Michael Brodkorb was a rising star in GOP politics. He was as I recall a hotshot in the UMD College Republicans when I was still a nominal Republican. Like a lot of them he drunk pretty deeply of the self righteousness that attends political ascendancy.
Recently he was canned for having an affair, something I hinted at without any confirmation. Now its out. He was intimately involved with his female boss. In the world according to GOP its bad to threaten another person’s family. Its doubly bad to threaten your own. Brodkorb has done both.
I find it ironic that after having done this he is clinging to a very liberal claim of rights – the one having to do with sexual equality. Only heretical Republicans like me ever believed in the Equal Rights Amendment. There was always the fear that if it was passed women would find themselves in combat or that children could be torn from their mother’s breast during the dissolution of a marriage.
Yet because some female staffers have reputedly nookied with their powerful male legislators and survived to tell the tale (if they are really talking about it) with their jobs Mr. Brodkorb is planning to file a sexual discrimination suit. Well fair enough. Its the philosophically liberal way to proceed. However, I can’t help but think this is more about revenge and payback than civil rights.
Until Brodkorb lost his job he was quite willing to be just one more paramour of a powerful legislator if a male paramour. Now that he’s been fired he wants all the females in a similar situation to be called out just as he was. Of course, the hypocritical male legislators who have enjoyed non marital conjugality might quail at being exposed. I think that is rather the point. No idealism here. Certainly there is no liberal idealism from the true conservative Brodkorb. He mostly wants to show that his former bosses included people as hypocritical as he was. Either that or he’s hoping to blackmail them into giving him a big settlement for his embarrassment. If he gets it It will just prove that Mike had lots of company in the hypocrisy department.
If you are a Republican watching from the sidelines you have to hope that Mike Brodkorb mostly has Democratic dalliances to expose. Good luck with that.
