The Politics of Victimhood

Ed Lasky discusses a NY Times sob story on Representative William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana. Break out your violins:

Representative William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, has reportedly been photographed accepting $100,000 of cash, $90,000 of which was discovered in his freezer. Does the Times thunder in outrage over this betrayal? Not a bit. It offers excuses, in this article by Christopher Drew and Robert Pear. Some excerpts:

Representative William J. Jefferson has always liked to talk about growing up in an impoverished farm community, picking cotton for $3 a day and hitting the books hard enough to win his ticket out — a scholarship to Harvard Law School. [....]
...a remarkable ascent from the deepest poverty and a quest for the comforts his family never had. [....]
Mr. Jefferson was raised, along with eight brothers and sisters, on a small farm in northeast Louisiana, where, he said earlier this year, “our whole life revolved around that cotton field.” His father left school after second grade, and his mother attended only through eighth grade. [....]