"... with common interests and a sense of shared purpose, but that isn’t where it stopped. All these years later... I still remember the way the temperature in that tiny grad-school office changed when he walked in the door, the way the heat radiating from him charged every atom in my body with desire, the way I thought I would not survive another second if I couldn’t touch his skin. We all know this heat. It can reduce people to ashes. It can make us take incredibly stupid risks and give no thought at all to the consequences. Wise people know better than to put themselves in circumstances that would allow an illicit desire to flower, but people aren’t always wise. And sometimes it is when we are least wise that we are also most human."
So concludes Margaret Renkl in
"Nashville’s Mayor Has Stumbled. Who Will Cast the First Stone?" in the New York Times, which I'm reading because
Instapundit blogged:
#METOO, NASHVILLE EDITION: Megan Barry’s lover Sgt Rob Forrest paid $53K more than other bodyguards combined. To be fair, he was providing more services.
The nice thing is, when you’re a female Democrat you can have an affair like this — at taxpayer expense — and a female columnist in the New York Times will womansplain how you’re the real victim here.
Posts
93 comments:
And this Democrat paid her lover 30+ Percent more than other bodyguards (but she got one hell of a service, right?
"It can make us take incredibly stupid risks and give no thought at all to the consequences."
Fortunately, women can now blame men for their stupidity and demand compensation for the consequences, so it's all good: the wisdom of #MeToo.
It's all good. Let them settle it one on one.
The insane thing is making it a public problem, which itself falls under doing stupid things for the momentary mental effect.
I still remember the way the temperature in that tiny grad-school office changed when he walked in the door, the way the heat radiating from him charged every atom in my body with desire, the way I thought I would not survive another second if I couldn’t touch his skin. We all know this heat. It can reduce people to ashes.
Where did Ms Renkl lift this purple prose from? Some Harlequin romance about a daughter of the English aristocracy kidnapped by a dashing pirate with a title like "Bound For Desire"?
Mayor Barry, I don't think bodyguard means what you think it means.
Where did Ms Renkl lift this purple prose from? Some Harlequin romance about a daughter of the English aristocracy kidnapped by a dashing pirate with a title like "Bound For Desire"?
Sappho.
A peer of the gods he seems to me, the man who sits over against you face to face, listening to the sweet tones of your voice and the loveliness of your laughing; it is this that sets my heart fluttering in my breast. For if I gaze on you but for a little while, I am no longer master of my voice, and my tongue lies useless, and a delicate flame runs over my skin. No more do I see with my eyes, and my ears are filled with uproar. The sweat pours down me, I am all seized with trembling, and I grow paler than the grass. My strength fails me, and I seem little short of dying.
"It can make us take incredibly stupid risks and give no thought at all to the consequences."
"Hi, Mayor Barry, my name is Harvey -- Harvey Weinstein. My friends tell me that we share a lot of mutual interests."
So we have the standard meme of the Powerful politician who has an affair with a subordinate, in the workplace and the subordinate receives monetary benefits and perks that the subordinate's peers do not.
But since the Politician is a (D), and
A woman,
It's different?
Because!!
The problem isn't the double standard but that the offered single standard is wrong in the first place.
@rhhardin,
The sweat pours down me, I am all seized with trembling, and I grow paler than the grass. My strength fails me, and I seem little short of dying.
It all comes off better in the original Aeolic somehow.
Margaret Renkl will no doubt remind us "inferiors" that when all the women the D's run out to accuse Trump of infidelity, it is all 100% Trumps fault.
The excess payments implies a public corruption issue, else it's something for the divorce court to settle.
As usual, there's not much more to say after Glenn Reynolds has taken pen in hand, as it were.
I am all for restraint and humility as we are tempted to criticize others.
But I would also like some evenhandedness.
Fortunately, women can now blame men for their stupidity and demand compensation for the consequences, so it's all good: the wisdom of #MeToo.
Bingo !
