This fall there will be governors’ races in our two great states of Virginia and New Jersey. Why these two states hold off-year elections is beyond the ken of human understanding. In New Jersey, for example, these off-year elections seem to have been held since the beginning of time.
The race in Virginia has stirred up a good bit of controversy which has caused me to comment upon it. The Republican candidate in that election is named Robert McDonnell. A few years back, when Mr. McDonnell was a student at Regent University, he wrote a thesis for a Master’s Degree that has caused considerable interest. McDonnell already had a degree from Notre Dame University with a Master’s from Boston College. But one way or another, he decided that he needed another degree from Regent University in Virginia, which is a creature of Pat Robertson. The title of the degree he was pursuing will be a back breaker. It is called a Master of Arts in Public Policy and Juris Doctor in Law. Cynics like myself might well assume that attendance at Regent University was aimed at getting a job in the Bush administration. But that job never happened and George W. Bush has gone away.
After studying for a year or more, Mr. McDonnell wrote a thesis of lengthy duration. It had 15 points, which I will not try to recount for you. Among those points that he raised in the conclusion to his thesis were these. First, Mr. McDonnell is anti-abortion to the hilt. Secondly, he decries working women because those women ought to be at home nurturing their children. The curious question follows: what if there are no children? But that seems to make no difference to Mr. McDonnell.
Among his other conclusions in the thesis is that he is against the interstate sale of pornography and obscenity. That is a pretty safe conclusion to come to. Then there is the thought that Mr. McDonnell recommended the end of all government welfare programs. And so he means such things as Social Security and Medicare. Finally we get to the sexual part of his thesis. Mr. McDonnell rails against homosexuals. He also condemns single-parent unwed mothers. Good gracious, he is also against safe sex education programs. He opposes telling anyone about abortion. He believes we should reverse no-fault divorce. I suspect that people should live together until they commit homicide. But the kicker is that Mr. McDonnell also condemns fornication. In the Republican Party, I suppose it is appropriate to condemn fornication and feminism. In the wicked Northeast, those things have long gone been accepted by the Republican Party.
The thesis was written by Mr. McDonnell in 1989, when he was 34 years of age. When I was 34 years of age, my thought processes had pretty well been established. But Mr. McDonnell says that, upon the discovery of his thesis, the thoughts he had expressed no longer really apply. He says that over the years his mind has evolved and he tends to leave it at that. He does not tell us that he now really opposes anything that has to do with working women who do not nurture their children, real or imagined, at home. On all the other points in his thesis, Mr. McDonnell tells us that his views have evolved but he does not tell us what the evolution amounts to. Clearly, it appears to cynics such as myself that Mr. McDonnell wrote his thesis in 1989 and holds the identical views today, but now that he is running for governor he finds a need to smudge those views. I had hoped that Mr. McDonnell in his mind evolution would tell us that he now either favors fornication or that he no longer opposes it. But that is not the case. The state of the record is that McDonnell opposes fornication.
It is clear that if McDonnell lived in the great state of New Jersey he would oppose the governor, Jon Corzine, not only because he is a Democrat but because he lived with a woman who was not his wife. The fact that in this case the two principals were divorced would, I suspect, make very little difference to a zealot such as Mr. McDonnell.
Jon Corzine was for a time the chairman of Goldman Sachs, the investment firm. When he left that firm, he took with him great bundles of cash. He used that money to become a United States Senator. When he tired of that job, I suspect that he resigned to become the Governor of New Jersey because he thought that the governorship would propel him toward the White House. Ah, but that is not the case. For old Corzine is stuck in Trenton, New Jersey, with a monstrous deficit, but at least he will not do what the Governor of Alaska did, which was to resign and let somebody else take the heat.
Now, as long as McDonnell has brought up the issue of fornication, it might be observed that for a certain period of time, Jon Corzine was living with a woman who was also divorced, who was also an official of the Communications Workers of America. She was the President of the local that held the bargaining rights for a large number of New Jersey state employees. I feel a certain kinship here in that the Communications Workers of America is my old union. But I must say that I never had an arrangement that included a love affair with a well-heeled fellow like Jon Corzine.
When the affair with the union president, Carla Katz, was finished, he picked up the tab on her house, which amounted to more than $700,000. He also agreed to put her children through private school. That is generosity beyond the understanding of any ordinary human.
Corzine’s opponent is Chris Christie, who during the Bush years was the federal prosecutor for the state of New Jersey. He contends that in that role he should be elected to the governorship because he put several crooks in jail while he was prosecutor. Finding a crook in New Jersey is about as difficult as catching fish in a barrel. In this state, crooks abound and are rivaled only by those who exist in Louisiana. At the moment the polls tell us that Chris Christie is ahead, but this is only September and the election is in November.
I have a conclusion about these two races. On the general subject of fornication, it is my view that as long as the act takes place under voluntary circumstances, I can do nothing about it and therefore I really have no objections to it at all. Clearly the affair between Carla Katz and Jon Corzine was a voluntary one. But Mr. McDonnell of Virginia is not one who would attract my sympathy or my vote. He says that his thinking has evolved, but clearly he still dislikes the idea of women in the work place, homosexuals, co-habitators, and all sorts of other people. I do not have a vote in the great state of Virginia, but if I did had one, it would not be cast in favor of Mr. McDonnell and his antediluvian views on life. I do have a vote here in New Jersey, and as we approach the elections find it interesting that no one has raised the issue of Jon Corzine living with a woman who was not his wife. I find this an enlightened view of life in the 21st century. If the election were held tomorrow, I would clearly vote for Jon Corzine, fornication and all of the other concerns. I will follow the events in Virginia as well to see if Virginians have a similar view of things in the current century. And I will also try to follow the fortunes of Mr. McDonnell to see if somewhere along the line the evolution of his mind might include acceptance of women in the workplace. My guess is that his thesis, written at the age of 34, pretty much states it all.
Well, the title of this essay was contributed by my wife, Miss Chicka. And I suspect that the races in Virginia and New Jersey will carry out the theme which is that governors’ races ain’t what they used to be. But there is enough interest in those two races to keep me occupied in the early part of November. These are the only two races for governorships that we have and they will have to do until 2010 comes along. In the meantime, keep your powder dry and watch out for working women and those mean-spirited fornicators that Mr. McDonnell has warned us against.
E. E. CARR
September 6, 2009
Essay 411
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Kevin’s commentary: The only way I see him defending that thesis is that it had so many horrible problems that nobody knew where to even begin with refuting it. Seriously though, it sounds like a holy grail for bigots.
Of course Christie won this race. You can view his thoughts on Christie below:
APHASIA AND ARTHRITIS
O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
A REVISIT TO THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS
PETERING OUT WITH HURRICANE IRENE