On Tap Award: Worst Scandal
There were many choices in this category. Selecting Barry Bonds or Michael Vick would have given me yet another opportunity to vent about stories that make my blood boil. But neither can be called the worst scandal of the year.
That dubious distinction is reserved for a scandal that the Washington Post first revealed last February: the pathetic conditions and miserable treatment of our nation’s wounded at the U.S. Army’s Walter Reed hospital.
I have long believed that those who volunteer to go off and fight for our nation deserve special recognition from those of us who haven’t. Those who are wounded or give their lives ought to be placed on an even higher pedestal.
But as the Post revealed and subsequent Congressional inquiries confirmed, Walter Reed was failing to provide even the most basic care and comforts.
In 1757, Admiral John Byng of the Royal Navy was court martialled for “failing to do his utmost” in battle. He was convicted and shot. Obviously, that was a punishment for another era. But the evidence that the commanders at Walter Reed failed to do their utmost is overwhelming. And yet, to my knowledge, no one went to jail over this scandal and no officer was brought before a court martial. That failing compounds the scandal even further.
Jim: Marshall offers an extremely strong choice, but I’ll offer another that has me grinding my teeth: Larry Craig abandoning his pledge to resign, even after a tearful press conference in Idaho. Look, pal, if you’re guilty of what you’re accused of, you don’t belong in the U.S. Senate. If you’re innocent, and you pled guilty to something you didn’t do because you believed that the cops would keep it quiet, you’re too stupid to serve in the U.S. Senate.
I’ve said that I won’t endorse any presidential candidate, but I might have to change that stand if one of the candidates forcibly ejected Craig from the Senate by throwing him down the Capitol steps.
Marshall adds:Jim makes a compelling case … for throwing Larry Craig down the Senate steps. It seems to me that there’s a list of things for which you don’t get a do-over. Pleading guilty to a crime in front of a judge is on the list. So is resigning from the U.S. Senate.
Cam says: OMG, u 2. U cumpleetly 4got about Britney Spears (sorry, if I continue typing like that I will lose my mind) and her mother of the year behavior. Or Scott Beauchamp and TNR. Or the Patriots stealing signals from the Jets. Or D.C. workers stealing millions from taxpayers. Or…
A scandal is something that leaves you aghast. And the story that I keep going back to isn’t a big story, at least not nationally. But it has utterly left me aghast. It’s the story of more than 120 admitted killers who received probation for their crimes. And this is in Texas, where opponents of the death penalty complain that Texas is the “killing capital” of the U.S.
Jim: Cam, that’s just stunning.
December 12th, 2007 at December 12, 2007 - 10:06 pm
My vote for the worst (and sadly, least exploited) scandal is the Clinton campaign’s acceptance of Norman Hsu’s bundled donations along with contributions from other dubious donors. Apparently, falsifying campaign donation records is no big deal for the MSM, but I think it should have caused much more grief for Clinton.
Marshall, I do have to disagree with you regarding Walter Reed. That was not the uncovering of a scandal. Rather, it was a hit piece against the Bush Administration and the military. High ranking officers did lose their jobs, and I cannot understand why anyone should have gone to jail. While Walter Reed is not a veteran’s hospital per se, I imagine that it has the same weaknesses as hospitals run by the V.A. If Dana Priest and the Washington Post were so concerned about the wounded vets they could have brought the issues to the attention of someone who could have addressed them immediately instead of letting the soldiers go on in the conditions they described for months while Priest and her co-hort worked on their expose’.