-Caveat Lector- >>>These Republicans shore do know howta keep the faith. After bashing Bill Jeff, >they let their Newts and their LivingStones and Henry Hyde rants outta the bag. Here, now, we's got us a Tim! Or is it a Tin? Or worse: mystery mettle?<<<
http://moose-and-squirrel.com/GeneLyons/GeneLyons.html Tim's Trophy Wife Some weeks ago, a Republican operative predicted an "October Surprise" that would wreck Mark Pryor's Senate campaign. Somehow I anticipated something more aggressive than bringing Tim Hutchinson's second wife out of hiding. Unfortunately for Tim, however, the biggest news his campaign mustered last week was an appearance by Randi Fredholm Hutchinson before a Republican women's group in Fayetteville. Contrary to what you may have anticipated, Randi was not exhibited in stocks nor compelled to wear a scarlet letter "A" on her bosom. Mixing her Biblical metaphors a bit, Renee Oelschlager, president of the host group, commented "I think she should be commended for coming into the lion's den in Northwest Arkansas." Lions, of course, were a Roman innovation for killing martyrs. I think it's stoning Oelschlager may have meant. Although none of the Republican ladies was impolite enough to ask Randi about her alleged career as a homewrecker, the topic was nevertheless on everybody's mind. "To voters," she somewhat defensively told reporters "somebody else's personal life does not matter as much as whether someone has done a competent job." No argument here. Other people's marriages are a foreign country where you don't know the language. Having grown up in a world where divorce was forbidden and all but unknown, it's my strong belief that while broken marriages are always sad, living together in perpetual anger is worse. To vote against Hutchinson because of his divorce is simply childish. Unfortunately for him, Bible-beating middle-aged pre-adolescents are his main constituency. If nothing else, marrying a U.S. Senator was a terrific career move for Randi Hutchinson. A former staffer, she's now an attorney at the huge Washington law firm of Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin and Oshinsky. Representing mostly Fortune 500 corporations- pharmaceuticals, HMOs, banking, insurance, energy, chemicals, tobacco, etc.-the firm surely recognizes the advantages of having a Senator's wife on staff. Having no doubt costumed herself as dowdily as possible for her Arkansas appearances (no sex please, we're Christians), it's unlikely Randi feels grateful to the Slate reporter who described her as too homely to be a bimbo. "She's pale and bulky with a weak chin," Will Saletan writes. "She's wearing almost as much makeup as the Fox News correspondent. She looks older than her age. 'How old was his first wife?' one reporter asks. 'Older,' says another." Roughly twenty years, I believe. Anyway, Saletan ungallantly implies that voters are more apt to forgive Hutchinson for "this enthrallingly sordid episode" because Randi's not a hottie. (Since local newspapers have run more photos of Monica Lewinsky's mother than our Republican Senator's new wife, I have no opinion.) Anyway, granting that Sen. Tim would be ill advised to exhibit an Anna Nicole Smith-type on the campaign trail, it'd be interesting to know Saletan's scriptural authority for this intriguing bit of casuistry. I doubt they teach it that way at Hutchinson's alma mater, Bob Jones University. Elsewhere, Saletan exhibits his own superiority to the rustic peasantry of Northwest Arkansas. His flight into "the political wilderness," carried him "over miles of blackness uninterrupted by electric light." (The Ozark National Forest, I presume.) On the ground in Van Buren, "a suburb of Fort Smith, if you can believe it," Saletan finds the natives fat, slovenly, toothless and ignorant. He thinks Jimmie Lou Fisher's name risible and accuses Mark Pryor of trying to fool voters into thinking he's David Pryor by using campaign posters with only his last name. Evidently, he's seen none of the TV ads where father and son appear together. Meanwhile, Hutchinson may wish voters had him confused with his boyish younger brother Asa. Without confessing adultery, Tim's been running all over Arkansas saying God's forgiven him just in time for the election. It's very considerate of the deity, you've got to admit, especially as He's widely known in evangelical circles to be permanently ticked off at the antichrist, Bill Clinton. Which brings us to the nub of the matter. It wasn't Hutchinson's foes who made his personal life a political issue, it was his own words and actions. A former Baptist preacher who ran as a "family values" conservative in 1996, he never said boo as Republicans unable to outflank President Clinton on legitimate public issues, turned his sexual sins into a theatrical spectacle. Who in Washington, some of us asked then, could withstand a federal investigation of his intimate life? Not Tim Hutchinson, it's clear. Did Randi get promotions others deserved? Pay raises she didn't earn? Was public money spent wooing her? Was she taken on junkets? Treated to expensive dinners? Who cares? Republicans are always eager to talk about "character" when they mean sex. A spineless hypocrite, Hutchinson cast the first stone, then ran away. Think he'll take a tough stand for you? No chance. May he and Randi live happily together somewhere far from Arkansas. 30 Oct 2002 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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