Brookfield Basics

Scott Lee Cohen and the Death of Dignity

Posted by Tom Gehl on Feb. 16, 2010 | 4 comments

Winston Churchill was a man of penetrating insight who saw human events with a clarity possessed by few in history.  Upon evaluating a seemingly incomprehensible situation he once remarked to his wife, "Clemmie - truth is stranger than fiction".

I know of no better words to summarize the sad episode of Scott Lee Cohen, who just two weeks ago was the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, until he was incinerated by the fireball of Andy Warhol's fifteen seconds of fame.  A trio of Saturday Night Live's most brilliant satirists could not have written a skit that even approximated the debacle of Mr. Cohen.  You cannot - you simply CANNOT make this stuff up.  

Where do such people come from that they are lauded and placed into such high office?  What is wrong with us as a people that we allow them to accomplish this?  Are our sensitivities so numbed that stories like this lack the power to even provoke a reaction?  And can we let go of our political leanings long enough to grasp the simple truth that while holding to a credo is a necessary and legitimate criteria of politics, personal character is also vital?

As Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, Scott Lee Cohen was a heart attack away from being the Chief Executive of one of the most populous states in our Nation.  Yet over the course of the last couple of weeks he acknowledged that, in addition to being a pawn broker (no particular shame in that), he was a steroid-popping, wife-abusing, prostitute-using, tax-evading criminal.    

Now let's just sit back and let that sink in for a moment.........................He claims he was just trying to help the good people of Illinois, and heck - he didn't know she was a prostitute.  Apparently the fact that his back rubs turned into romps for cash was not sufficient to discern that his massage therapist offered more than just back rubs.  But the unquestioned topper in this theater of the absurd was his unvarnished contempt for those he sought to govern.  So great was his contempt that he served up this tub of titillating tripe with the palpable expectation of being believed.  

We can now add Mr. Cohen to the list of walking train wrecks that populate the rails of our political leadership, with both major parties sharing the "first chair" in this orchestra of disgrace.  We see a Republican Congressman turned deviant, haunting airport bathrooms in search of illicit sex.  Can we even bring ourselves to use the word "deviant" to describe such behavior, or are we so cowed by the language of political correctness that we eschew it?  And there is Republican Governor Mark Sanford's cavort with an exotic, South American beauty; his self-described "soul-mate".  And most recently we learned the truth of John Edwards, the former millionare lawyer turned populist Democratic Presidential candidate.  He wove a nefarious web of abuse, deceipt, and corruption to cover his other life, leaving his beleaguered wife alone in her battle with cancer so that he could seek our support for the highest office in the land.  So eggregiously odious was his conduct  that Mr. Edwards accomplished the impossible - he ceded the moral "high ground" to The National Enquirer, and briefly gave it the mantle of journalistic credibility.  

And in all such cases, once the lurking effluence of their dark side is revealed, we are subjected to the inevitable denoument - the tsunami of sentiment as the tearfully remorseful office holder tries desperately to convince us that he's really just a regular guy who "made a mistake, or "went through a bad period".   

There are so many angles to take on stories like this.  One of the things that strikes me first is how in the heck do these people have the time and the energy to pull off these double lives?  Moral considerations aside, where do they get enough hours in the week to build, live, and sustain such a duality?  It is all I can do to keep one rather mundane life going.    

And when they are at last ensnared, why - WHY can't they comport themselves with some old-fashioned dignity?  Do we need to see them routinely march to the podium, douse themselves with rhetorical gasoline, and knowingly strike the match of self-immolation?  Why must they purge themselves at the obligatory press conference turned freak show?  Is it part of their healing - does it give them some sense of perverted "closure"?  Why must they insist on putting us through such misery in order that they might claim some end to their own?

I believe there are two reasons.  First, it is because they never learned the lesson that Rachel Dawes shared with Bruce Wayne in a tremendous scene from the movie Batman Begins.  In that scene Dawes, fooled by Bruce Wayne's masquerade of feckless playboy-hood, tells him, "it's not who you think you are underneath, Bruce.  It's what you DO that defines you".  

Secondly, I believe that, having invested themselves so completely in the enormity of their lie, they achieve a delusion so great they actually believe their manufactured alter ego;  the monstrous lie becomes the truth.  They reach a such a nadir of deception that they view themselves to be the men they TELL us they are, instead of the men their actions demonstrate them to be.  Rationalization is the most seductively powerful force in human behavior - a drug far stronger and more addictive than the most powerful physical narcotic.  It is a psychological descent that begins with a few furtively taken steps, turns quicky to a slippery slope, and ultimately becomes an ice covered, downhill plummet.  

Civil discourse and meritous conduct require certain building blocks; blocks that we have sadly removed from our language.  Concepts like shame and dignity need to be reconsidered.  Shame once acted as a legitimate deterrant to abberant behavior, and dignity served as an affirmation of desirable conduct.  Episodes as described above clearly demonstrate that concepts of shame and dignity have no place in the understanding of such men.  And having witnessed and digested an almost endless parade of such charlatans, our nation has all but subconsciously removed such considerations when making their choices for high elective office.  Dignity is so rare today in public life that we have almost forgotten what it looks like.  We need to have the courage to acknowledge shameful behavior.  We need to remember that there is such a notion as dignified conduct.   

And as for the Scott Lee Cohen's of the world, I have a request - leave us alone.

Please - maintain your life as the pawn-broking, pill-popping, wife-beating, hooker-hankering boor.  But if you can't do that - if you have swallowed the pill of your own mendacity so completely that you really believe yourself to be indispensible, then please - when all of the sad wreckage becomes public -just summon the requisite dignity to gently and gracefully apologize.

And then just quietly go away.