How Do They Treat the Help?

One of the important tests of character is: How does he treat the help? When Scoop Jackson, longtime senator from Washington, died, we suddenly learned how all the staff in the Senate dining room adored him. We had no idea.

The Clintons, we learned, were not liked by the White House staff. And the report on Katie Couric is that people dive for their offices when they hear her heels clicking down the hall.

Why bother to treat the help with respect? As usual, Agatha Christie has the reason. When a friend of young Agatha dissed a servant she was told off in no uncertain terms. The servant was a professional, and worked hard. And above all, because of their position, servants could not talk back.

In the US armed forces, it turns out, mistreating the help can send you out the door. Victor Davis Hanson tells of one career-ending incident. It was quite simple. Vice-Admiral Richard J. Naughton tried to enter the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis without the proper ID.

Naturally expecting that the young Marine sentry on duty would recognize his all-important superintendent, Naughton boldly tried to pass. But instead, the Marine asked him to produce identification. Angry words and some sort of altercation ensued between the admiral and the enlisted man.



Later, Naughton claimed he couldn't "remember" whether he had "touched" the guard, but he did concede he "might" have done so.

Some skeptics thought that Naughton would skate, but he didn’t. There was a lengthy investigation and Naughton ended up resigning his position as superintendent of the academy and his commission.

In other words, the boss of Annapolis had to obey the rules or he was out.

That brings us, as you knew it would, to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. She thought the rules didn’t apply to her, either.

But she has even less class than the admiral. After an incident in which she is alleged to have struck a police officer who restrained her for bypassing a metal detector, she didn’t apologize. Instead she played the race card, the gender card, and the sexual harassment card in a naked attempt to blame the servant, in this case the Capitol Hill police officer, rather than admit that she was a “Do You Know Who I Am” narcissist and abuser of power and privilege.

Tom Delay had a telling point about the McKinney incident. He said that he would be filing ethics charges against her if nobody else did, and that he had a personal interest in the case. A few years ago, a Capitol Hill police officer died in Delay’s office, shot to death doing his job defending the congressman against an intruder who had jumped around a metal detector.

So there you have it. The superintendent of the United States Naval Academy had to resign for pushing a Marine sentry. What will happen to a congresswoman who does the same thing?

Before you judge anyone, check to see how they treat the help.