South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley nearly won her primary outright Tuesday, no thanks to some highly unethical behavior on the part of either her opponents or her opponents' supporters. She was smeared with accusations of two different affairs, one brought out after the first suffered issues coming up with any evidence more incriminating than phone calls. I dunno about you, but if I'm going to all that bother to do something naughty like that I'd want a *bit* more payoff than phone sex. On the other hand, having seen pictures of this aspiring Lothario, phone sex may be all he has ever gotten. The second one didn't even have that much evidence to support it.
Evidently SC is famous for sleazy politics. Accusing a female candidate of multiple affairs just to clear the field is pretty damn sleazy, I will agree. But what disturbed me is some otherwise calm conservative bloggers (
Ace, I'm looking at you) were prone to assume that the accusations were enough to prove *something* happened, and that Haley had the burden of proving it didn't. Even though her first accuser *did* have a history of, er, selectively editing the truth especially when it came to police reports of domestic violence. So why is he more credible in his fantasies than she is in her firm denials of wrongdoing?
Look, if the weasels had accused her of witchcraft, does she have the burden of proving THAT wrong? Even if they claim to have been turned into a newt and then gotten better? I use the example purposefully. Women were accused of witchcraft and hung on the flimsiest of proof, often assertions of vague stabbing pains and other non-visible injuries. The questions, when any were asked, were not "come on, do you seriously believe in witchcraft, for real?" but more along the lines of "how high did she fly?" Demanding that Haley release her phone records wouldn't prove anything either, and could reveal information she does not want made public (non-sleazy information, such as political consultants. Or maybe she swapped recipes with Sarah Palin in order to win her coveted endorsement?) Telephone records don't come with transcripts. Telephone records also do not have a section on the DNA of the individual actually holding the handset and speaking. So, the most you could say is an entity at phone number xyz called an entity at phone number abc and the call was connected for x minutes. This has happened to me, where neither entity was a sapient human being (one being a stupid robocaller, and the other my answering machine). I am assuming both devices are old enough to understand what they are doing and handle the consequences, but it has nothing to do with MY morals.
(Well, by Catholic standards I may have put a bit of tarnish on my soul wishing for Grievous Bodily Harm to befall the person or persons behind the robocall, but I'm so far down the Purgatory list a bit more is hardly worth worrying about.)
From my father, I learned:
