Dear Rep Weiner: If you don't want to resign, here's the speech you have to give [View All]

[Kelvin Mace]

You have three forces aligned against you:

1) The GOP and its media helpers (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc)

2) Your party leadership.

3) The press

In order to hang on to your job you have to neutralize all three, and here how you do it with one speech.

Set up a press conference, tell the press you are going to address calls for your resignation. Show up, and give this statement.

"Despite my apology for my improper personal behavior which hurt and embarrassed my family, my constituents and my colleagues, there are those within the press, the GOP and even within my own party who are calling for me to resign.

I have called you here to day so that I may address each group's concerns for my political future

Let me start with my Republican critics call for my resignation. Well, I have in my hand my signed, but undated resignation. I will fill in the date and resign on the same day that one or more of the following happens:

1) Senator David Vitter, the junior Republican senator from Louisiana, who by his own admission, solicited and had relations with prostitutes (which is an actual crime by the way) apologizes and tenders his resignation.

2) Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich withdraws from public life because of the adulteries he committed with two of his three wives. An apology to his first two wives would also be in order, as would an apology to President Clinton for his hypocrisy in sanctimoniously condemning the President for immoral behavior, while he cheated on his own wife.

3) Senator Tom Coburn apologizes and resigns for his complicity in covering up the adultery of Nevada senator John Ensign.

Absent these resignations, I think it highly inappropriate and hypocritical for anyone in the GOP to demand my resignation, while these men, who by any standard, committed far worse sins than I did, yet remain in office.

To my fellow Democrats, especially the leadership of my party, I remind you that Democrats do not concern themselves with people's private lives, particularly when the actions violate no law. That is the Republicans job. Democrats DEFEND people's privacy, and strive to keep government from interfering in people's personal lives.

I remind my fellow Democrats and my leadership that we do not cloak ourselves in the mantle of "family values", then sit in judgment of people, while stripping social safety nets which have protected families in the past. That is the Republicans job. Instead

Democrats stand up for families, letting them love and marry who they wish, helping them get an education, helping them get paying jobs in industries government helped revitalize, like say, the American automobile industry.

I remind my fellow Democrats and my leadership that we do not wrap ourselves in symbols of liberty while singing jingoistic songs, or reciting pledges of allegiance by mindless rote. That's the Republicans job.

Democrats defend ACTUAL liberty and work hard to ASSURE justice for all. And if we use a song in our campaigns, we have the decency to ask the artist's permission first, and then fairly compensate them.

I remind my fellow Democrats and my leadership that we do not collect money from union members during election years, then knife them in the back when anti-labor bills come across our desk. That's Republicans jobs.

Democrats stand shoulder to shoulder with working Americans, fighting for their right to bargain collectively.

I remind my fellow Democrats and my leadership that we do not step on the fingers of the poor and the middle class, as they desperately try to hold onto to their piece of the American dream. That's the Republicans job.

Democrats fight to preserve the middle class and to give the poor the opportunity to better themselves with dignity and compassion. Democrats fight for fair wages, safe working conditions, and equal opportunity.

I remind my fellow Democrats that we understand that people make mistakes, that we are human and beset with human foibles. We do not style ourselves pseudo-guardians of morality, demanding harsh and vindictive punishments for sins committed by others, while indulging those very same sins in private. That's what Republicans do. Democrats do not rabidly rant about how gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage, pausing just long enough to sign our second, or third set of divorce papers. That is what Republicans do (well, at least Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani).

And finally, I remind the head of my party, who expressed his opinion about my personal failure recently as "...if it was me, I would resign", that he was elected on his promises of hope and change for all Americans. Those promises included a public option health care program, closing the Guantanamo prison camp, rolling back the Bush veil of secrecy, scaling down own our trillion dollar military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, ending illegal domestic spying, protecting Medicare and Social Security, and a few other issues, major and minor.

While my personal failing has caused emotional anguish to my family, my supporters and my constituents, the public failing of the leader of my party has had literal life and death consequences for the American public as a whole.

If, in his opinion, my personal failing warrants resignation, what should his public failings warrant?

Would not the leadership of my party, and the American people who elected them, be better served if they spent less of their outrage on my personal sins, and more of it on the destruction that is being wrought by the extremists who control the opposition party? If nothing else, perhaps they could simply shut up and LEAD, instead of collaborating with the insane demands of the Republican party and calling it "bi-partisanship?!

And finally, to my friends in the fourth estate, who have covered this story with slavering glee, who have focused on my peccadilloes to the exclusion of proper coverage of far more consequential stories. I might remind you about your job and responsibilities, as you have been so courteous as to remind me of mine.

Slithering around inside the Washington bubble from cocktail party to cocktail party, schmoozing with the very politicians and lobbyists who should live in fear of your attention doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you a sycophant.

Simply reporting what both sides of an issue have to say without evaluating the accuracy and truthfulness of the statements doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you a stenographer.

Parroting dubious claims about threats to this nation without taking the most basic steps to vette those claims, doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you a government propagandist.

"Embedding" yourself with military units so you can be spoon-fed stories and photo ops by the military doesn't make you a journalist, if makes you a tool.

Following a failed vice presidential candidate who couldn't be bothered to actually finish her term of as governor, treating he every word, Facebook posts and "tweet" as somehow as "serious" doesn't make you a journalist, it makes you a either a partisan advocate, or a creepy stalker (your call on that one).

Being a journalist mean asking hard question of the people in power, like why they enjoy the best tax-payer subsidized health care in the world, but deny the same coverage to tax-payers? Why the criminals who destroyed the American economy are given massive tax payer-funded bailouts, allowing them to pay massive bonuses to themselves, while the very tax-payers the cheated are kicked to the curb and cheated again? Why do we allow oil, gas and coal companies to dictate energy policy, insurance companies and hospital conglomerates to dictate health care policy, and greedy speculators to dictate financial regulation?

That is what journalism is about, asking the questions the people in power don't want to answer. Journalism isn't about getting in with the "kewl kidz" while collecting a pay check greater than 85% of the rest of Americans.

And if you still don't understand whether your are a journalist or not, here is a simple test: If the political power structure doesn't hate you, you are NOT a journalist.

Edward R. Murrow didn't become titan of journalism by spoon feeding pre-digested, pre-approved pablum to the public. He got there by enraging government and corporate powers, and telling Americans harsh truths like ""we used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."

Murrow didn't get invited to many Washington parties.

In closing, having been offered opinions about my conduct from my opponents, my colleagues, and by members of the press, I hope these same parties will find my advice equally instructive.

Good Day!"