An American Lion

What do you do for money, honey?

There is a non-scandal brewing over the choice of words used to describe Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. Apparently, some talk radio hosts used a shocking term for her, and the liberal media jumped all over it like catnip. Cue the phony outrage:

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh make deeply offensive comments on a near-daily basis on their respective radio programs. Mostly, I don’t feel the need to draw attention to them. But yesterday both men crossed into completely unacceptable territory. Followers of the health-care debate will know that Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu is high on the list of moderate Democrats who may ultimately vote against the bill. On Saturday, she was the second-to-last senator to lend her vote to a motion to open debate on the bill. Part of her motivation to consent came form a concession she successfully extracted from leadership $300 million to pluga gaping hole in Louisiana’s budget, a state still suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the botched emergency response to that crisis. The formula that determines federal Medicaid funding counted one-time post-Katrina aid to Louisiana as an increase in household income, thus causing the budget shortfall. The funds will help cover medical costs for the poor and uninsured, which, in part thanks to Katrina, Louisiana has in spades. Landrieu says that Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal had explicitly asked her to pursue these funds. Sources on Capitol Hill confirm that Jindal had been pressuring Landrieu on the issue for months.

Such a deal shouldn’t be a surprise. Like it or not, it’s routine practice on Capitol Hill to trade your vote for something that helps your state. That’s just the cost of doing business in D.C. And yet Landrieu’s actions prompted Beck and Limbaugh to call her a prostitute. Beck likened her to a high-class hooker, saying, “She may be easy, but she ain’t cheap.” Limbaugh dubbed her “the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitutes.” (Keep in mind though, that Landrieu still hasn’t committed to voting for final passage of the health-care bill. She’s openly declared that she still has reservations about the bill. Saturday’s vote was simply about opening debate.)

What that makes here is a whore, not a prostitute. A whore has no scruples, and will do anything to get something from someone—hence, Landrieu is a whore for attention, and wants whatever she can get, and, like Lucy with the football, she’ll take everything they give her and promise the moon and then give everyone the high hat. A prostitute has sex with people for money. Radio talk show hosts are whores for ratings. Everything they do is designed to create phony issues. Anyone who takes them seriously is not a serious person, in and of themselves.

The problem is, whore sounds worse than prostitute, and men can certainly be whores. Man-whores abound in places like Washington D.C. and you can scarcely go a few blocks without running over someone who is willing to whore themselves out to a lobbying firm, a head of state, a media company, or a tourist. We have a huge problem with men and women whoring themselves out for cash in Washington D.C. Don’t hold your breath—no one cares and no one is doing anything about it.

It’s never a nice thing to call someone names, however. It would be better if the good Senator simply acted like a responsible steward of her responsibilities and voted according to her own convictions. Did she have an internal struggle with the idea of voting to get money that might, in the long run, be better spent or not spent at all? Did she put self-interest ahead of the good of the country? She is there to represent her constituents; that she traded her vote to help them is what it is, and that is, a transaction for money. We sometimes put politicians in jail for that sort of thing, or perhaps I have that backwards. Can you trade your vote for money? Can you sell your vote as a U.S. Senator for $300 million dollars, even if none of it goes to you? Because, I can guarantee you, if $300 million dollars goes back to the state of Louisiana, a very small chunk of that is going to go right back to Landrieu is some way, either as a donation to her re-election campaign, as funds spent on something that benefits her business interests, or to hire people who will then owe her some sort of patronage favor.

All of her previous statements about honor and integrity are now the most laughable form of hypocrisy. She can be bought with legislation, and I guess that makes us a Republic.