Hexy, guest posting at Feministe, says of the Florida mayor who was recently fired because his wife works in porn,
According to this article, Janke’s wife’s occupation raised concerns about whether he could “remain effective”. This line jumped out at me:
“When you become a public figure you are held to a different level of scrutiny and ethics,” Babcock said.
And, you know, that surprised me, because I don’t see any unusual ethics here. The Madonna/whore dichotomy, the whole idea that certain women are marked as OK to fuck, but not the type you take home? That’s a standard I see everywhere in day to day life.
In other words what different standards?
Hexy goes on to say the couple seemed to have been together long enough to parent teenage children, which would tend to imply that any alleged character flaws in the couple probably would have been noticeable before and when he was elected in the first place. Although being able to successfully parent teenagers in the first place might have been a clue that maybe she, and by extension he, didn’t have ZOMG TEH MYTHICAL SEX-WORKER DISEASED FEEIND!!! cooties on them in the first place. Because for the most part sex-worker diseased-fiend cooties tend to be, well, mythical.
And not to put too fine a point on it, as of the 2000 census Ft. Meyer’s Beach, Florida, had a population of only 6561. Consider everything mainstream stereotyping “knows” about small-southern-town mayors. When you think about that you might start wondering whether the porn company was exercising poor judgment in not holding the mayor’s wife to higher scrutiny and standards and firing her! Oh but that would be silly right? Because, maybe I guess, what everybody “knows” about porn actors are true but what everybody “knows” about mayors isn’t?
Submitted by 3085 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-07-28 14:28.
In a small town you would think those who elected him would have known.