I think Sam’s point is that Madonna is a paragon of virtue.
-Joe
Well, in McCain’s case it’s because she’s the one who has funded him over the years. In Hillary’s case it is, of course, because of Bill. In Obama’s case, I guess it’s so, well, I’m not sure. Because she’s ‘Terrorist Fist Bumping’ all over the place, which is, of course, a secret sign that she’s gonna kill us all.
Or something.
-Joe
Honestly I bet you NZers couldn’t tell you the name of the last 3 prime minister’s spouse’s. Though I’m not sure they could tell you the last 3 PMs names!
Spouses just don’t matter!
I hope this thread doesn’t last longer than 2-1/2 inches’s suspension for starting threads like this.
I suppose the relevance lies in the fact that who a person chooses as his or her life partner says something about who he or she really is, perhaps more honestly that what is said aloud. We elect a President directly (more or less - well, more directly than a prime minister, anyway), and we’ve come to believe whether rightly or wrongly that many candidates will say or do just about anything during the year or two preceding his or her run for the White House to be elected. But the choice of a spouse is usually something that happened quite a few years back and has survived; it strikes us as a bit extreme for even a politician to have maintained it over the long haul for purely cosmetic reasons.
Now this particular thread, which is mostly about looks, since you can’t really be creeped out by a person you don’t know except by looks, is just us being silly, other threads questioning her or other candidates’ spouses’ character or morality are really just new ways of trying to get a truer look at the candidates’ morality. To give a ridiculous and extreme example, if you yourself were a person who had never broken so much as a single law, never hurt so much as a fly, but your spouse had been stealing, advocating violent overthrow of the government, or had cheated with someone to break up their marriage, and you had continued your marriage with him or her with no apparent dimishment of affection, that might make someone question your morality, even though you had done nothing wrong yourself.
Well, that’s not exactly true. I never met, say, Jeffrey Dahmer, but reading about him creeps me out, and it’s not his photo that does it. Reading all the negative stuff in Cindy’s background, I can see why people would be creeped out. There’s some good in there too, though, I guess, which is why I posted the Snopes link above.
Indeed. In particular it explains that she merely stole from drugs from her charity’s stockpiles. That might have been obvious for the American posters, but it wasn’t for me. Reading the posts in this thread, I assumed she had embezzled large amounts of money, something I would think as absolutely outrageous. While I think stealing some drugs to feed her addiction to be very excusable.
Well, it seemed to me that most people were taking it on a strictly superficial basis. But I’ve been wrong before, and undoubtedly will be again.
Well, I certainly was. This is America for God’s sake.
If we can’t be superficial here, the terrorists have already won.
Anyone know McCain’s stand on addicts? Does it vary from the GOP default of “They’re criminals, lock them up”?
-Joe
People see what they want to see, and virtually all of us Dopers are no different. The verdict was already in before 2.5 hit the Dope.
Fuck 'em I guess.
He seems to take a hard line on traffickers and dealers, but has sought expansion of federally funded drug treatment centers in the past. He has also advocated various controls on these centers and on various schedule drugs, to varying degrees of success. He opposes medical marijuana and pot decriminalization.
In short, he has an anti-drug policy that seems to support treatment as an appropriate penalty for simple possession and use. Not too far from my own position on the issue, frankly.
See you asked the wrong person because I was married to someone who had commited crimes (theft) and I had NO IDEA (I must be stupid) and I had no ‘diminishment of affection’. His crimes were completely unknown to me but when they were discovered I never questioned my morality, I just wondered why I never spotted the fact he had lost his. My morals were never his and I would be devastated if the world judged me by his morals.
kiwi, the questions are, did you stay happily married to him, and how long in the past had that theft been when you found out?
His original crimes were when he was a teenager. He came with me to New Zealand and during his residency application I found out about them. They were years prior and he had a shitty childhood (REALLY REALLY shitty) so while I was pissed off I moved on.
After I had our child, then he had a back injury and couldn’t work it seems he went back to theft. The first I knew of it was the police at the door with a search warrant. The SINGLE MOST HUMILIATING experience of my life.
Did I make sure he knew how bad I felt? Apparently so because he killed himself several months later. I made him feel more guilty then the court did and I have to live with that.
Holy SHIT, kiwi! I am so sorry! Excuse me, but I have to go say ten Hail Marys or whatever kind of penance we atheists do. I did not mean to rip up your past like that. Jesus!
Christ, she’s not a saint, she’s not the Devil. It’s so easy to create caricature’s out of all these people. She is a person who has had personal issues, made mistakes, some of them pretty shitty, and she has done some noteworthy good things and really she isn’t worthy of hate or extreme admiration. She is probably a lot like 99% of us, only she happens to have more money and is married to a Senator who is running for President.
Yeah, that’s the view I’m leaning toward now.