Bill Clinton trying to get a job for Monica is down the memory hole.
She's a dem and a woman, so the rules are different.
I'm starting to see yard signs calling for her to resign. Bad timing for her, what with her administration looking for billions to fund a controversial mass transit plan. Our decision to avoid Davidson County is looking better every day.
Trying again:
The Mayor's Office changed the Overtime Approval Signature from the Chief of Police to Megan Barry's consigliere.
Months after Mayor Megan Barry began an extramarital affair with her bodyguard, one of the mayor’s top aides, Rich Riebeling, made an "unusual" change to security protocol.
Instead of following a longstanding policy that the police department pay for the travel expenses incurred by officers on Barry's security detail, the mayor's office began approving and paying for those expenses out of its own budget. The move was made to minimize the impact of the travel on the police budget, according to the mayor's office.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/02/12/mayor-megan-barry-bodyguard-travel-expenses-affair/326183002/
As a Metro Nashville taxpayer, I don't care who she boinks on her own dime. I do care when she asks me to help pay for her trysts. And if she or her minion bypassed this monetary check and balance, who's to say she didn't bypass others?
Hmm, am I seeing a pattern?
Mayor Barry recommended city job for daughter of officer with whom she had affair
tennessean.com/story/news/2018/02/06/mayor-barry-recommended-city-job-daughter-officer-whom-she-had-affair/301867002/
The extended heat metaphor I do find quite bizarre, however. I surmise Miss Renkl needs an in-depth medical evaluation. Something is definitely screwy about her physiology.
Generally, I ignore all claims of adultery prior to the term of office.
Here, the Mayor is whetting her whistle on the job. So, that's a strike against.
But it appears to be consensual, no claim of sexual assault or harassment, so that's a wash.
Equal rights to sleep around!
"Wise people know better than to put themselves in circumstances that would allow an illicit desire to flower, but people aren’t always wise."
And for having wisdom Mike Pence is mocked. By the left of course. And only the left.
It's all cool when Democrats do it.
Human, and all that.
When democrats waste money, our money, it's human.
Three minutes ago, I fell in love with an out-of-touch, late-to-the-party Boomer gal, writing florid prose in order politicize her personal life on a site not as many people read as before and where morons appear to be running the show.
‘Although some say I am a lusty duke, absconding to the hot barn for many a sweaty midnight rendezvous, it is merely because the right maiden, of true heart, mind and spirit has yet to slake my thirst and bridle my passions’
‘Young hearts be free tonight’
-Rod Earl of Stuart
This isn't just because she's a Dem, there is something timeless about it. A family man who has an affair is and always has been, to use a good Victorian word, a cad. A married woman having an affair is fulfilling a need that isn't being satisfied at home. I'm sure the gender studies profs and #Metoo people will work it all out.
The nice thing is, when you’re a female Democrat you can have an affair like this — at taxpayer expense — and a female columnist in the New York Times will womansplain how you’re the real victim here.
True that. What's wrong is not the affair, but having it on the taxpayers dime.
So, where are we with this sexual harassment thing? Is it possible for a man to have a sexual relationship with a subordinate and have it anything but harassment due to the difference in power? If so, is it possible for a woman to have a sexual relationship with a subordinate and have it anything but harassment due to the difference in power?
Without regard to how you answer those questions, what bothers me the most about Mayor Barry's situation is not the adultery but the abuse of her office. She misused her office to higher her lover's daughter -- for a position that wasn't in the budget. She misused her office to circumvent the approval of her lover's overtime pay and travel expense reimbursements. That is, she demonstrated an attitude of entitlement that is inappropriate to public service. That, and she (most likely) broke the law.
That Times Opinion piece really tries to justify an affair on the public dime.
Doesn't work.
I don't really care if the Mayor stays in office -- I don't live in Nashville. But I can see the double standard clearly from up here in the Badger State.
"It can make us take incredibly stupid risks and give no thought at all to the consequences."
