Do as I say, not as I do. Again.

Well, the Vic Sprouse thing has reared its ugly head, again. Back in March, in one of my all time favorite posts, "Hoppy to Vic: Lay off the sauce, dude," I reported on the Vic Sprouse marital problems issue. If you don't know, Vic Sprouse the Republican Minority Leader in the State Senate is now going through divorce number three. That in and of itself, is no big deal. However, when you are the legislative leader of the party that is constantly espousing all kinds of bible banging, right wing, FAMILY VALUES rhetoric, to have your leader constantly in relationship trouble, is a bit awkward, especially when it appears chronic marital infidelity is an issue. Supposedly, he left wife #2 for wife #3. Wife #3 is the former Amy Mckinley, daughter of former Republican Gubernatorial candidate, David McKinely. [EDIT: I also now have it on good authority that Sprouse and wife #2 were separated, albeit apparently only briefly, when he began seeing Ms. McKinley, but that other affairs were in fact the reason for the ending of marriage #2. While there is always a bit of "he said, she said/every story has two sides" to these things, the overall point of the post still stands, namely that Sprouse has a chronic maritial infidelity problem while he operates as the leader of the "family values" wing of the senate.] And evidently, he left her for some other local gal just over a year ago. What makes all this even more scandalous (and actually more accurately, just simply sad) than that he just bailed on Amy, he did it while she was only a couple months pregnant with his son.

But the story doesn't end there. When their son (Maxwell) was born, he was born a couple months premature, with CHARGE syndrome, a rare condition that has many associated physical, and developmental obstacles for Maxwell to overcome. When Mrs. McKinely-Sprouse was pregnant, but separated, she moved to Washington State to be near her sister, and Maxwell was born out there last summer. She has documented her experiences with Maxwell and about CHARGE syndrome on her blog (which was mentioned in the Charleston Gazette the other day), and interspersed in her blog entries are several comments about her current dealings with Slick Vic regarding their upcoming divorce hearing. Evidently, (according to Mrs. McKinley Sprouse) Slick Vic only wants to pay what the court requires him to pay. Needless to say, the medical costs for Maxwell are in a word, staggering. You can read all about the physical, emotional, and financial struggles surrounding Max and Amy on her blog. I don't need to reproduce them all here. But I will say some of the comments on her blog lead one to believe that Slick Vic feels that Maxwell's extraordinary medical costs shouldn't be his burden, and that somehow, governmental aid, or welfare type programs should pay for his son's medical costs. That's awful convenient, considering Slick Vic can't ever seem to shut his trap about cutting this tax, or that tax, or reducing government, or cutting this program or that. The Fifth Column nailed it. He's the epitome of the "I got mine, you get yours" republican.

But, back to the "scandal." Who exactly is the "new woman" in Vic's life? According to some comments posted in another local blog, the trail leads to Lesleigh Lanning, who apparently is connected to the legislature. Of course, I'm going waaaaaaaaaay out on a limb here, and this is all based on information gleaned from another blog's comment section. If this information is incorrect, I'll be more than happy to take the information down, and issue a very heartfelt public apology to Ms. Lanning. But based on the information I have available at this time, it's pretty solid.

So, you ask, "Bing, aside from all this gossip, how the hell does this relate to West Virginia politics?" It's like this. When you have people who are supposedly running the State, like Sprouse, and they are constantly talking the talk to the everyday peons, they better damn sure be walking the walk, too. It's the same crap you had in the Rick Staton and Lisa Smith situations. You have the politicians telling the public they need to do this, or need to pay that, or act this way, or not do that. And then you find out, the legislators themselves, are doing just the opposite. And some of the loudest, and most shrill lecturing comes from the republicans on stuff like "family values." If this whole "famliy values" line of rhetoric is so damn important, and respecting "family values" is such a great way to go through life, why in the hell, is the leader of the party that can't shut up about "family values" constantly bed-hopping on his wives? Here you have one of the legislative leaders of the party, doing the complete antithesis of what he's telling everyone else they should do. That kind of blatant, rank, outright hypocrisy, is a direct insult to the public, or at least it should be. I know it sure as hell pisses me off.

We are talking about Sprouse, who's a republican, in this post. But, the democrats do it too. So all you repubs, before you go firing off your hate emails and cluttering up the comment section with your "but, but, but the democrats........" crap, read the "And the NIMBY of the year award goes to...." post and figure in crap like how Dianne Feinstein is adamantly pro gun control, but has a concealed weapon permit. That kind of shameless, brash, arrogance and hypocrisy should be insulting enough to the public that these idiots get their asses thrown out of office, regardless of party. This "do as I say, not as I do" crap doesn't play when everyone is an adult. Maybe the voters will finally decide they don't like constantly being told to sit at the little kids' table, when Vic is up for re-election again. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2008 to see.