Our American Double Standards

I'm waiting for the shit to hit the fan on the whole Lewis 'Scooter' Libby/Bush pardon issue, which isn't really an issue yet, but will be.

Most of the media is reporting a likely or at least highly speculated pardon of Vice President Dick Cheney's former aide, convicted of perjury in the case of outed CIA bunny Valerie Plame.

Will George W. Bush create a new firestorm controversy by pardoning Libby or will he take a pass, angering those who say Libby was an obvious scapegoat to save Cheney's job? It's a sad thing we're even talking about such things.

But while pardoning anyone convicted of a crime should be absolutely abolished due to the elitist double standard it creates and the message it sends by proving you CAN be above the law if you know the right people, are you really surprised by it? It's nothing new.

Paris Hilton sits in a special jail cell in Los Angeles today, isolated from the other inmates and having received very special treatment in both the booking of her entry and in the way her case has been handled. If I were a resident of Los Angeles, I'd be hard pressed to stand in the street and protest until I was joined by thousands of others. One nation, one set of rules and one set of punishment guidelines for all of us, right?

From Richard Nixon to Martha Stewart to OJ Simpson, seems like our judicial process is one giant set of double standards. Why's it okay for an unattractive woman convicted of drunk driving to sit in a general population cell in the Los Angeles Women's Correctional Facility while Paris Hilton receives such preferential treatment? This is all rambling of course but my frustration isn't as much with the system as it is with our general population's complicity about the whole thing.

Posted by JD on June 6, 2007 10:37 AM