Sexual Hypocrisy is the Kinkiest Kind of Hypocrisy
posted on March 15th, 2008
And no, I’m not joining in the chorus of people calling Spitzer a hypocrite. I’m calling everyone else a hypocrite.
Statistically speaking, at least some of the journalists decrying Governor Spitzer’s prostitution habit have visited prostitutes themselves. Others know men who have cheated on their wives, or wives who have cheated on their husbands, some of whom paid for it. Did all of them lose their jobs? Should they have? Why is it anyone’s business? When a man pays a woman for sex, that transaction is between the man, the woman, and any spouses the man and woman might have (and that goes for all combinations of gender and sexual identity). It’s none of my business.
“What a terrible role model that man is. Now when does the new season of ‘Gene Simmons Family Jewels’ start?”
Celebrities of all stripes are of course much more interesting to us when they have naughty sex of some kind, but even among celebrities, societal standards of sexual decency are extremely fluid. While not exactly tolerated, the entire culture of rock and roll grew up on sex and drugs, so nobody is surprised or outraged when a rock star avails himself of, shall we say, “groupie related services”. Gene Simmons is probably the only revered TV dad to claim to have had sex with over 1,000 women. And he goes home to 1983 Playboy Playmate of the year Shannon Tweed! But he’s a rock star, so we can watch a show about how good a dad he is (and I actually think he’s a pretty good dad on the show. Aside from being a dick to Terry Gross, he’s never done anything to make me think otherwise) without feeling like perverts or hypocrites.
Sports figures are generally given a free pass as well, unless there are rape allegations. Just as musicians on tour are generally assumed to be messing around, athletes on road trips are generally assumed to be messing around as well. We only hear about it when there’s something extremely out of the ordinary, like when seventeen members of the Minnesota Vikings are caught up in a “sex boat” scandal. Prostitutes were flown in from out of state in that scandal as well. The result? Two players were fined, and none lost their jobs or were even suspended. Sure, sales of Daunte Culpepper jerseys haven’t been hot lately, but I don’t suspect it’s because parents don’t want their kids wearing his number.
Why, then are politicians so frequently brought down by sex scandals? I’ve heard it said that politicians should “be held to a higher standard.” This is typically said by people who don’t seem to hold themselves to a particularly high standard, and it’s total bullshit. I want my elected officials to be smarter than I am, more capable of government than I am, and transparent in their dealings. I don’t care if they have a drink once in a while, or wind down for the weekend with a little chronic. Hell, I don’t care if they have hot and cold running cocaine from a faucet right above the mini-fridge in the office, as long as they keep themselves under control and do a good job. So I certainly don’t care if they frequent the services of a prostitute, as long as they don’t put him or her on the payroll.
I’m not defending Spitzer. Or at least, I’m not saying he should have kept his job. Frankly, anyone with an $80,000 habit of any kind, be it prostitutes, drugs, gambling, or whatever, is not in control of himself, and probably shouldn’t be in government. Or any other job, until he can get regain that control. Any former Attorney General who can’t manage to hide his tracks, especially when he helped create the monitoring process that snagged him, doesn’t deserve to keep whatever job he has when he gets snagged. But let me be clear; he deserves to lose his job because he has a problem, couldn’t control it, and couldn’t keep it to himself, not because he had sex with a prostitute.
This rant filed under: Political
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
