

Should politicians' sexual behavior be private? - Jun8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bader-dmh/everything-said-about-ant_b_872346.html

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Jun8
tl;dr Since Weiner's sex life is private his only wrongdoing in this affair is
because he made the Democrats lose a valuable candidate for NYT Mayor.

The wrongness of this essay goes to the heart of the matter, I think. When the
(similar) Strauss-Kahn affair surfaced recently the overwhelming French
response was that he was tricked and that this was his private life anyway.
One aspect of why people were angry with Strauss-Kahn was that he got himself
out of the presidential race, and caused Le Pen to get more votes. This is, in
essence, exactly what this essay says for Rep. Weiner.

I find such an "us vs. them" mentality abhorrent, where when someone from
"our" camp screws up we get more angry with them for making "us" look bad
rather than what they did. Politicians should be held to a higher standard in
their private lives than normal people, if you cannot handle this (or don't
want to) then don't go into politics. Things that can be deemed OK (and legal)
for normal people, i.e. sending a shirtless photo of yourself to a woman on
Craigslist, having sex with a prostitute (e.g. in Nevada) are off-limits for
politicians.

Another interesting point is that such behavior in these men (they are almost
exclusively men) are not isolated incidents: Strauss-Kahn had a history of
aggressive women groping, Weiner was sexting with six women, etc., so we can't
write it off as a momentary lapse of reason. This is exactly "broad
generalizations made nowadays about the sex and powerful men" that evidence
shows to be true again and again and that Bader calls bullshit, because he's
blinded by his political agenda.

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bediger
Of course it should! That way, they're more, um, pliable, when the FBI or NSA
gets hold of evidence of some 2-sigma behavior on the part of a Senator or
Congressman.

No? Well, why do you think that FISA rubber stamps every single warrant
request they get? Why does the US Congress not get outraged over 4th Amendment
violations like the NSA dragnet wiretaps? Why does the Black Budget just get
bigger and bigger without any question?

