Injured Commentator Cites Belief in Bipartisanship as Reason for Staying

WASHINGTON (MNS) A well-known Washington pundit was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring early this morning for the treatment of wounds sustained in a domestic incident with a long-term partner. Though Maryland’s privacy rules do not permit disclosure of either the name or the gender of the parties involved, anonymous sources present at the health center at the time of the admittance, sustained that the person is “someone we all know from TV who is generally viewed as being quite close to both the Clintons and the Obamas”. The source, who is said to have access to important documents related to the incident and hospital admissions process went on to explain, “The victim repeatedly sobbed that ‘Bipartisanship is the reason I stayed’ “.

When clinicians asked the patient to elaborate, the victim said, again according to the source, “For years I have been preaching bipartisanship on the network airwaves and felt it important that I also walk the same walk at home. Back in 2003, even though Grover Norquist, one of the more influential strategists of the Republicans during the Bush years, said in an interview with the Denver Post, that bipartisanship is another name for date rape, I still went on air and encouraged my party to pursue it. When in 2005, the Republicans, who then controlled hearing schedules at the Capitol building, forced John Conyers to hold his inquiry on the Downing Street Memos in small basement compartment, I preached bipartisanship. When the Republicans threatened the nuclear option in judicial hearings, repeatedly left my party out of key briefings and made personal insult and the questioning of our patriotism their only real campaign tactics, I went on TV and called for bipartisanship. If I thought subjecting my party to abuse like this was a good idea, it shouldn’t surprise you that I put up with a lot of real violent crap at home.”

According to Harry Reid, the Nevada-based author of Partners Who Stay and an expert on abusive relationships, the reasons that people like the Washington pundit remain in violent domestic and/or work situations are many. There are, he says, always certain common denominators. One of these is low self-esteem. “The abused entity almost always has a very precarious or unstable sense of self. Generally speaking, victim has spent so many years donning and removing masks in the hope of pleasing others that he or she no longer has any clear idea of where his or her core instincts lie. The abuser, sensing this absence of definable limits, is quick exploit this for his or her advantage”

When asked to give examples of this highly labile personality type, he pointed to the last two Democratic Presidents of the US, “two men of enormous talents whose core personality traits were forged in peripetic and largely fatherless childhoods, precisely the type of shifting environment that can often lead to the creation of a superficially attractive but essentially anchorless ‘pleaser’ personality”.

According the Reid, economics can also play an important role in fomenting abuse. “People can get used having a certain lifestyle and are reluctant to jettison it in order to rid themselves of the abusive partner.” To illustrate his point he again recurred to a political example. “Like all politicians, Democrats like being able to appear on TV and collect corporate money for their campaigns. They know, from looking at the dollars and media coverage awarded, or more accurately, not awarded to people like Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney that denouncing systematic abuse in matters large and small will put an end to all this. And given their largely “outer-directed” personalities, most figure it is a less than attractive trade-off. Hence, they stay and put up with the abuse”.