blogger interrupted

Just been watching some fine reporting from Howard Fineman and Jonathan Alter on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and learned that a sticking point to putting Hillary on the ticket may be that she doesn’t want to be vetted.

But close advisers to Sen. Obama signaled an Obama-Clinton ticket was highly unlikely. People in both camps cited what several called “a deal-breaker” — Bill Clinton may balk at releasing records of his business dealings and big donors to his presidential library.

Getting elected president doesn’t require some outside objective vetting process.  Being selected for VP does.  It is just like the Clintons to try and sidestep this obvious requirement, while spending the entire campaign complaining how they’ve gone through it already.  

And, well…I have something to say about that.  Pull up a chair.

A lot of people really don’t understand why I’m still blogging, and moreover, why I’m bothering to put up a fight instead of, as one person who recently wanted me to go away put it to me, “leave gracefully”.  Leave what gracefully?  Life?

It has not been a small issue with me that so many people in high positions; businessmen, lawyers, doctors, politicians, media, and their staff members; manage to hold their positions, salaries, and lives while carrying with them baggage that if disclosed on an employment application, would immediately remove their resume from the applicant pool.  Marc Dann, and his entire staff leap to mind.

I am blogging, and blogging in the manner that I do, because there is an inherent hypocrisy in American society that puts people in my position, i.e. people whose baggage is a public record felony conviction, in a position of total helplessness, without a single way out.  And sitting in judgment of these people in such terrible straits, are often those who have done far worse things in their lives, hurt far more people, some of which is even documented on public records, and yet have the temerity to tell someone like me that I am unemployable.

And the ones who stand in such judgment are morally offended when the microscope is turned back on them.  Like Mark Naymik & Mark Smukler.  When someone like me, who has few options but to fight back, begins to fight back, to point out the hypocrisy, for no other reason than to be given permission to rejoin society, it is this hypocrisy that is the final round in that fight.  After the recovery, after the humiliation, after the long years of isolation, the only thing left to overcome is this hypocrisy.  And it may not be possible to do so.

For Bill Clinton, and his wife, to even have this thought occur to them - that to become Barack Obama’s running mate for Vice President of the United States of America they somehow get a pass on a standard vetting process - is astounding to some, and would have been to me not too long ago.  But not anymore.  

For I have lived the life ruled by this hypocrisy.  Bill Mason made damn sure that my name would be labelled for life, that my career would be over, that my earning potential would be zero, as punishment for the worst mistake of my life.  But when it came to his buddy Pat O’Malley, I would bet every last penny lying in the dust on my desk that Mason allowed O’Malley to engage in far worse crimes, for far longer, with far more knowledge, while earning another 4 years salary which amounted to at least a couple hundred thousand dollars, which I’m sure O’Malley has now banked to keep his face fed and pay his $100,000 bond for one count of obscenity.  And I’m equally sure O’Malley will find someone who will look the other way and hire him in the interests of “second chances”.

This is why I am not afraid to blog, to get locked in stairwells, to have people foul my name for their political advancement, to talk to a local newspaper and have my face on the cover, and to point out just how unjust this hypocrisy is.  Not just to me, but to millions of Americans.  

That’s the fight I’m in.  I didn’t want it.  I didn’t want to be the poster child for post-conviction redemption, but it really is the only choice I have left.  As James Renner put it…

He hasn’t spoken about the local candidates who used him, on the cheap, to get elected, then turned their backs on him once it happened because they couldn’t have a convicted sex offender on staff. But he’s talking now. And writing. A lot. He hopes that finally doing so will save his life.

That is not an exaggeration.  Not in the least.

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