Pierce: It Turns Out Mike Pence Has Been Working on Being Unlikable for Decades

[babylonsister]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22874753/it-turns-out-mike-pence-has-been-working-on-being-unlikable-for-decades/

It Turns Out Mike Pence Has Been Working on Being Unlikable for Decades
Your vice president once turned in his fraternity brothers for—gasp—drinking beer.
By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 30, 2018

Mama, of course, she said, hi/ Have you heard the news, he said with a grin. The vice president's gone mad/ Where? Downtown. When? Last night. Hmm, say, that's too bad. Well, there's nothing we can do about it, said the neighbor/ It's just something we're gonna have to forget.

—Bob Dylan, "Clothesline Saga."

The late great Indiana political blogger Doghouse Riley used to call Mike Pence "the Choirboy," and hipped us all to the fact that this was a walking haircut stuffed with piety, ignorance, and not a whole lot else. Comes now CNN with a profile, and we learn from the people with whom he went to college that Pence has been practicing to be an unlikable and thoroughgoing prig for decades now.

Narc on your frat brothers? You bet.

As a college freshman, he was elected to head his fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta. He also took command of a fellowship group, Vespers, which met in the campus chapel every Tuesday evening. At the frat he turned in his brothers for drinking beer. At the chapel he passed judgment on his peers.

A fun date? Absolutely.

Vespers was organized around songs and testimonies of faith. It offered community to students who were adjusting to the emotional challenge of leaving home. It also gave the guitar-playing Pence the opportunity to preach with the zeal of a new convert to right-wing Christianity. His schoolmate Linda Koon recalls a charismatic fellow who turned cruel when she failed to meet his definition of true faith.

Koon's problem was that she couldn't recount a dramatic come-to-Jesus tale of Christian conversion. "He acted like he had been struck by lightning," she said. "I had just grown up in the Lutheran Church and had always been a Christian. That wasn't good enough. He told me that wasn't good enough, 'God doesn't want your kind.' It was a very narrow view of an infinite being."...As she told us in an interview, Pence's evaluation of her fervor was followed by a recitation of her supposed sins, including her attendance at a wild party at the fraternity where Pence was in charge. Koon says she left the session in tears, and was subsequently shunned by the members of the prayer group. After a temporary loss of faith, she undertook a new religious journey that led her to a more open-minded perspective. But the pain of the loss she experienced at Hanover remains. "There's a part of me who is still 18," says Koon, "and I still feel it."

Judging a peer who came to you in confidence with an immense personal problem? Just the way Jesus would have done it.

The pain is more acute for the gay man who lived down the hall from Pence at Hanover and considered him a mentor. Almost 40 years after they met, Pence's schoolmate asked to speak anonymously as he recalled that Pence was the first person he ever told about his sexual orientation. "I went to him because I respected him. Mike told me that who I was was an abomination, and that I had to change. He also stopped being my friend."

And, finally, sizing up the future Mother Pence and finding her at first inadequate to the Kingdom Of God In Pence? What do you think?

Remarkably, this Hanover alumnus said, Pence was almost as judgmental about his wife-to-be, Karen, as he was about gay students. "He told me that he needed to forgive her because she had been married before and wasn't a virgin. It had taken a while for him to get there, but he had forgiven her. He couldn't forgive me in the same way and it was a long time before I came out to anyone else."

This is the guy who is about four Diet Cokes, one clogged coronary artery, and/or a massive rage-tweet-induced aneurysm away from the presidency of the United States. And, again, it did not take Donald Trump to make Mike Pence a twisted, god-bothering, judgmental and successful political reptile. All that took was the Republican Party. In conclusion, let me borrow the Blessed Molly Ivins's sign-off from her now-legendary takedown of Camille Paglia.

Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole."

Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia:

Sheesh, what an asshole.

[Solly Mack]

1. Yikes. He browbeat his "Mother" into submission.

From reading the article, it tells me Pence has made his wife's life a living hell. He made her feel damaged. Tainted. Dirty.

She is living a life where she will never - ever - measure up to his ideal woman (or "godliness" ) and I'll wager he has held that over her head their entire time together.

And, she, obviously too weak to challenge him, has become as close to that warped perfection as she could - through years of bending to his distorted thinking. So much so she has become peripheral to her own life, her own marriage.

Only something and somebody if he is something or somebody - and then only if he allows it.

Yeah, I know I'm surmising a lot from a little but I've worked shelters for abused women and this is not a new story to me.

[FakeNoose]

8. Hopefully "Mother" will outlive her husband by 10 or 15 years

I'm sure they will be the best years of her sad, sorry life.

[Va Lefty]

2. Jeez, what an asshole!

[smirkymonkey]

3. He is as delusional and insane as Trump, just in a different way.

He sounds insufferable.

[yonder]

4. There doesn't appear to be much "pay it forward" in misguided Mike.

[mcar]

5. K&R

[Totally Tunsie]

6. CNN Opinion column is running this as a 3-part series

authored by Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner.

I've read Parts 1 and 2, but can't yet find the remaining Part 3.

I'm wondering why Esquire's Charles S. Pierce credits "CNN with a profile" when CNN is not the originator of this writing, and neglects to credit the rightful authors. Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner, who corroborated on "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence". D'Antonio is also the author of "The Truth About Trump".

[link:https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/28/opinions/mike-pence-plan-to-outlast-trump-dantonio-eisner/index.html|

][link:https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/29/opinions/pence-went-to-college-found-god-dantonio-eisner/index.html|

From CNN:
Editor's Note: This article is the first in a series of three by Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner, the authors of the new book, "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence." The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own.

[Hekate]

7. Kick and retch

[dhill926]

12. haha...too true....

[Danascot]

9. Damn, he's an inquisitor

in search of an inquisition.

[byronius]

10. Clearly some super-deep-seated stuff going on down in that dark machine.

Last edited Thu Aug 30, 2018, 09:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Always, always, ALWAYS the outward judgement in balance with the self-hatred.

This man has some intense reason to hate himself -- something he's harmed, or something he felt that terrified him into near-insanity.

Every pious, patriotic man who stands behind Donald Trump in these days stands instantly revealed as a traitorous apostate.

[pangaia]

14. Excelent diagnosis of pense.

[Ligyron]

16. Right?

"instantly revealed" Spot on.

[DinahMoeHum]

11. Just remember, even his fellow Hoosiers couldn't stand him. . .

. . .and were prepared to deny him a second term as Governor, when Trump & Co. came to his aid.

[highplainsdem]

13. I guess he missed the "judge not" part of the Bible...along with everything else worthwhile in it.

He's an authoritarian sociopath in fake-spiritual clothing.

[3catwoman3]

17. The "judge ye not" part seems to be forgotten by...

...a lot of the holier-than-thou types. May Pense's own Judgement Day come very soon.

I cannot stand self-righteous pricks.

[lunatica]

15. He's convinced he can do it better than God

A common malady among religious sadists. They don the mantle of doing god’s work, only “better”. The way it should be.