SALON

Thursday, Jul 2, 2009 10:15 AM UTC

Sex scandals are bipartisan

But it's Republicans who are prone to preaching about other people's intimate lives

By

Topics: Sex,

Sex scandals are bipartisanFrom left: Newt Gingrich, John Ensign and Mark Sanford.

With respect to Gov. Mark Sanford, it’s probably always a mistake for a Puritan to visit Latin America. A handsome cardiologist’s son, he married money, went into real estate, then politics. Like many South Carolina aristocrats, he’s an Episcopalian. However, like most Southern Republicans, Sanford talked like a biblical fundamentalist: piously condemning others’ sexual sins and boasting about his own righteousness.

Such simple-minded certitudes often fail to survive exposure to the wider world. One dark-eyed temptress and it all comes undone.

You’d think the man had never heard a country song.

GOP hypocrisy regarding the “culture war” that Newt Gingrich declared against Democrats a couple or three marriages ago is getting to be a very old story. It’s hard keeping track of the virtual parade of naughty congressmen, philandering GOP mayors and governors, polymorphously perverse right-wing preachers and Republican senators variously soliciting undercover cops, patronizing prostitutes and sleeping with the help.

Until Sanford’s weepy confession, everybody was happily pretending to be shocked by the revelation that Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., carried on with a staffer whose jealous husband blew the whistle.

People, Ensign’s home is Las Vegas, whose major industries are casino gambling and prostitution. All things considered, it’s probably a good thing Sanford undertook his “trade mission” to Buenos Aires; in Vegas, he might have lost his shirt along with his innocence.

Some Republicans complain of a double standard. Nonsense. They’re the ones that opened Pandora’s box. Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen put it best: “If you help run Mothers Against Drunk Driving and you’re caught drunk driving, it’s going to be a bigger deal than the typical DUI.”

But no, I haven’t forgotten the recent John and Elizabeth Edwards show. Nor the crass behavior of New York’s Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Nobody will ever forget the adventures of President Clinton and that woman, Miss Lewinsky. The panting Washington media won’t allow it. During last year’s presidential contest, the New York Times ran a front-page article speculating how many nights Bill and Hillary Clinton spend together. (And another insinuating that Sen. John McCain’s friendship with a blond lobbyist was more than professional.)

The difference is that while Democratic politicians are equally prone to using their families as stage props, they’re less given to Sunday-school homilies about other people’s intimate lives.

Theologically speaking, the two parties have divided the Seven Deadly Sins as follows: Republicans oppose lust, sloth and envy; Democrats scorn gluttony, greed, wrath and pride. Little progress is reported.

More broadly, hypocrisy about political sex scandals is well-nigh universal. First, everybody pretends to abhor having to talk about everybody’s favorite topic. This invariably leads to deep-thinking efforts such as a recent Associated Press analysis headlined “Why Do Politicians Cheat?”

“Narcissism is an occupational hazard for political leaders,” one professor explained. “You have to have an outsized ambition and an outsized ego to run for office.” During the Lewinsky Follies, a veterinarian friend put it more succinctly: “Enhanced breeding opportunities are the whole point of becoming an Alpha male among the primates.”

Covering a professional bass-fishing tournament in Tennessee years ago, I formulated Eugene’s First Law of Sexual Dynamics: “If there’s something one man can do better than another, there’s a woman who’ll sleep with him for it.” At the weigh-in, the docks were lined with young women eager to hook up with the fishing jocks, costumed like George W. Bush on “Mission Accomplished” day, with colorful embroidered patches advertising rods, reels and lures.

OK, so I’m (half) joking. Word of this phenomenon hasn’t reached the lovely Dana Perino, President Bush’s former press secretary. Writing in National Review Online, she opined that if we’d elect more women, we’d have fewer sex scandals. “No woman I know has the time for such trysts, nor do I know any who say they desire one. They’re too busy trying to keep all the plates spinning at home, at work, and at the gym …”

Except, of course, for women busy having affairs with politicians. Not to mention professors, newspaper reporters, plumbers and minor league third basemen. Dana, sweetheart, people find time.

The most aggravating reactions, however, are those presuming to dictate exactly how the wronged partner ought to react. Stand by the cheater or make a public display of anger? Keep the cad or divorce him?

Whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards or Jenny Sanford, my view’s the same: Other people’s marriages are a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. Butt out.

I also think we’d all be better off going back to pre-Clinton hypocrisy, when a politician had to end up drunk in the Tidal Basin with a stripper dubbed the “Argentine Firecracker” to make news. Alas, celebrity sex is a big circulation and ratings booster. Politicians are considered fair game.

We’ve become a nation of peeping Toms; it’s a sadistic activity.

© 2009 by Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 74 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
3033 points3034 points | 2192 comments
vote
Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now?: With GOP-backed cuts to forecasting agency, experts warn future storms will go undetected and more lives lost
979 points980 points | 515 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator wants to offset tornado aid with other cuts
146 points147 points | 55 comments
vote
Horrifying new trend: Posting rapes to Facebook " In Chicago this weekend, prosecutors announced three teenaged boys will tried as adults for aggravated criminal sexual assault after allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl — and posting a video of the attack on Facebook."
28 points29 points | 15 comments
vote
New campaign compares gun control to anti-LGBT discrimination
26 points27 points | 10 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations