Christina O’Donnell Has No Cojones

Former Atlanta Falcon’s football star Michael Vick told his former coach, Jim Mora Jr., in an interview that will air today, that his entire life, A-Z, was a lie. Though much-maligned for his lifestyle, including dog-fighting and animal-cruelty, Vick seems to have confronted his past misdeeds and turned his life around. He has confronted and “owned” his past and made amends. He has had the courage – the “cojones” to use the term embraced by the right – to “man up.” It would be nice if Christine O’Donnell had the courage to do the same.

Because her entire life, like Vick’s, seems to have been a lie, A-Z.

She even lied about lying. In fact, it seems there is no lie she is unwilling to tell. If there is, she hasn’t met it yet. Christine O’Donnell is the lie that keeps on giving.

Interestingly, while lying and lying about lying, she’s also claiming that God is on her side. I mean, she doesn’t just get a feeling: “During the primary, I heard the audible voice of God. He said, ‘Credibility.’”

And that’s not all:

“God continued to strengthen and empower us when, you know, his strength is perfected in our weakness,” O’Donnell told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Because you see that if it weren’t for faith, when all logic said it’s time to quite, we pursued, we marched on, because we knew God was not releasing us to quit.”

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me as though O’Donnell is saying God empowered her to lie and has not given her permission to stop lying. She is lying for God.

Let’s see if we can catch up with O’Donnell’s lies. The Washington Monthly lists her miscues:

• O’Donnell claimed to have graduated with a bachelor’s from Fairleigh Dickinson years before she actually earned a degree;
• O’Donnell lied about having studied at Oxford;
• O’Donnell lied again about post-grad work at Princeton;
• O’Donnell lied about a fellowship at Claremont Graduate University; and,
• O’Donnell’s campaign staff argued yesterday that the bogus claims were part of the candidate’s LinkedIn bio, but O’Donnell wasn’t responsible for that unauthorized bio and she shouldn’t be blamed for its inaccuracies. Isn’t everyone responsible for their own bio. Do unauthorized people write yours? Sounds like another lie to me.

And so it proved to be, because it was not only on LinkedIn that O’Donnell told these lies.

• The Washington Post reports that, “[T]he claim that Christine O’Donnell studied at Oxford has now turned up on a second O’Donnell online resume, this one from ZoomInfo” and “The Zoom Info entry was labeled, “user verified.” Proof, in other words, that O’Donnell herself put it there.

According to TPM:

• O’Donnell told similar lies on her MySpace page;
• O’Donnell told similar lies on her 2008 campaign website;
• O’Donnell told similar lies on her 2006 campaign website;
• O’Donnell’s 2002 resume for Claremont Institute listed Oxford University;
• O’Donnell included deceptive information about her education in court filings; and
• O’Donnell repeated related false claims during recent media interviews.

These are a lot of lies and for her to insist it’s all a misunderstanding or a mistake is a weak defense.  She lied, and she lied early and often.

And she says God told her to do it. A libelous statement if I ever heard one.

Washington Monthly lists some of O’Donnell’s other qualifications for office:

• suspected campaign embezzlement;
• suspected tax fraud;
• rejection of science;
• hatred of gays;
• background in witchcraft;

Of course, the whole witchcraft charge is too absurd to do anything but titillate an uninformed media.

We might also add that O’Donnell is a creationist and that she is anti-environmentalist.

An example of just how crazy O’Donnell is: Example: “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”

And, “”You know what, evolution is a myth.” / “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

She clearly didn’t read Darwin and she just as obviously does not understand the theory of evolution.

How about this one?: In 2002 and 2006 she said that condoms are “anti-human” and “will not protect you from AIDS.”

And women should love this one. We know conservative men do: When asked if she was a feminist this was her response: Asked if she considered herself a feminist, O’Donnell said: “Absolutely, but let me qualify that — I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.”

Christine O’Donnell is perhaps qualified for office on ideological grounds; that is, she may pass current Republican purity standards, but she is not qualified along any other lines. As to the issues, wanting to make English the official language of the United States and ensuring lunatic right-wing fringers are well-armed are not really qualifications for office.

Is it any surprise O’Donnell has fled from appearances not only on Face the Nation but FOX News Sunday? As MediaMatters says, O’Donnell “has now made it clear she won’t appear on any Fox News program that (might!) ask her uncomfortable questions.”

What we have here is, in a way, the ultimate candidate for the Republican Party: a fake candidate to represent a fake nation, a woman touting a past that doesn’t exist wishing to represent a United States that doesn’t exist. Both are products of the imagination and in many ways well suited to one another. But they are not what America needs. America needs real people willing to confront not only America’s past but its future.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.