If contrition is what they truly feel, let’s grant them the space and the grace to step away from public life and the gossip mill and focus on cleaning up their mess and salvaging what they can of their marriage, their family and their lives. This could be such a moment for the Zieglers. A moment when you have a choice to continue down the selfish path you’ve created or do the more difficult and demeaning thing by admitting your egregious mistakes and committing to doing whatever you can to make amends for the negativity, hurt and damage you’ve caused. A moment when you acknowledge to yourself that the dishonest person you’ve been “being” is not the honest person you want to be. It is the one action they could take at this point that could be seen as redemptive.Ī revelation like this is one of those slap-in-the-face moments that can catalyze a lifetime epiphany. Doing so would be the first step toward showing they are more concerned about those they have hurt than they are about preserving their influence or defending their tarnished honor. (Though while we’re calling out hypocrites, how about equal time for those calling for Christian Ziegler, who has yet to be officially charged, to resign while still fervently supporting a man for the presidency who has been found liable for sexual abuse in a civil suit and criminally charged with paying hush money to cover up extramarital affairs – and who has probably been part of more throuples than the Zieglers could aspire to?)īut there are innocents who are also absorbing the impact of this scandale du jour – most notably, the alleged rape victim and the Zieglers' three young children – and they don’t deserve the oversaturation of rants, recriminations, scorn and invective that, at this point, only add fuel to an already destructive fire.Īs of this writing, neither of the Zieglers has chosen to voluntarily step down from their elected positions (though Bridget Ziegler has apparently, if not publicly, stepped back from her commitment to the conservative Leadership Institute). But more likely it’s because in my deepest core – beneath the instant judgments, flippant comments and knee-jerk emotions – I know my own flaws and character failings too well to feel entitled to cast stones.ĭon’t get me wrong: By vilifying and ostracizing some of our most vulnerable neighbors in their arrogant quest for position and power, the Zieglers caused irreparable harm and they are absolutely deserving of whatever repercussions result from that hypocrisy. More: While Florida seeks to suppress history, a Sarasota school helps us celebrate itįor one thing, it’s just not my nature to kick someone, even someone I disrespect or disdain, when they’re down. Christian Ziegler is currently the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Bridget Ziegler co-founded Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group. spoke of, was at last “bending toward justice.” We want to believe the good are rewarded and the evil are punished.Īnd though in reality that’s not often how it works out, in a world that often seems deeply unfair – the child struck with cancer the Good Samaritan hit by a car the scammer who disappears with a senior citizen’s nest egg – it can be reassuring to see the scale occasionally tip into balance.īut whether it was my late mother’s voice reminding me, “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all” or, more likely, my own remembrances of how a stony silence can be a harsher indictment than a verbal reprimand, I wasn’t inclined to join the revenge posse.Ĭhristian Ziegler, then a Sarasota County commissioner, and his wife, Sarasota County School Board Member Bridget Ziegler, arrive at the first Moms for Liberty National Summit in July 2022 in Tampa. Not because I, too, wasn’t feeling some sense of satisfaction that the “arc of the moral universe” Dr. With each new Facebook tirade snarky, sarcastic column or joke about “thouples” and “the true meaning of ‘Moms for Liberty,’” I felt a little sicker to my stomach at the thought of weighing in. It was on every social media platform, every nightly news show and everyone’s mind.Įven the stranger standing next to me in line for coffee the next morning – who apparently recognized me despite my disheveled lack of resemblance to my carefully coiffed column photo – asked: “When are you going to write about the Zieglers?” By the time the performance was over, the news of the accusation of sexual assault against state GOP Chair and former Sarasota County Commissioner Christian Ziegler and the “threesome” he and his wife, Sarasota County School Board Member Bridget Ziegler, reportedly had with the alleged victim was inescapable.
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