Is U.S. Senator David Vitter brain dead or what? The Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar is making a career out of breathtaking stupid  stunts. As I reported yesterday, the Sarah Palin brain epidemic has infected Louisiana Governor Bobby (Smarty Pants) Jindal—another Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar. However, I expect him to partially recover after television cameras leave the Gulf Coast and he quits saying stupid things that contradict experts.

Senator Vitter is a more challenging case. He has been haunted by hookers throughout much of his political career—first in his hometown of New Orleans and later in the nation’s Capitol where he was identified as a prostitution client of notorious D.C. madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey. The irony of the disclosure is remarkable. Vitter’s voice was among the loudest in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. 

Despite world class hypocrisy—a level of which challenges a title long held by TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart—Vitter’s voting record causes far-right conservatives to wet their britches in glee, an appropriate reaction to a politician whose paid paramours claimed he had a diaper-wearing fetish.   

If any doubts remain about Vitter’s quirks and misogyny, he erased the questions by allowing an aide with a criminal record of domestic abuse to act as the “women’s issues” representative in his Washington Senate office. 

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/23/vitter_aide_abuse 

At a photo op last week when Vitter officially registered as a candidate for re-election, he refused to discuss the aide’s misconduct and position on his staff. The Senator abruptly ended an impromptu news conference and fled from the courthouse. In an editorial today, the Baton Rouge Advocate took him to task over the issue and his unwillingness to offer an explanation.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/98293574.html

I figured Vitter would lay low for a couple of days. But I learned long ago that desperate politicians are apt to embrace any issue they believe consituencies support. The Republican Senator obviously believed he was standing before a rally of morons Sunday evening when he voiced his support for lawsuits by so-called birthers, who continue to question whether President Obama was born in Hawaii.  

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100713/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_republican_senator_birthers

And the now the video.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/david-vitter-birther-gop_n_644031.html

Because the nation’s mental institutions are already overcrowded, birthers have been deemed harmless to our health and safety, and are allowed to run free in society. In fact, a good number of these folks were cured of the birther delusion by learning to read something besides viral e-mail. Vitter and former CNN commentater Lou Dobbs—another Harvard graduate, believe it or not—may be last “educated” people in the country to exploit the birther issue.

Anyway, I wait with bated breath for Senator Vitter’s next stupid stunt. He is far more entertaining that Governor Smarty Pants. Even though he has a comfortable lead in the most recent polls, I am naive enough to believe voters will recognize his shortcomings and allow him to become a lobbyist—an advocate perhaps on behalf of ladies of the evening.

I will certainly miss him when he is gone. But if  re-elected by some strange set of circumstances, I can then ask the same question I posed at the beginning of this post. But with a slight variation.

“Are Louisiana voters brain dead, or what?”

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.