Mood:
happyTopic: "Christian Valuelessness"
As a general rule, Frodo does not revel in the misery of others. What follows is an exception to that rule, for in the spirit of Senator John Ensign (R-NV) or Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC), we have another shining example of hypocrisy swathed in an episode of "dickie dunking". So, sit back dear reader, and enjoy a few moments of consternation in the life of the soon-to-be-former Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Great State of Georgia, Glenn Richardson.
Several weeks ago, the local gendarmerie were summoned to the palatial digs, in Paulding County (which for the geographically challenged, sits adjacent to the Alabama State Line), of House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R), in response to a suicide attempt. The Speaker was sitting, dazed reportedly, on the edge of his bathtub, pistol in hand, with a plethora of pills strewn all about. The local media covered the story the next day, reflecting on the "severe depression" experienced by the Speaker, given the recent break-up of his marriage, the death of two of his closest friends in an airplane accident, and the continuing financial problems of the community bank in which he was a major investor. All of this had caused him to call his Mother, in order to bid her a fond adieu, and to slip the shackles of bondage. The police, apparently, arrived in the nick of time.
Note the use of the word "apparently."
Three weeks later, the Speaker was alerted to the fact that his estranged wife was holding a press conference on the local CBS affiliate in two hours. Susan Richardson ended their 17-year marriage in 2008, moved to a neighboring county with two of their three children, and received an unspecified grant of alimony, plus $3,000 per month in child support. She held a press conference in order to charge that the suicide attempt was merely a call for attention, and that he continued to harangue and accuse her of inattention to their children. The "coup de grace" came however with her allegation that he conducted an affair with a lobbyist for Atlanta Gas Light Company who, concomitantly, was representing the utility before the State House in order to build a controversial $300M pipeline. Previous allegations of such activity by the House Ethics Committee had been dismissed. As a "sidebar," it should be noted that every member of that Ethics Committee had been appointed by the Speaker.
Subsequently, the affair became known to the employer of the lobbyist, and she stated her fear of being fired to the Speaker. The Speaker was quoted as saying "He will not fire you. I can and will bring all hell down on them if they do." The corroboration of this statement, and many others, it seems, are in the e-mail messages emanating from the Speaker's personal computer, which Susan Richardson now has in her possession. Her comment about the apparently long-standing affair is that most of the e-mails are "very explicit."
The story goes on and on, with even the local chapter of the Christian Nuts for Republican Mismanagement (aka "Christian Coalition") stating that the House "may need to re-evaluate the qualities they have a right to expect from their leader." Richardson, for the uninitiated, is but another of the characteristically petty criminals who cloak themselves in the manner of the false prophets. Elmer Gantry may have been a fictional portrayal by Burt Lancaster, but the model he displayed is as real today as it has been since the days of Reconstruction in the American South.
Richardson is a bombastic, bullying, iconoclastic, sorry-ass excuse for a man, much less one of the most important political leaders in this part of Middle Earth. Frodo is, quite obviously, dancing on his political grave, knowing that pyrrhic victories are better than none at all.
Frodo also notes that the Appalachian Trail begins, or ends, in Georgia. Perhaps it is something in the water?
