What a sad life, that West guy had.

[closeupready]

:( I watched Frontline tonight on Spokane mayor West, and it was painful to watch. Just the whole thing - the closet, how it twists people, how after 50 some years of living in the closet and (maybe) hoping that the feelings will go away, and they don't, and you're 50 something and you suddenly realize that yes, you are gay. Really sad.

[flamingyouth]

1. We're taping that.

It's not on here for another few hours but, yeah, that's my impression of his life as well. :(

[5X]

2. I don't think he deserved what was done to him by the paper.

Even if he was a hypocrite, they were just bigoted
and out to get him.

[closeupready]

3. I agree.

And I felt it was offensive how the staffers were standing around making what I thought were borderline homophobic jokes. Maybe I'm just too sensitive but it seemed that way to me.

At the same time, he DID concede that he voted against the interests of the GLBT community who, by the way, were as equally his constituents as the heteros he represents. And he did concede that if he could have done it over, would he have voted differently, and he said yes, I would not have voted that way, which I thought was a decent thing to admit to.

But I still found it painful to watch him go through what he went through.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. That's the impression I got too.

The paper has come in for criticism. I felt sympathy for West, and I hadn't thought I would.

'Frontline' Program Tonight Is Critical Of Spokane Paper's Probe Of Mayor

[5X]

5. Me too, I had at first thought, 'ha, another repug hypocrite',

but there didn't seem to be any evidence of anything
criminal, just someone sad and lonely, really.

[Sapphocrat]

7. Check the link I just posted.

"Morlin . . . pointed out that the TV show, which made a point of saying the FBI had failed to charge West with any criminal wrongdoing, did not mention that the state Supreme Court had ruled his actions were improper and a city investigation found he had violated state law and city policies."

Mark Foley didn't commit any crimes, either.

[Sapphocrat]

6. It was too sympathetic toward West.

It's very difficult for me to have any sympathy for someone who built a career partly on anti-gay legislation, continued to do so well after he came out to himself, and never expressed a hint of remorse for having hurt so many people. The only thing he regretted was getting caught.

As one of his young friends told him, he could have been such a fine role model -- but furthering his own career by walking on the backs of the very community he could have belonged to, and empowered, was more important than doing the right thing.

In my book, he's no better than Roy Cohn.

This may be of interest:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003408546