Having been forced, as a news junkie, to read/watch/listen to numerous commentaries/articles/reports from our vast media empires who have declared open-season on the President of the United States, I find that no one seems to have homed in on the real point. The real point here is that the President has engaged in the kind of behavior that many past (and current) leaders have enjoyed with impunity (regardless of whether that behavior be in any sense right or wrong); but the current press pack mentality has parlayed every snatch of innuendo, gossip, backbiting behavior by political opponents, every salacious detail imaginable, into a free-for-all which is not only disgusting, hypocritical and hyperbolic, but the true betrayal of the public trust.

The betrayal here is not by the President, as so many pundits would have it, but by the press -- historically the fourth branch of our democratic form of government -- whose job it should be to report the news and views of our times. Instead they are creating and then feeding on a highly skewed perception of reality in which what has generally been considered private behavior takes on the role of center-stage while real news is ignored. Thus our public perception of this President has nothing to do with the real role he has been elected to perform; and we as a nation are publicly embarrassed by our press repeatedly, ad nauseum, going after salacious tidbits in press conferences meant for the discussion of serious world affairs.

So, yes, I feel betrayed as a US citizen, not by the man I voted for because of his well-spoken aspirations for the benefit of this country, for the positive policies he espouses in which I also believe, for the wonderful hard work he does on a daily basis despite the extraordinary difficulties not only of the job, but also those heaped upon him by his political enemies intent on keeping him jumping through ridiculous hoops based on a code of morality seldom seriously followed (or expected) of public figures. I feel betrayed by the news media who seem to have changed their job description from disseminating the news to ring-mastering a sad and vicious circus act which distorts our perceptions of both this President and the real issues of the world we share.

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We have all developed our personal morality through the way we were raised and, hopefully, life experience. This is a country of vast diversity, home to folks from many other nations and a great variety of religions/moral upbringings. That is why I voted for Clinton (twice) and would again, in a heartbeat. He was the only candidate, and then the only President of which I am aware, who spoke so movingly to the idea of diversity -- including his "Cabinet that looks like America" filled with bright ambitious people of various ethnicities and gender, instead of a bunch of old white men. Despite personal peccadillos (and, honestly, even if we don't have sex at all, don't we all have characteristics or engage in activities of which we may not be proud, or certainly which we would not want made public?), what this man stands for is the bringing together of the diverse peoples of America into a possibility of cooperation rather than being divided by fear and hatred.

For me, it was never "the economy, stupid." It was always about moral values -- yes, the real values that we need to belong to a country we can all be proud of, that we can all claim despite our differences, because we can all learn to work together and take pride in those differences as each of us brings our unique talents, viewpoints and values together for the greater good of us all. And, you know, that starts with forgiving each other our trespasses, as we would want to be forgiven ourselves, and looking to what is good and valuable in each of us to raise ourselves up to the highest possibilities.