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Politics and strange bedfellows
Up in New York, some are saying that the only difference between Gov. Eliot Spitzer and other Albany politicians is that he paid for it. Hee, hee, hee. Then along comes the governor who replaced the governor, telling reporters that both he and his wife had extramarital affairs while he was a state senator. Tish, tish, tish. Leno, Letterman and the rest are cracking jokes right and left. Ha, ha, ha. (Can't repeat 'em. Family newspaper.) One network rushed up production of a special on prostitution - most folks watched basketball instead. Oops. The lady involved has had offers to pose for Playboy and Penthouse. Cha-ching. If not a circus, a zoo. Now, I am not going to make a blanket accusation here, but from time to time I catch a whiff of hypocrisy in all this, especially when Alabamians begin taking potshots at New York and its politicians. We've got no room to talk. Alabama indiscretions are legendary. "Big Jim" Folsom immediately comes to mind. 'Course, no one could accuse "Big Jim" of hypocrisy. Once, when a reporter asked him if it were true that he was caught sleeping with a woman in a Phenix City motel, the governor shot back, "That's a lie, nobody slept." Readily admitting his love for the ladies, Folsom would grin and observe that "if my political enemies stroll a pretty gal by ol' Jim, they'll catch him every time." Folsom could have taught Bill Clinton a thing or two. Down here, most of our Statehouse shenanigans have been discreet, at least according to the late Pete Mathews, a longtime political power up on Goat Hill. But folks digging for dirt usually found some, and once even Mr. Pete discovered himself in the middle of what promised to be a first-rate scandal. A bachelor, Mathews was known for his attention of the fairer sex, so no one would have been surprised to discover that he had occasionally taken female guests out on the state yacht at state expense - a perk of power, so to speak. But when reporters found his name appearing on the yacht's register with amazing regularity, even the most jaded of them knew a good story in the making. So, they sought out Mr. Pete and challenged him to explain. He couldn't. All he could do was swear it wasn't true, point for proof to his fair hair and sun-sensitive skin, tell of his inclination to sea sickness, and promise to get to the bottom of the matter. He did. And at the bottom he found a handful of married legislators who had expropriated his name and bachelor status for their own and put him down to hide their amorous outings from their wives. Being a gentleman, Mathews refused to name either the politicians or their guests. Mr. Pete also told stories of how senators and representatives purposely passed cosmetology legislation that would expire after one year, so that beauticians from all across the state would descend on Montgomery every session to "lobby" for their cause. Once again, he declined to reveal who got "lobbied" and what that "lobbying" involved, but the glint in his eye left no doubt that there were some things the public just didn't need to know. Admittedly, none of this matches what the former governor of New York did, but at least once we came close. The story was told to me at an Alabama Press Association meeting by an old Montgomery reporter who had been on the job since World War II. But being as discreet as Mr. Pete, I will not name names. Late one night, the reporter got a call from one of his contacts in the Montgomery Police Department. "You've gotta get down here. We've got this hooker who claims she has just been with 'so-andso' up at his office in the Capitol." Now, "so-and-so" was one of the biggest of the big, and the reporter knew that there was no way he was going to write the story based on the word of a lady of the evening. But he also knew there was no way he would miss the story being told, so he got dressed and rushed down to the station. There she was, and calm as could be she told her tale. When she finished, the interrogator asked, "How did you know it was 'so-and-so'?" "I've seen his picture a thousand times," she replied. "And what did y'all do," the investigator continued. "Nothing," she said. "All he did was talk." "It was then," the reporter told us, "that I knew she was telling the truth. "Just like an Alabama politician. All talk and no action." Seems to me Gov. Spitzer might have profited from that example.
Harvey H. Jackson grew up in Grove Hill. He is a professor and chairman of the history department at Jacksonville State University.
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