Hey, buddy, take your position at the back of the ever-growing line …
I’m experiencing a kind of wonderment today regarding the news that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child 10 years ago with his housekeeper and was apparently able to keep the news under wraps all that time.
You can get how he could have kept it from the media, but living that lie day in and day out for a decade with your unsuspecting family….that’s amazing – in a very disappointing kind of way that challenges the basic human instinct to come clean with the people closest to us. Truth-telling is instinctual because it is absolutely vital to the caring, long-term relationships that comprise fulfilled human lives.
You can resist the instinct, and in fact many obviously do, but only at your own peril. Witness John Edwards in a very similar situation last year.
Arnold is in the self-flagellation period, John in the hair-shirt-wearing phase, of the repentance-to-redemption process that the public has come to expect in place of actual good behavior.
We may not like it, but at least it provides plenty of cover in the personal responsibility department, should we ourselves ever need it. I guess we all think we just might…
