Photo “scandalized” by Flickr user stillthedudeabides. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Matthew Yglesias makes the (other) eternal excellent point about how twitting about sex obstructs discussion of substantive issues.
I think Bill Clinton makes some fair points in his intemperate rant against Todd Purdum. But in a lot of ways, the flaws in Purdum’s article (lots of innuendos about illicit sex) serve to obscure the valid points (we know very little about the financing of Clinton’s lifestyle and his foundation)
This isn’t, incidentally, a dig at Senator Hillary Clinton (although I’ve argued in the past that I have a much bigger problem with the proposals and behaviors of the men she employs than the Senator herself, whom I tend to admire.) Instead it’s a dig at the problems that arise from a chronic inability to deal like grownups with gender, sex, and sexuality.**
As Yglesias says, even if the scandalous rumors about whether Bill flies around with a billionaire fiend a private jet allegedly nicknamed “Air Fuck One” turn out to be true, the scandal still isn’t about the sex it’s potential for unexamined quid pro quo with the billionaire friends he’s been riding with. John McCain’s spouse Cindy McCain, who’s business connections are similarly unexamined, seems free from scandal and therefore her arrangements are also free from questioning for appropriateness.
It’s pretty frustrating. The scandal about Ted Haggard wasn’t his homosexuality but his rejection of homosexuality in others. The scandal about Undersecretary of State Randal Tobias wasn’t that he hired escorts prostitutes, it’s that he continued advocating for abstinence and marital fidelity even though he knew that even he couldn’t practice what he preached. The scandal about sex slavery/trafficking isn’t the sex but the slavery. The scandal about Elliot Spitzer isn’t that he had sex with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, or even that she had sex with him for compensation, it’s that he prosecuted women just like Dupre for offering services just like the ones he hired to perform.
[** Senator Clinton, by the way, may have poor hiring judgment but in everything from her statements about sex education, to comprehensive health, to human trafficking, to her daughter’s sex life, to her husband’s peccadillos to the inevitable rumors and innuendos any powerful and, especially, older woman faces about her gender preferences, she’s great. —fl]
Submitted by 2198 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-03 23:12.
It'd be nice if hypocrisy were illegal, but could you imagine the manpower necessary to enforce those laws?
[Oof, no. Actually you could streamline the process by jailing anyone who thought they could arrest someone else for hypocricy! :-) Thanks, Nekobawt. --fl]
Submitted by 2198 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-06-04 19:14.
I think this is a rather brilliant post (and a great choice for a photo), as that's what it always seemed to be. One of my favorite natural philosophers was a woman known for her infidelities, but she was still considered quite classy, because she made no airs about pretending otherwise.
[I think you're talking about Ayn Rand, and if so then it's also worth pointing out that Rand's standing among her accolytes supports my idea that status and not gender determines why people think men "naturally" cheat more. Thanks, Athena. --fl]