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Dear Playboy Adviser: (Petraeus Edition)
(The following emails were found in an electronic trash can outside CIA headquarters. No attempt has been made to contact The Daily Show or to verify their authenticity)
Dear Playboy Adviser:
I am an older professional man; call me “Dave” (maybe not my real name). Bored with my marriage of many decades to a woman who looks like she could be my mother, it seemed OK to me to have an affair with this dame writing a book about me, and, OK, maybe a few other broads. Turns out they are all bat shit crazy and now I’m in trouble where I used to work. I just want to get back in the saddle, put myself back out there while I’m still young enough, but I’m worried. Is Viagra still the best or should I try Cialis? This all seems like just a personal matter but the media is all over it like some big f’ing deal.
All in,
Stick Man
Dear Stick Man:
Writing from a Gmail account SkinnyLoveHunk@gmail.com created by someone named NotGeneralPetraeus at CIA HQ is a poor way to conceal your identity, just saying.
David Petraeus, you are a disgraceful slut. You lied to your wife, messed around with a “reporter,” wrote her naughty emails we all know are going to leak eventually and make us sick. If you did not resign, exactly what credibility would you have with your staff? How about your female staff? What kind of leader and role model are you trying to be? You wrote yourself in your “12 Rules for Living” that Rule No. 1 is “Lead by example from the front of the formation.” You were the head of the freaking CIA– did you think no one would notice?
You presence in any senior position would send a clear, sad message to all employees that double standards of behavior apply, and that if you’re senior enough you can get away with things underlings get fired for. The Army publicly fires commanders all the time for adultery, and the CIA quietly pulls security clearances from employees who cannot show personal discretion and judgement. If you’re lying to your wife, who else are you willing to lie to for your own crappy satisfaction? Your agency needs to know it can trust you. And don’t invoke your own Rule No. 4, “There is an exception to every rule, standard operating procedure, and policy; it is up to leaders to determine when exceptions should be made and to explain why they made them.” That does not apply to your marriage vows, mister.
(To be fair, none of your 12 Rules specifically bans nailing your biographer, but it is implied)
Is America sending the right message to the world when this is the best we can come up with? What, you think, this is the State Department?
Now, you disgust me. Zip it up and go away please.
The Adviser
Special to NotGeneralAllen@gmail.com: Take a look at that emblem you carry; it says Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful. That’s your guide on what to do when you’re not sure what to do. And if you’ve got time to write 20,000-30,000 pages of sexytime emails to a married broad in Florida, you’ve got time to win the freaking war. Do your job, loser.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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Rich Bauer said...
1Of course, when there is another terrorist attack on this country – and there will be – the citizens will forgive this little mistake and cry out for King David to be their WarLord and savior.
11/14/12 2:30 PM | Comment Link
Eric Hodgdon said...
2There’s the notion that public and private behavior are to be kept as though multiple personalities are normal. ‘Maybe so.’ “Oh, shut up.” ‘No, you can’t make me.’
Anyway, these stories are important?
Well, they may show that appointments are as valuable as elections.
Or, they may indicate someone with too little work to do. I remember years ago when work slowed down I would….
Or, the subterfuge and sneakyness and giggling are fun and favored pastimes of those supposedly working at our expense. “Yea, in more ways than one.”
11/14/12 5:06 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
3Gee, too bad Holly didn’t have some oxytocin. She coulda slipped it in his Viagra bottle.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-oxytocin-men-monogamy-20121114,0,5131478.story?track=lat-pick
Funny how fast a sordid sex scandal spreads over the world…but murder by drone? sheeezusHcrist.. human nature never ceases to amaze me.
11/14/12 5:26 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
4ps. I wonder ..did ole P do Hillary too? Bet he at least tried. I’d submit all those bars this schmuck has on his uniform..are really for conquests of the third kind.
11/14/12 5:38 PM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
5Might be interesting to ask the Washington City Paper’s columnit, Savage Love, to write his thoughts too on such sex scandals and higher level officials.
Thanks for this and thanks to Pitchfork for the LA Times article on oxytocin. The article says it promotes empathy too, among other things, something some of our officials are in desperate need of
11/14/12 8:53 PM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
6*columnist (argh I cannot spell)
11/14/12 8:53 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
7Having suffered through the STUPIDITY of “Slam Dunce” George, this country cannot afford another idiot CIA director, who was either unaware or didn’t care if his “privates” e-mails become “pubic.”
At State we were educated by our own counterspy service — DS, “the only email anyone should send is to alert the subject you will call that person later.”
11/14/12 9:54 PM | Comment Link
Carrington Ward said...
8Meanwhile, Anna Chapman takes a moment away from her perfume line to think of what might have been.
11/14/12 10:33 PM | Comment Link
jo6pac said...