This is a very popular quote from many infamous criminals.
Re: Some Seppo:
As a Metro Nashville taxpayer, I don't care who she boinks on her own dime. I do care when she asks me to help pay for her trysts. And if she or her minion bypassed this monetary check and balance, who's to say she didn't bypass others?
I'm not a Metro Nashville taxpayer, but this seems right to me. She can be "human" all she wants, but when you start misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars of your employer's funds for your own purposes, that's usually a firing offense.
Hmm, am I seeing a pattern?
Mayor Barry recommended city job for daughter of officer with whom she had affair
This one, I think what's troubling is not immediately apparent from the headline. This is the bad bit:
The position as an entry-level city attorney was the first newly created job in Nashville's legal department in two years. It was not part of the existing budget. Barry approved the new job opening. No other candidate was considered.
She didn't just "recommend" the daughter for the position -- she had a new position created and funded specially for the daughter.
You can feel the heat radiating from the photo of Sgt Forrest. If you've got a CRT.
What's with Mayor Barry scandals?
Actually......REALLY WISE people don't steal other people's money to fund their sex lives and boost their life styles.
Ordinary people who do this, go to jail. But...as we know the rules are different when you are a Democrat and especially if you are a female....right Hillary??
Young Duke Of Sulzberger would have to release many from his salaried stable of Marquis Names, even those who could comment intelligently on space-time, history, gay theater, the Kennedys, the Beatles and social justice activism mesmerizingly in one column.
Alas, the inkwell was full, but ad-click revenue was running dry. There were new bulletin boards out West. Silicon Valley. Power had shifted...
Best part: the guy retired with his padded pension -- padded by the overtime the Mayor allowed -- so now he can draw on that 'til he dies!
How well-vested is the Nashville TN Pension fund, I wonder. (Wisconsin's is doing very well at the moment). Maybe the taxpayers can be paying for this affair for years and years and years!
Loins. Tell us about loins.
Where did Ms Renkl lift this purple prose from? Some Harlequin romance about a daughter of the English aristocracy kidnapped by a dashing pirate with a title like "Bound For Desire"?
2/20/18, 8:49 AM
LOL! Yeah, I immediately pictured Fabio and his biceps walking into the room, followed by his hair, with Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" playing in the background. Sort of like when Edith laid eyes on Aaron Rodgers in that commercial.
Women must never be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
A young woman I worked with in the 80's admitted she'd left her previous office because she'd slept with all the men in it. She didn't play her cards well at all.
And why'd she say that to a near-stranger? It certainly wasn't a come-on.
Another way of being human is suffering consequences.
Marion Berry wants his hits back.
It's Nashville. Would it have been so terribly difficult to explain it all in terms of country music?
That headline could well introduce a Bonnie and Clyde remake.
Henry said...
Marion Berry wants his hits back.
Bitch set her up, too. This all came out because the cocksman constable's wife sued for divorce.
It was almost like a song
But it's much too sad to write
@Some Seppo -- Should have been Marion Barry. Goofed up that joke.
Thirty-two years ago I, too, fell in love with a man I worked with. It started the way so many office romances start with common interests and a sense of shared purpose, but that isn’t where it stopped.
When they met, both were smitten immediately; most historians believe Parker joined Barrow because she was in love. She remained his loyal companion as they carried out their crime spree and awaited the violent deaths they viewed as inevitable.
There are so many things wrong with this article that after careful consideration I've decided this woman, this Margaret Renkl, is a Russian troll or is under the control of a Russian troll. I wonder if anyone's looked into the possibility that the whole Nashville mayor screwing her bodyguard was really just a garden variety honey trap. Why would anyone do that? Who cares about the Nashville mayor? Of what value could she possibly be to a foreign intelligence service? I don't know. I'm not in charge of the Russian conspiracy theories.
He is a cheap Trailer Park Gigolo. And she took the best years of his life, and then fired him. Hope he has that blue dress with her DNA on it. He probably already smoked the big cigars.
