Wednesday, June 22, 2005

MY TEAM IS AWAYS RIGHT. YOURS IS ALWAYS WRONG

Anyone remember "Good Guys/Bad Guys Cheer" by Country Joe & The Fish.

I didn't think so.

It was a "spoken -word" piece on their 1968 Together album in which Joe, or one of the Fish shouts, "Let's hear it for the good guys!" The crowd responds "YAY!!!" This is followed by "Let's hear it for the bad guys!" The crowd boos. This is repeated several until the noise all runs together.

A couple of things made me think about the "Good Guys" and the "Bad Guys" in the past couple of days.

First there was Tom Bailey's latest post on his New Mexico Politics blog. He talks about the recent disclosure that Republican Albuquerque City Councilor Tina Cummings lying about a past DWI conviction.

Fair enough.

But then he basically says that Cummings is part of a Republican tradition of morally-challenged politicians, listing several good examples of bad examples from Bob Livingston all the way back to Bob Packwood.

However, the most recent example of a New Mexico politician lying about a DWI was a Democrat -- Letitia Montoya, who ran for a state Senate seat in Santa Fe last year. At a candidate forum last year Montoya was asked whether she'd ever been arrested for DWI before. She said know. However, court records showed she indeed had been arrested for drunken driving 20 years before. Montoya, who lost that race but is now running for secretary of state, now says she just told "a little white lie."

Yesterday The Drudge Report linked to The New Mexican Web site's version of my story about Gov. Bill Richardson's latest speeding escapade.

As a result, I was getting e-mails from people all around the country who were outraged that the governor can speed all he wants and even refuse to stop for police, while regular folks would get ticketed or maybe even even arrested for such a stunt.

Fair enough.

But a couple of e-mails used Richardson's speeding as just another example of the arrogant and immoral ways of Democrats.

However, a couple of years ago, when Richardson's speeding first became an issue, I interviewed a certain Republican who admitted to a high-speed ride of his own. Here's an excerpt from the Oct. 2, 2003 Roundhouse Round-up:
"The only reason I would have gone more than 100 mph is if I was late to something," Richardson's immediate predecessor, Gary Johnson, said in a phone interview this week.

Johnson said the only time he recalls his state police drivers going 100 mph was once when he was late for a political function in Albuquerque.

"I was late to see George Bush," he admitted. This, Johnson said, was during the 2000 presidential race. But Johnson said, unlike Richardson, he wouldn't have let his driver go that fast had there been a reporter in the car. "I wouldn't have considered it with The Washington Post in the car," he said.

UPDATE: I just noticed that conservative N.M. blogger Mario Burgos -- to his credit -- points to an example of another Republican speed demon -- this a story with tragic consequences. (I'm just not sure why Mario calls me a "lone merry man.")

And if I start to sound a little self-righteous, I can always look at these photos published by Conventry to bring the ego down a few notches.

1 comment:

  1. Why merry? I don't know... I guess it's that Friar Tuck thing you have going. Apparently, I'm not the only one you strike as merry:

    "The 45-year-old Steve Terrell has been in the business of newsgathering for over twenty years. He has a reputation of using humor in all his writing; in his mock rock music, in his column and in his radio show. Fellow journalist Mark Hummels puts it this way: Terrell doesn’t make fun of people with his writing, he just quotes them making fun of themselves."

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