9Carrington Ward said
Thanks :))))))))))))))))) LOL
11/15/12 12:01 AM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
10Hmmmm, about the article on P’s 12 rules.
Check out who wrote it.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/04/general-david-petraeus-s-rules-for-living.html
11/15/12 5:46 AM | Comment Link
Meloveconsullongtime said...
11Did the Army model itself after the State Department or was it the other way around? I mean the Army whor-, um I mean Unpaid Social Liaison – Jill Kelley’s career as an Army Groupie reminds me of a Russian woman who used to hang around the Yekaterinburg Consulate, ultimately soliciting Consular staff to aid and abet her in a US felony.
11/15/12 8:19 AM | Comment Link
teri said...
12Oh, nice touch, taking a potshot at the Mrs. General, whose only apparent sin has been to allow herself to age naturally rather than going for the hair-dyed, botoxed, liposuctioned look that the males of this country prefer now. The temerity of letting herself look 60 when she is…well, 60.
Hey, do they have children? Preferably female children, preferably ugly? Maybe your next post can be about them.
Seriously. This is beneath you.
11/15/12 10:38 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
13“David Petraeus has never been shy or retiring, particularly in a crisis, and it is unlikely that a man who takes his public image so seriously will remain silent forever. Friends say he is pondering how best to take responsibility in a fuller, more public way. (President Betray-US??) Until then, the most celebrated general of his generation has just answered the question he famously asked in a very different context nearly a decade ago: “Tell me how this ends.”
Answer: We are all SCREWED.
11/15/12 1:04 PM | Comment Link
Sargeant Pepper's Spray said...
14Powerful man falls for attractive, younger woman who worships him – obviously this is a totally unique event in human history. It’s probably never even happened before.
If he didn’t have a top secret security clearance it would be a total non story except maybe the “stay away from my man” letters coming from a highly educated Harvard grad.
11/15/12 1:13 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
15“If he didn’t have a top secret security clearance it would be a total non story…”
AS in total fiction – There are over a million feds and contractors with TS clearances and no one cares who they are screwing.
11/15/12 2:21 PM | Comment Link
MattieB said...
16@Teri:
In “The Hunger Games,” the inhabitants of the Capitol are “enhanced,” through cosmetics, clothing, and — in the books — plastic surgery, to the point of grotesquery.
The female protagonists in this sorry story are notably surgically, and otherwise, ameliorated. P4 visibly opts to color his hair a flat shade of sandy brown at the age of 60. Someone like, say, Shakespeare’s general Coriolanus would not likely bother with this. Indeed, a pivot of the play is Coriolanus’ refusal of PR and spin in his campaign for the Roman senate.
Even someone of the essential decency of PVB will casually publically demean a woman who is content to appear the age that she actually is.
The Republic, and the capitol, might benefit from less silicone and botulinum toxin, more essential decency. But that’s only this commenter’s opinion.
11/15/12 3:48 PM | Comment Link
wemeantwell said...
17The demeaning remarks about Mrs. Petraeus were made in husband Dave’s “voice” and were meant to show his feelings toward her. The remarks are “his,” not mine. I do not myself refer to women as dames or broads.
11/15/12 3:53 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
18BANGKOK — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has ordered the Pentagon to find out why so many generals and admirals have become embroiled in legal and ethical problems, a trend exacerbated by recent investigations of two of the military’s best-known commanders. The Pentagon disclosed Panetta’s directive on Thursday after he arrived in Bangkok as part of a (FACT FINDING ???) visit to Asia.
I’m shocked, shocked that in a country that laughs at the rule of law would have leaders who behave badly.
11/15/12 4:45 PM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
19@ Teri, Mrs Petreaus is the only person in this scandal who appears above it, even though she has kept a silence. It was honourable among other things that she wrote an editorial warning about the dangers of loan officers trolling veteran hospitals inducing wounded warriors to sign for significant loans while heavily drugged, only later to find out once default proceedings began they had signed such papers.
What other official has tried to be a voice for justice in some aspect? In this current sordid saga, the officials seem so shallow and silly in spite of the positions they occupied, in which they could have wrought some good for others – if only they tried and could hold such thoughts. It’s a black mark on men who had done what the general did. Yes, people are fallible but our culture seems to be forgetting to have compassion and respect for sacrifices other people make and the excesses are compounding too much
11/15/12 8:23 PM | Comment Link
Lisa said...
20[Ah, Peter, ’tis a shame when one must clarify one’s sarcasm. I knew you wouldn’t malign the missus, for this is not her story.]
Commenter Mr/s Orda is correct when noting (I think) the selfishness which is accreting in this world in the form of multifold inflicted miseries. It would be nice if intelligent people were also cued up with a sense of compassion, as it is they who will be calling the shots, as it were.
11/20/12 3:55 AM | Comment Link