The Ick Factor Rides Again

It's happened so many times you'd think it would be obvious by now. If you talk loudly about the "sanctity of marriage" to prevent gays and lesbians from participating in that same sanctity, if you fly your "family values" on a very large and public flagpole, if you set yourself up as a yardstick by which everyone else should structure their moral lives - if you do all that, you'd darn well better walk the walk. Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Helen Chenoweth, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston - the list of hypocrites goes on and on.

And now we can add Michael Duvall, a California state representative from Orange County, to that roster of shame. He is a conservative Republican who opposes gay marriage while touting his own marriage and two children.

Indeed, he is so far to the right he received a 100% rating from the Capitol Resource Institute, an explicitly Christian lobbying group set up "to educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature." (Of course, their definition of "family" excludes same-sex families.) And just for good measure, he introduced a bill banning the creation and sale of T-shirts with the names of dead soldiers alongside such political statements as "Bush Lied," etc.

So what did he do? The OC Weekly reports that just before the start of a committee meeting, he was regaling a colleague with some rather gross details of his romps with not one but two women not his wife when his microphone went live, broadcasting his words on TV. (I will not get into the sordid intricacies of Duvall's bragging, mostly because thinking about them makes me want to saw off the top of my head and scrub out my brain with a Brillo pad. If you're a masochist who revels in the Ick Factor, have at it.)

As if to prove that yes, it can get worse, both women are lobbyists for companies regulated by his committee. For his part, Duvall never even tried being discreet:

Legislative sources say they have witnessed Duvall, who is vice chairman of the Assembly's powerful Committee on Utilities & Commerce, socializing after-hours with [Heidi] Barsuglia [one of his lobbyist mistresses]. Sources - who asked for anonymity because of Duvall's power in the capital - say Susan Duvall usually stays in Orange County during the week, when her husband flies to Sacramento. They also say they have seen Duvall with Barsuglia in restaurants, "arm-in-arm" at political fund-raising events and even shopping together for groceries just blocks from the capitol building.

"Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in Sacramento," a capitol staffer recently told me. "He's old and fat. She's hot, blonde and about 20 years younger. He could have never gotten a woman like that before he got this job.'"

So we have the specter - again - of a moral high-horse type who doesn't bother to live up to his own standards, and who is literally in bed with the lobbyists to boot.

After the scandal broke, Duvall tried explaining it away by issuing a statement saying "I deeply regret the comments I made in what I believed to be a private conversation." Didn't work; the howls kept coming. So late today, he finally gave up and resigned:

I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly, who are working hard on the very serious problems facing our state. I have come to the conclusion that it would not be fair to my family, my constituents or to my friends on both sides of the aisle to remain in office. Therefore, I have decided to resign my office, effective immediately, so that the Assembly can get back to work.

Note that he doesn't regret the hypocrisy or the corruption, only that he was caught bragging about it.

You really think they would have figured it out by now: if you can't or won't keep it in your pants, don't lecture anyone else about it.