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You Stay Classy McGurk
In addition to sleazy emails trading sex for access (a two way deal between disgraced Brett “The Stick” McGurk and disgraced Wall Street Journal “journalist” Gina Chon), we add another pack of stained sheets to the pile.
Sex on the Roof
I hope no one missed commenter “William” who added to this blog:
Yes, it is true, he had sex on the roof. Everyone knew it. I was there, not on the roof, but afterwards when everyone was talking about it and he was walking around like cool man on campus.
He does lack key leadership jobs and it appears his expierience has been handed to him, but he found these positions because people like him and he does a good job. I will give him that – he is likable and does good work. He also has a talent for attracting the ladies.
Sex at The Yard
Meanwhile in sleaze land, the Washington Post reports that McGurk invited his then-mistress Chon to be a guest lecturer at a Harvard course he taught in 2009. Harvard students attending the class had no idea that their teacher was romantically involved with Chon, who spoke to them about her experience
reportinggetting inside info by sleeping with her sources in Iraq, according to a student who attended.(Sigh) Needless to say, both the Stickman and Chon were married to others when they arranged to have Harvard pay for Chon to spend some quality time with Brett on the university’s dime. Another classy move McGurk!
No one at State was working on a warm Friday afternoon to comment on whether McGurk’s actions constitute the same “notorisouly disgraceful conduct” it beats
offon its own employees for doing.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Viral BJ (BJ=Basic Justice, not that other thing)
If you are one of the few people who missed the story about an “alleged” sex tape that includes an “alleged” State Department VIP having “alleged” sex on the roof of the old US Embassy building in Baghdad, well, it must be for lack of interest, because the story seems to be popping up everywhere.
Meanwhile, the State Department has yet to issue a denial, a curious thing. You can read the daily press briefing here to check.
While the story has not made it to Doha yet, it is in the UK and another in the UK, India, Poland, and Nigeria. The Week, which include the story as item number three in “Five scandals that could undo Obama’s re-election bid.”
Basic Justice
“BJ” in this context stands for “basic justice,” not the naughty thing you were thinking of, shame. My point in raising all this fuss is to mark the way the State Department turns on charges of “poor judgment” against me for blogging (I am being fired due to my book and this blog, long before any sex tapes raised their, er, head) while turning its back on any number of instances of questionable behavior when the persons involved are not bloggers that they are looking for an excuse to fire.
Here’s one of the actual charges:
Which referred to this:
For those who don’t recall, that photo of Ms. Bachmann (of questionable judgment of its own) appeared on thousands of web sites; try this Google search to see. And yes, everyone from Colbert to Leno to the guy in your car pool (and me) made the same joke about it.
Childish? A bit. Snarky. Yes. Maybe even rude, funny, immature, naughty, bad taste, whatever. But a firing offense? Seems a stretch, especially since the photo appeared briefly on my blog in October 2011 and here we are firing me in late April 2012, some six months of festering “poor judgement” later. Now that seems a bit, well, childish. Or maybe vengeful.
Keeping State Secrets
I met recently with a group of young professionals in Washington interested in foreign affairs, several of whom expressed some interest in joining the State Department. The question of security clearances came up, and the point I made was that more and more the secrets you will be asked to keep are not matters of national security as much as matters of embarrassment.
Instead of keeping vital info from the Chinese, you are instead expected to remain silent when your boss has sex on the roof above you. Instead of keeping information secret to protect the President, you instead must learn to keep silent when his Secret Service agents bring whores back to their Government-paid hotel rooms abroad.
Those are the secrets you must keep. Anything else is poor judgment.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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