatsby, his finest novel.
Hemingway, that refiner’s kiln of the language, is only occasionally cited for his meanness, anti-Semitism and disrespect for women.
But every day we give passes to politicians for their lies, their tall tales, their swift-boating, their obfuscations, and their stupid refusal to recognize that republican government must inevitably be government from the middle or it clutches up and dies of its own opinions. Similarly, we give passes to the press for perpetuating their lies (see previous post).
So what about the wife and husband who look at the politician across the breakfast table every morning? Do they say to themselves, Good morning, you goddam liar, you thief, you egomaniac? Or do they say, Good morning, fellow miscreant, whose tail can we twist today?—DM
Leave a comment