By all accounts Tampa socialite Jill Kelley has kept her pants on since her role emerged in the resignation of David Petraeus earlier this month.
Petraues is the West Point graduate, former leader of American forces in Afghanistan, and CIA director who resigned because he was caught opening up to his biographer. Based on his previously glowing media coverage one would think he is our generation’s version of Washington, Grant, Eisenhower, Westmoreland, and Schwarzkopf rolled up into one brassy uniform — but I digress.
Kelley was originally a minor player in this story. But the more information that pops up, like Petraeus in missionary, the more people are speaking on the record to the media about the authenticity of the 37-year-old wife of a Tampa cancer surgeon.
While the story arouses one’s curiosity about many things, it should lead us to consider how frivolously we confer status on someone or something.
Money cannot buy one class. Just as a high-profile position does not afford integrity, possessing a few degrees does not make one intelligent and cooking Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t make one a chef, money purchases many things, but not everything.
Kelley probably learned that the hard way this month as countless people have essentially called her a poser in the Tampa Bay Times and other publications because she wanted to enter South Tampa’s high society.
In high school I used yearn “to be popular.” Looking back, it was such a silly thing to strive for. Then, and now, I didn’t have the most money, world-class looks, the fanciest car, or a personality that is particularly flashy.
I would like to think I am funny. However, that may be stretching the truth, and may turn me into one of the “C.U.N.T.’s” that believe all that is superficial is all that matters.
In truth, I am a sports writer in a sleepy South Texas town that prefers to be told selective truths as opposed to the slightly snarky honest prose that has become a trademark of my writing. There is more to me than the byline people see in the newspaper most mornings.
There is more to most of us than what we post on social media, cram into a 160-character text message, or slip into a phone conversation. The Times story illustrates the Kelley’s didn’t have too many true friends in snooty South Tampa.
While it’s easy to saturate ourselves in the silly, at the end of the day little of it matters. People preen and pretend to care for others all the time. They are the people who cannot stand normal thinking, because everything is about them.
Those who are really in it for the long haul are usually the people who not only — figuratively— know when you pants were down, but tell you where to buy a new pair because your current pair are stained.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
