“Oops! My bad (but it’s not my fault!)”

So my buddy The Last Boy Scout sends me a link to this news story (being a former newspaperman himself), with the gloat, “Let the record show that this guy is a Democrat!”

The meat of the story (ahem) concerns a former San Diego councilman, running for office again, allegedly caught peeing into a cup on a street corner in some tony San Diego enclave, then following that up with a quick flogging of the old Molly Malone. Out there, on the street. While running for office.

I understand all his campaign ads end with a voice-over, “I’m John Hartley, and I approve of my penis.”

You’d think that’s bad enough, until you hear his explanation, which (again) I steal liberally, and verbatim, from an actual news organization. When asked for an explanation of his inexcusable behavior, he said, “I made a mistake.” Then he added, “I take full responsibility for my actions.”

WTF? Since when do you take responsibility for a mistake?! That’s the definition of a mistake, something untoward that occurs that is beyond your control. How do you take responsibility for something that is beyond your control??

And as for his explanation that it was a “mistake”? Locking your keys in the car is a mistake. Running head-first into a newly cleaned glass porch door – mistake. Whacking off in public is a choice and a fucking stupid one at that, compounded exponentially if the perp in question is a public figure, currently re-running for office!

Which at long last brings me to my point.

I’m sick to death of this “mistake” mea culpa-non-mea culpa. It’s just a way to disown own’s egregious misbehavior without taking responsibility for it. Like running to rehab. “I’m not a run-of-the-mill pervert at all, I just have behavioral issues stemming from childhood that with therapy, the love of my loyal wife,” gesture to mortified, matronly woman standing next to you on podium, “and accepting Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior…”

Oh, and then he pleads “no contest,” which is legalese for “I made a mistake I’d really rather not own up to.”

Best of all, this yutz is apparently planning to stay in the race.

So the story ends with this asshole tacitly admitting his guilt without the onus of having been officially found guilty, drawing a tiny fine ($500) and being set loose again on a finally wised-up public. Why the fuck doesn’t he have to register as a sex offender? Does anyone think this is the first – or the last – time this asshole is gonna engage in this kind of antisocial behavior? That it’s not going to escalate?

If he wasn’t a local bigwig, this story would have had probably the ending that it should have had. The court fucked up big-time by not bringing the full weight of the law down on this dunderhead. Force the responsibility for his actions on him and let him whack off in the prison yard for year or two and see how that goes for him. I hear they really go in for explicit sexual acts performed in public in the Big House.

The Betty Ford Clinic will always be there for him when he gets out if he still needs it.