I must admit that I found the term “pluperfect subjunctive” to be more than a little perplexing.  The more someone who actually understood the concept tried to explain it to me, the more confusing it became.  I ultimately decided that no one else actually understood it either, so on several occasions, for pure entertainment purposes, I would comment that a particular phrase was the classic example of the pluperfect subjunctive.  No one ever challenged me, probably because they either didn’t really care or more likely because no one wanted to admit they were also clueless.

Now we have political theater with regard to Senator Menendez that may actually make the pluperfect subjunctive more than a little appropriate.  A subjunctive is basically a verb that is used to express contingent or hypothetical rather than real action.  Since the action is viewed subjectively, it is called subjunctive.  Pluperfect actually means past perfect and it is used to describe an action that took place prior to some other past action.  An example would be:  “when I got to the dock, the ship had already sailed.”  In this case the Washington Post is saying that when they arrived, the prostitute who previously said Menendez did now said he didn’t.   A word to the wise, it would probably have worked out better if they got the right girl.

The Washington Post and the Daily Caller are now engaged in screaming at each other about who did the worse job of reporting.  A couple of things should be obvious.   For one, someone was paying $60,000 for Menendez to spend a couple of days in the Dominican Republic.  If you think Menendez, or his bff spent that kind of jingle for a nice beach and some great margaritas, rational thinking is probably not your strong suite.  But more important, the Senator’s conduct reeks of political corruption and payback.  Frankly, the sex party is probable the least important of his problems.  It is impossible to read this story without realizing that the Senator was bought and paid for big time.  There should be bi-partisan disgust with such blatant corruption on display.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect that if Menendez was a Republican, the Washington Post would not have bothered sending a reporter down there to check this out.  They would have just assumed he was guilty as sin.  If nothing else, he would have been guilty of being a Republican.

Now Menendez is claiming that this horribly flawed Washington Post article is proof positive of his innocence.  That is like O.J. Simpson claiming that because Mark Fuhrman lied about using the N word O.J’s DNA magically appeared on the knife used to kill his ex-wife.  Oops…that actually worked.

Like I said:  “pluperfect subjunctive.”

TDM