“Doctor, doctor, glad I’m not sick.”

~ Bob Hope cameo, Spies Like Us , 1985

“Schlotkin! Go work on your putz.”

~ Rick Moranis, Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs , 1987

In a state better served by the produce of Lynchburg, Tennessee, (“Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey. Same as our fathers made it.”), than by their Members of Congress, we have another skirt-chasing foible folly fit for a Saturday Night Live Newt Gingrich skit.

Enter Tea Party Republican freshman Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-Tenn.), another conservative formerly practicing physician who adapted so well to the hated Washington, he decided to plant roots near the Anacostia swamps. In another public service reminder to avoid trampling on anyone’s “religious liberty”, please don’t call it “evolution.” Was the lure of not having to maintain malpractice insurance that attractive?

Dr. Scotty (not the lochs and highlands laddie played by the late James Doohan on Star Trek) has a problem that’s making its rounds in the press. An old flame woman problem with a former patient-cum-mistress was once thought to be in the embarrassingly unplanned mommy-to-be kinda way several years before Desjarlais’ latter-day political opportunist revelation on the road to Damascus, er, Washington. Somehow, I doubt Dr. Desjarlais hasn’t been citing her as exemplifying his caring bedside manner as a physician. The state board which “giveth and taketh away” medical licenses might not be impressed.

Somehow Doc Desjarlais’ “family (on the side) values” might not resonate all that well with Appalachian voters. This isn’t Louisiana, where Sen. David “Diaper Boy” Vitter (R) got a 2010 reelection “[Motel room] Sportsmen’s Paradise” golf mulligan despite his D.C. Madam phonebook schtupping “diversity” of the commercial variety. At least Vitter was smart enough to not further inspire late night comedy writers by calling it “job” creation. Desjarlais’ troublesome recorded phone conversation apparently before his divorce finalized in 2001 might be a hair in Desjarlais’ campaign soup, if he had any functioning follicles left on top.

Well, apparently after having reviewed Mitt Romney’s personal corporate copy of Joseph Smith’s golden tablets with ideologically-correct conservative magic spectacles, there was now no embarrassing pregnancy after all, ergo, no dreaded abortion to muddy Desjarlais’ supposedly virginal anti-abortion credentials. Hundreds of millions of people might buy into the fable of “virgin birth”, but probably not this politically-inspired twist after a few missed months. The late actor Jim Nabors, as 60s TV character Gomer Pyle, might say: “Well shazzam, Sgt. Carter!”

I often wonder if there is a crazy contest picking Tennessee members of Congress. Ditzy Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) regularly embarrasses herself as “Michele Bachmann South.” What a pair!

In final weeks politicking damage control mode, the dinged Desjarlais campaign uneasily touted Doc Desjarlais current marriage as a paragon of domestic bliss. How Gingrich of him.



