RIVER CITY JOURNAL: DID BILL MISS SOME SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS? PROBABLY NOT

Adultery already had been invented when Bill and I were growing up, so when did he forget about hell and damnation?

Most of us have been caught up in the latest White House scandal, even if our involvement is limited to denouncing what has become lurid news from our nation's capital.

I think we are all a product of our upbringing, and since President Clinton is the first American president in history to be younger than I am, I have to wonder what has happened to job rearing in general and hotshot whippersnappers in particular.

Mind you, Bill Clinton is not a lot younger than I am, and I think he and I generally lived through the same decades that molded our lives, mainly the 1950s that are best remembered by the TV sitcoms of that era that are less archive than they are sugar-water versions of what we wish our childhoods had been.

In recent days I've tried to apply the Kelo Valley test to the president's alleged behavior regarding women who are not his wife. So help me, I can't recall any standards of my youth -- the same standards that still provide most of my moral guidance today -- that lead me to conclude it is OK to behave like the current president of the United States.

Let me tell you that men fooled around on their wives when I was young. A guy called Bill Clinton did not invent philandering. But I can also tell you in no uncertain terms that adulterers in those days did not walk away unscathed and with a 70 percent approval rating, much less the continued support of their wives.

Try to imagine this: Who in your own favorite hometown could have messed around with women and not have been cluck-clucked to death at the local beauty shop?

The preacher? I can't fathom the First You-Know-What Church of Whatever tolerating a preacher who had his way with a woman in the church study. He would have been called to greener pastures at the drop of a collection plate. In a small town, I doubt that even a Jimmy Swaggart-type boo-hooing confession would have made much of a difference. First You-Know-Whats know how to forgive, but they pick their sins carefully.

The doctor? Here's a man (yes, children, all doctors were men in those days) who knows the intimate details of every man, woman and child and is trusted to keep his wits and his pants about him. As it turns out in more recent times, even doctors from small towns mess around from time to time, but this seems to be part and parcel of a later era -- the post-Vietnam period, for example, in which people started imitating the federal government's canny knack for lying and misleading.

The teacher? As it turns out, fooling around is about the only reason you can fire a teacher. Moral turpitude is little more than high-sounding talk about hussies and young studs who can't control their hormones. I certainly remember, as a high school student, the climate in my favorite hometown when the coach started dating a student. The atmosphere was sizzling even on the coldest winter day. It would take a pretty tough teacher to stick around any community under those circumstances, even if the school board never took any official action.

Yes, I'm sure I had relatives, uncles and the like, who soiled their lives by messing around. In those days, though, every mother relied on the sorry example of Uncle Whozit to serve as a living lesson for her children, especially the boys. Can't you hear your mother? "You better watch out, or you're going to wind up just like Uncle Whozit." You knew exactly what she meant. And it hurt to think your very own mother could have such low thoughts, especially about you.

The point is this: Based on the Kelo Valley test, I can, from a distance of 40 or more years, tell you with some certainty that adultery flourished in my growing-up years just as it has since before Moses brought those stone tablets down from the mountaintop. But, doggone it, it was not acceptable. No one ever dreamed of thinking, much less saying, Oh, that's OK, he's got an important job, and he can mess around and still do a good job.

No. No one thought that. People in my growing-up years were careful to point to adulterers as victims of the wages of sin. And if you sin, you don't get 70 percent approval ratings. You go to hell. And having seen the glowing embers of a smoldering trash bin, I knew from an early age -- heck, all of my friends knew -- exactly what was in store for those poor, unfortunate souls who forsook the arms of their wives for the claws of fallen women.

I think Bill Clinton had this sort of upbringing. What I don't know is when he decided to take his chances with smoldering trash bins.

It's something none of us is ever likely to understand.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.