{"id":2125,"date":"2010-05-18T19:12:14","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T23:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2125"},"modified":"2010-05-18T19:12:14","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T23:12:14","slug":"outside-the-primaries-politicians-behaving-badly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/05\/18\/outside-the-primaries-politicians-behaving-badly\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside the primaries, politicians behaving badly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As voters went to the polls today, two stories broke that perpetuate some of the worst stereotypes of politicians:<\/p>\n<p>Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has reportedly touted his war time service in Vietnam. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/19\/nyregion\/19reax.html?hp\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> the front runner for the state&#8217;s Senate seat got five deferments and never went to Vietnam during the war.<\/p>\n<p>Republican Mark Souder, a sitting Congressman from Indiana, resigned today after admitting he had an extra-marital affair with a staffer. It was reportedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/05\/18\/tracy-jackson-mark-souder_n_580144.html\" target=\"_blank\">the same staffer that interviewed Souder<\/a>, an Evangelical Christian who spoke often about &#8220;family values,&#8221; on the superiority of abstinence education over sex education.<\/p>\n<p>Yuck. Both men now seem worthy only of dismissing entirely.<\/p>\n<p>There is one element of their combined story that I&#8217;ll watch: which one will be the subject of debate (or rancor) next week.<\/p>\n<p>Blumenthal is digging in his heels. He says the <em>Times<\/em> reporting amounts to an &#8220;outrageous distortion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Souder quit.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re about to hear (ad nauseum) the old saw, &#8220;It&#8217;s not the crime, it&#8217;s the cover up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sick of both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As voters went to the polls today, two stories broke that perpetuate some of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2126,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions\/2126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}