Las Vegas Weekly

Hush, Mr. Hampton

Oy. It’s a given that John Ensign is unethical and should get gone. Right now, it’s poor, poor pitiful Doug Hampton who’s annoying the hell out of us. Maybe it’s that his timing is way off in complaining about the amount of hush money he’s been given to be okay with his wife copulating with the senator. It’s a recession, man! Countless people are floundering. How sympathetic should we be that Mr. Hampton may have gotten a mere $96,000 in restitution “gifts,” along with a cushy job at an airline from the Promise-Keeping friend whose coattails he’d been riding forever?

After watching Jon Ralston’s interviews and reading Hampton’s letter to Fox News and considering Hampton’s deep feelings of “needing to be made whole,” it seems he needs a reality check. It sucks, but: 1) Cindy Hampton was apparently complicit. Maybe she should pay her husband some restitution. 2) Sadly, families are wrecked by affairs every day. They don’t get restitution. 3) Lots of people might’ve left Ensign’s employ after realizing he was sleeping with their wife. Put some distance in there rather than continue to have prayer meetings and backyard barbecues with him.

“The magnitude of what has happened to our life has settled in,” Hampton told Ralston. Nope, not yet.