Or, We have met the enemy again!

Yesterday, I noted (correctly, I still believe) that the Petraeus/Broadwell/Jill Kelley sex scandal is just a repeat of the Clinton/Monica/Linda Tripp scandal of over a decade ago. In that case, the nation wasted years of time and millions over nothing. We're doing it again.

On the CNN morning news show, their in-house military analyst, retired General James "Spider" Marks, dolefully answered questions about it, as he is paid to do. But he used an interesting name for the likes of Jill Kelly and Paula Broadwell: "camp followers". As I recall, he said ...

These people are nothing but camp followers. There have always been camp followers and there always will be. They were following the stars. The stars were not following them.

That makes sense to me. It was the case with Clinton, too. Unable to shine as brightly as stars, Monica, Linda, Jill, and Paula all try to shine by reflected light. We have to allocate some blame to the stars too. It was their choice to invite the camp followers into the camp.

What we don't have to do is make things worse by treating any of this like it matters. While this is a personal tragedy for the people involved, it's nothing more than that. The FBI is just doing what they're paid to do. There is no smoking gun. The Hollywood tabloid treatment the story is getting doesn't say anything good about the rest of us.

I was hoping to see some news on CNN, not this. General Marks said he wished that he was talking about something else too. But, No! We have to have our noses pressed to the window of somebody else's bedroom.

Pogo is right again. We have met the enemy and he is us.