Seriously, I bet she is the aggressor here using the famous, " I need you to protect me big man" line.
"... with common interests and a sense of shared purpose, but that isn’t where it stopped.
I'm guessing none of this is meant to apply to Stormy Daniels.
The author also stated that, per the misuse of funds, she will wait for all the facts to be gathered.
I'm sure, just SURE, she applies THAT standard to President Trump.
Ho Lee Katz.
Just say a home video of a panther prowling at someones back door in Wisconsin. A number of other homes in the background.
Bring your puppies in!
Judging from the way the mayor looks, that bodyguard EARNED every penny of the extra $33K he was paid.
I denounce myself, so don't bother.
P.s. when you saw BAG's phrase "whetting her whistle" at 9:06, did you, as I did, first read it as "wetting his whistle"?
YoungHegelian said...
I still remember the way the temperature in that tiny grad-school office changed when he walked in the door, the way the heat radiating from him charged every atom in my body with desire, the way I thought I would not survive another second if I couldn’t touch his skin. We all know this heat. It can reduce people to ashes.
Where did Ms Renkl lift this purple prose from? Some Harlequin romance about a daughter of the English aristocracy kidnapped by a dashing pirate with a title like "Bound For Desire"?
You read it too?
Sgt Rob is a HUNK!! If you're into the pudgy-bureaucrat look.
The police bodyguard who had an affair with Mayor Megan Barry will get a $6,691 monthly pension, an amount which increased substantially because of the overtime he was paid.
"In retirement, Sgt. Rob Forrest would get $80,302.56 a year. That amount could fluctuate if he takes an upfront partial lump-sum payment, according to human resources records."
I bet the taxpayers think that's pretty good pay for not doing anything.
"One longtime employee benefits board member said under Nashville law, if any of the ongoing investigations reveal he collected overtime illegally, then Forrest's pension may be reduced."
Wow! REDUCED! This is pretty typical "deep state" crap.
That cat video only proves to me that in fact I did see a cougar some 10 plus years ago only a few miles from the spot of the latest sighting. I saw a large animal bounding through deep snow with a big tail following it. And yeah, a year ago I witnessed a large coyote square off with my dog, who I'd just put out on his lead at midnight, right in my front yard.
Pity Sgt. Forrest’s wife didn’t show up at one of her hubby’s trysts with a semiautomatic rifle.
Once in every job
Someone comes along
We did it on my desk
It was almost like a song
I paid you so much more
Technically that's wrong
Now I'm in the soup
That part isn't like a song
But my lawyer's kind of hot
I talk to him each night
It's like another a song
That I don't have time to write
Yes, the issue here is the salary he was paid and the other changes in expensing that do seem have been a part of this affair. If the facts are true, she should actually be criminally charged for corruption.
Read to the end, the author literally blames it on hormones.
It’s fantastic.
Why should a major US city newspaper read like Cosmopolitan?.
But, yes, women are off the hook and can't be held responsible for poor decisions and lack of self control.
So the NYT writer admits she sinned, so she won't cast the first stone.
Strange, considering the stuff they write, I thought that NYT reporters and editors had no sense of sin or shame.
There's almost nothing interesting or unusual here--I'm not even sure it's blog-worthy except to highlight the absurd weakness of the frame of the defense.
It's the old rule: when women do anything that thing is "empowering" and must be celebrated. When a woman has an affair with someone she works with the affair must be understood and the woman must by sympathized with. She is either a victim somehow or her choices must be empathized with and/or praised. When a man has an affair with someone in his office he's a terrible cad, an abuser, and an out of control jerk who "couldn't keep it in his pants." We're all expected to scorn and shun him.
This is what's known as equality. What's so different about this particular example? Pretty standard stuff.
Well, of course the women sex criminals are getting a pass. It's just more proof that #metoo has always been a political, sexist propaganda campaign aimed at men.
