Darkside Rainbow

If you haven’t been paying attention to the actions of the U.S. presidential candidates and the hawks-eye media attention to their every tiny blunder, you may have missed the uproar when candidate Tommy Thompson made a somewhat ambiguous statement that nonetheless implied that it was perfectly acceptable for an employer to fire a homosexual worker based on their own personal moral beliefs towards homosexuality.

Thompson already apologized for it once, and well he should have, but apparently his story’s getting bigger and more elaborate as he goes along.

Thompson offers second apology on antigay comment - Advocate.com

Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker.

Speaking to reporters after giving an address at the state GOP convention, Thompson also said he was suffering from the flu and bronchitis and had been admitted to a hospital emergency room three days prior to the May 3 debate.

”Nobody knows that,” Thompson said. ”I’ve been very sick…. I was very sick the day of the debate. I had all of the problems with the flu and bronchitis that you have, including running to the bathroom. I was just hanging on. I could not wait until the debate got off so I could go to the bathroom.”

I’m having a moment in which my sympathetic side and my cynical side are having a bit of a war with each other.

My sympathetic side reminds me of the number of times I’ve inadvertently blurted out tactless things that I didn’t mean, offended someone, and had to apologize for it. (It doesn’t happen as often as you think, so stop laughing.) Just because Thompson’s a politician doesn’t mean that he’s exempted from the common human compulsion to occasionally have a nibble on one’s own toes, and everyone blunders now and then. Forgiveness is necessary or we wouldn’t function as a society, because no single one of us is perfect and everyone’s going to have an off day now and then.

My cynical side is just snorting in derision and saying, “Come on. How many scrabbling excuses is he going to make up? Especially after that remark he made to that Jewish group.” Seriously, it’s a bit of a far reach. First it’s a faulty hearing aide and a bladder problem, now he’s throwing clandestine hospital visits into the mix? I like to try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but that’s starting to strain credibility just a little. I’ve always heard that the more elaborate your lie, the harder it is to believe.

Apparently I’m not the only one to think so.

”How many times is he going to say something that’s completely offensive to the majority of Americans before people start to say ‘What’s going on here?’ ” said Jason Stephany, political director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

So which way do you lean? Embarrassing and forgivable error…or is Thompson just a tactless oaf who later has to backtrack and try to cover his mistakes?

And considering who we’ve elected into office the past two terms in a row…in all truth, is it really going to affect his chances in the presidential race at all?

tommy thompson, presidential candidates, presidential debates, gop, politicians, political blunders, anti-semitic remarks, homophobic remarks