Good Ol' Family Values

I can't say that I take pleasure in seeing a prominent religious public figure crash and burn under the weight of their own hypocrisy.

Wait a minute... yes I can!

Poor Sarah Palin. Everything seemed to be going so well for her. She was living a truly Christian life - getting pregnant out of wedlock and (likely) rushing into marriage to try to cover it up, promoting abstinence while living with proof that it doesn't work (and teaching her kids to do the same), inspiring fear and hatred in the 'Other' who was running for president, attacking liberal comedians as pedophiles who shouldn't be trusted around children because she couldn't figure out a joke, firing public safety commissioners out of personal vendettas, and sparking rumors of federal indictments for embezzlement.

You know... the sort of pious moral superiority that can only come with a proper religious background. Oh, well; at least she'll soon be mostly out of the limelight and won't have to face that darn liberal media for a while.

This isn't anything new. Religious leaders and religious politicians who tout their values as a sign of just how gosh-darn genuinely religious they are have a bad habit of violating their values in a very, very public way. Larry Craig, anti-homosexuality polemicist; Ted Haggard, megachurch preacher and moral role model; John Ensign, who said Bill Clinton had "no integrity left" after the whole Lewinsky deal; Mark Sanford, who loves to hike the Appalachian trail; Mark Foley, outspoken opponent of child pornography and the exploitation of children and part-time pen pal of underage Congressional pages; Jimmy Swaggart, who made a habit of exposing the indiscretions of his fellow evangelical leaders; and many other religious and political leaders.

Must be very convenient that you can go out and sin all throughout the week, then come back to church on Sunday and get saved all over again!