Plus, women should never be made to feel bad about their poor personal choices.
"Best part: the guy retired with his padded pension -- padded by the overtime the Mayor allowed -- so now he can draw on that 'til he dies!"
That's the fucking you get, for the fucking he got.
But, I'm sure a Republican woman who did this won't be getting a pussy pass from the Right People.
Balfegor said...
I'm not a Metro Nashville taxpayer, but this seems right to me. She can be "human" all she wants, but when you start misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars of your employer's funds for your own purposes, that's usually a firing offense.
I agree, but you're are off by a factor of 10 or 15 times. Those tens of thousands of dollars? up his pension. So if he collected $10k, he likely gets $9k a year extra for the next 30 years, but he got lots more than $10k
who knows how much at this point
but maybe a million extra in pension
Isn't it a bit misleading to cut out the part where the article writer notes that she married her office romance and raised three children with him, and replace it with an ellipsis? The way Althouse edited that made it look like the article writer could have been just as morally lax as the Nashville mayor was.
An odd case. The mayor does not look like she would have to oay for sex. There is something else here, I suspect something like blackmail.
It always makes me chuckle a little when the NYT disables comments on certain pieces as if they know this one is too easy for the Right.
I wonder what the ratio is of successful relationships that start at work to those considered harassment. I know very few people who have told me they were legitimately harassed at work by a pursuing colleague, but I sure know a lot of people who started a relationship that blossomed into something they are thankful have.
I was pursued with gifts and attention by one of my subordinates for many months. She would buy me clothes, and other gifts all the time. We finally went out together, and stayed together for a dozen years raising two kids. Then after the kids were through school, we broke up very amicably and are still very good friends and still working together. I suspect work started relationships are consensual at a rate many times when it's anywhere near harassment. It's a shame that the rare bad occurrence is destroying the common good ones of people sharing interests and also sharing their lives.
This is becoming all too common in my opinion. Everything from terrorist attacks, to school shootings, to workplace abuse happens a couple times with big exposure and suddenly everyone is saddled with new rules, inconveniences, and burdens because "we have to do something". We end up with security theater, to little real effect other than how it hurts the many to appease the few, and it rarely works anyway. Better than nothing is indeed a high standard.
#MeToo #SheKnew #SheProgressed wants to abort her baby and plead human rights, too.
The problem here of course is the use of public funds for the payoff. Which she had to use as, though she is a wealthy enough woman, this sort of thing would have been difficult to hide from her husband.
I am speculating, but I suspect this business only began with a short-lived affair. The rest was some mixture of blackmail and coverup. And as usually happens, the coverup is much worse than the offense, and the coverup needs to be covered up, which leads to more blackmail, and etc., a snowball effect.
I suspect that the husband found out at some point when the public corruption and coverup were much bigger problems than the affair would have been. Sin leads to sin which leads to more sin.
"I still remember the way the temperature in that tiny grad-school office changed when he walked in the door, the way the heat radiating from him charged every atom in my body with desire, the way I thought I would not survive another second if I couldn’t touch his skin."
Fabio?
We need a free and unbiased media to have a viable democracy.
Odds are there was much less sex in this than there was dread.
I got the sense that NYT writer was making allusions to Elvis lyrics in that piece empathizing with a Tennessee politician.
I agree that Althouse's ellipsis in the quote is misleading. I know the parties involved, and I had to click to the Times to make sure the article itself didn't elide the key fact that they married and are still married. In fact they were both single at the time, so in moral terms it doesn't have much in common with the mayor's story--except the shared humanity that is the writer's point.
The issue is not that Barry slept with the guy, or had the hots for the guy, or was married to someone else at the time - the issue is more that public money appears to have been used to forward/create romantic occasions.
We might not really approve of sleeping around, and we might feel some sympathy for the aggrieved partners, but we don't find it to be our business. But if the public is paying for it somehow, it becomes our business.
