'Mom, Dad—I Need $96K'

[babylonsister]

'Mom, Dad—I Need $96K'

by Kathleen Parker

John Ensign admitted this week that his parents paid off his mistress. The Daily Beast’s Kathleen Parker wonders how exactly the senator hit up his aging parents for money.

snip//

Bailing out children is a time-honored tradition among parents, though not usually into said child’s fifties. We do what we can when Skipper loses her lunch money, pay for college if we can, help out with the first-day-at-work suit. But paying off a girlfriend well into middle-age?

Dad has to be at least 70 and probably much older, possibly in his 80s. The sort of groveling one imagines taking place is repulsive to consider. Then again, Ensign has no true shame and less dignity. His hand-written letter to his former paramour, Cindy Hampton, apparently to confess his sin, is a staggering work of narcissistic indulgence that makes South Carolina Governor Mark Stanford look like John Keats.

First he tells the woman that this is the most important letter “that I’ve ever written,” yet doesn’t trouble himself to insert a “Dear” before Cindy, followed by a comma. Just: Cindy

Then he states the obvious, that he was “completely self-centered” (and that’s changed?). But worse, worser and worst, he says, “I used you for my own pleasure.” Whereupon every woman between the shining seas gagged in unison: Achhhhh.

No wonder Cindy and husband, Doug Hampton, demanded money from this chump. First you insult the man by sleeping with his wife, then you insult them both by saying you only used her? At least Sanford lost his mind in head-over-heels LUV. Ensign didn’t have the decency to fake affection.

I suppose a parents’ love is never exhausted, as long as there’s hope around the bend. But is there anything less manly than an adult male who can’t even manage his own affair? And how does one calculate the value of a woman’s company? I’m not sure what’s more insulting to the Hamptons – a letter that doesn’t so much as hint that Cupid won the war of wills, or the low, low price of $96,000 for the use of another man’s wife.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-10/mom-dad-i-need-96k/full/

[lamp_shade]

1. I suspect that in the very near future, he'll be living in his dear parent's basement.

[Warpy]

2. I know what my parents would have told me

"Well, then, you'd better get a second job and start earning it."

My folks were heavily into tough love and certainly wouldn't have been impressed with the illicit extramarital kind.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. One would think he would have the money.

After all, he has to be making SOMETHING bestowing oral favors to K Street.

I understand his credulous parents paid up to keep the paper trail legal.

[MADem]

4. Was that cash against his inheritance, a loan, or money he had put by for them in the past? nt

[kestrel91316]

9. Dad is a casino mogul with bazillions. $96k was pocket change.

[MADem]

11. Ah, an advance payment on his inheritance, then! nt

[Uben]

5. If he just wanted to use her......

...why didn't he get a prostitute? Woulda been a lot cheapeer!

[Wetzelbill]

6. damn that is some serious cash

That was some expensive sex, geez. I'd like to say us guys will learn at some point, but we never will. I can't believe he actually paid it, what a horrid move.

[tanyev]

7. Hey, Kathleen, you left out the part where Ensign called his mistress

right after mailing the letter and told her to disregard it and then continued the affair for six more months.


And yet, Hampton said that soon after ditching his detail of religious protectors, Ensign called Cindy to warn her that the letter was coming and that she should disregard it. Twenty-four hours after sending the letter, said Hampton, Ensign was with Cindy in Las Vegas.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/hampton_religious_buddies_drove_ensign_to_fedex_to.php

[TankLV]

8. Well, at least now we know WHAT the "other woman" was...

Madam - if I gave you a million dollars, would you have sex with me?

Sure - but you don't have a million dollars!

Would you have sex with me for TEN dollars, then?

SURELY NOT! What kind of a woman do you think I am?

Madam - we both know WHAT you are, we're now just trying to settle on the PRICE!

[Schema Thing]

10. While I agree with the gist of this....

Kathleen Parker and I are obviously in very different economic strata :P~