Where's your other hand, Henry?
Face it, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has lost some of its luster since President Bush presented it to three extraordinary screw-ups -- George Tenet, Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer -- in 2004. But in an effort to resort it to its rightful place in the pantheon of medal-dom, say right up there is the Nobel Peace Prize, former U.S. Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois will be a recipient of the 2007 award.
Hank is to be commended for his many fine years of public service as a Republican congressman. When not personally consuming the other white meat, He certainly brought home more than his share of pork for the district in the western suburbs of Chicago where he served with distinction from 1975 to 2006.
But there is a facet of Hank's illustrious career that President Bush is sure to forget to mention at the medal award ceremony at the White House on Monday: Arch hypocrite.
Let's jump into the Wayback Machine for a trip to 1998 when Hank, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was leading the charge against President Bill Clinton for his adulterous consenusal sexual affair with a certain White House intern.
It was during those halcyon days of GOP finger waging that a most unfortunate thing happened to Hank: In one of the first big Internet news scoops, a young Salon magazine revealed that Hank had had his own adulterous consensual sexual affair -- diddling Cherie Snodgrass, a married Chicago woman (photo) and mother, for five years in the late 1960s.
The revelation followed news stories that two other self-rightgeous conservative Republicans who like Hank condemned Bill in the strongest terms -- Representatives Dan Burton of Indiana and Helen Chenoweth of Idaho -- also had had adulterous affairs.
Mind you that Republicans don't have the franchise on cheating on their spouses and being hypocrites. They just do it with more panache.
Incidentally, in response to the Salon story Hank harrumphed that his affair with Miss Cherie was a "youthful indiscretion."
He was 41 at the time.
Hyde was creep. All you have to do is offer a bill to save babies and you are a saint?
ReplyDeleteIn 1981, after leaving the House Banking Committee, Hyde went on the board of directors of Clyde Federal Savings and Loan, whose President was one of many of Hyde's banker contributors. The Congress deregulated S&L industry in 1982, and Clyde began taking part in loans for luxury residences in Texas and bought a bank in the Cayman Islands, a notorious financial exchange for laundering money. Since 1984, when Hyde left the board, it was clear to the directors from the reports that the establishment had failed, but Hyde and others on the board continued to give inappropriate financial loans to cronies and insiders and make it possible for the establishment to overcharge the government on student loans. In 1990, the federal government put Clyde in receivership, and finally paid $67 million to cover deposits. In 1993, the Resolution Trust Corporation sued Hyde and other directors for $17.2 million.
Hyde had an extramarital affair in the late 1960 and destroyed a family.
Hyde was 41, a state legislator, and the father of four sons when the affair began in 1965 with a
29-year-old Cherie Snodgrass, who had a son and two daughters between the ages of 7 and 9 at the time. The relationship lasted until at least 1969.
Shalom,
--- Prof. Leland Milton Goldblatt, Ph.D. ®
http://drgoldblatt.blogspot.com/
Dr. Goldblatt has had a liver transplant and is a drunk; and a man who hates children including his own, cats, and women, unless they are hot and easy.