So this is not about sexual behavior - it's about misuse of office. Trying to claim that it's about sexual behavior is entirely misleading. It's about allegations/appearance of official misbehavior, not about personal misbehavior while in office.
This is a public corruption scandal, not a sex scandal. It's very much in Barry's interests to present it as a trouble of the heart and loins, of course. But the problem is she took public money on behalf of her lover. Absent that, who cares?
Grant contends: In fact they were both single at the time, so in moral terms it doesn't have much in common with the mayor's story--except the shared humanity that is the writer's point.
You don't think misappropriation of funds is immoral? Are you thinking of running for office, by any chance?
Mockturtle: why the insult that completely misses the point of my comment? The writer’s example of human weakness from her own life and the example of the mayor aren’t morally equivalent. I’m commenting about the quote Althouse cited and the article itself, not about something else.
The prisons are full of people with whom we share "common humanity", so that part is trite.
And they are in prison for acting on feelings or urges common to all of us.
That does not excuse the mayor.
"I still remember the way the temperature in that tiny grad-school office changed when he walked in the door, the way the heat radiating from him charged every atom in my body with desire, the way I thought I would not survive another second if I couldn’t touch his skin. We all know this heat. It can reduce people to ashes."
So, apparently Trump was right. With some women, you can grab them by the ****** and they don't mind. It is nice to have a woman explain the forces at work in these situations.
But would feminists consider that the man in the quote took advantage of the emotional state and be responsible for harassment?
With Republican men, the story is they are lecherous predators.
With Democrat men, the story is “one free grope” or “get out your Presidential kneepads.”
With Democrat women like this one, the story is “Stella got her groove back.”
With Republican women... eh, not aware it’s happened. But if it did, the story would be “evil old bitch” or some variant of Andrew Sullivan’s obsession with Sarah Palin’s uterus.
If, despite being married, the NYT reporter still is cutting slack to an adulterous affair which bilked the city out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and engaged in corrupt activities, then no, the way Althouse edited it is entirely irrelevant. The reporter is a blatant apologist against the rule of law, logic, morals and proper professional etiquette because 'moist loins'.
FIDO: the writer is not an NYT reporter. Did you even read the opinion piece? If you don’t get that basic fact right, why should anyone care what else you have to say?
So concludes Margaret Renkl in "Nashville’s Mayor Has Stumbled. Who Will Cast the First Stone?" in the New York Times
So...what am I misreading again? And do the same metrics apply to you?
I am commenting on what Ms. Althouse is commenting about. I go with the information she gives me.
However, it is unclear if both of these people are unmarried or not. I have seen conflicting accounts. So mea culpa on that front.
Who Will Cast the First Stone?
(raises hand)
Working Security Man Blues
(Chorus)
Well those sweet brown eyes they still a'haunt me
And those long legs, they have left me a wreck
I hear her knowing laugh, see her smile in my dreams
But darlin what I loved best was the paycheck
I knew I was in trouble that first Monday
When I reported in to my new detail
The hot look when she gave me the twice over
Wouldnt take long for us to go off the rails
(Guitar)
She called me in on the fourth Saturday
A small workshop, she said, on threats by email
But in that tight skirt, and her hair all swept down
I could get double time for tapping sweet tail.
(Chorus)
Every morning I'd put on my badge
And guard her life most faithfully
By sundown I'd put in for some overtime
So I could love that little minx furiously
(More twangy guitar)
Now some folks they still believe in unions
But not the sort the boss worked out with me
Like my momma always said down in Knoxville
Dont trust a handsome man from Tennessee
-apologies for "tail" maybe D Yoakam can clean it up for radio.
AS with the Oxfam NGOs who were paying children for sex in third world countries, I once again have to say that AT LEAST she was paying her sex worker for his efforts. She could have been more like the UN Peacekeepers in Africa, who routinely rape those they are supposed to be protecting. Credit, I must insist, where it is due!
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