Kill the Messenger

If my memory serves, the first person to run 26.2 miles was some ancient Greek type guy bringing news from a place called Marathon about a battle that was being fought.  Or he was running TO a place called Marathon. Anyway, he arrived with the news, way out of breath, and promptly died.

I don't know whether that particular event was the one that started a trend, but if you were the messenger of bad news, you could pretty much count on having your life ended after delivering it. Saved on tips.

Which, in a very round about way, brings me to Newt Gingrich and today's headline about Newt the Juke having a secret affair, when he was going after Bill Clinton for messing with Monica Lewinsky. The Newtster sure had some raging doublespeak for why his screwing around wasn't the same as Clinton's screwing around.

Newt the Two-faced also calls to mind Mark Foley [gay or pedophile, you be the judge] being on some congressional committee to help stamp out child sexual abuse [some day I will fact check], while he was also sending salacious IM's to underage male White House pages at night.

The point is, and it's about time I got to it  -- maybe we should think about bringing back that whole KILL THE MESSENGER idea, since a lot of the people [okay, two] who are throwing stones or, to use 21st century vernacular, outing somebody for bad behavior are doing the same thing themselves.

Like what's his name, the anti-gay preacher, Reverend Hubbard, who had to go to heterosexual reh-hab for riding bareback with his massage therapist.

Parish priests, anyone?