Saturday, June 25, 2016

Kenneth Starr's Scarlet Letter

At least some of you, depending on the quality of your eduational system, may have read Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter."  The letter in question is A, forced to be worn by Hester Prynne after being found guilty of adultery, but (spoiler alert) later on found to be on the chest of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, her lover and the father of her daughter.  This theme, with its New Testament echoes (the parable of the splinter and the beam, for example), reoccures again and again in our culture:  the chief condemmnor of sinners is exposed as a sinner himself (or herself).

So, as it turns out, it is with Kenneth Starr, Bill Clinton's chief legal tormentor in oppositon to the then-President's sexual proclivities.  The man who simply couldn't stand the thought of the President of the United States using the Oval Office for an affair with an intern turns out to have been, while president and chancellor of Baylor University, someone who turned a blind eye to incidents of sexual abuse.

And he got his comeuppance for it.  The arc of history is long, but it does indeed bend toward justice. Good riddance.

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