Penitent Boneheads
Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies. (George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance, 1857)
Do we have the vaguest idea why incidents of adultery among the political elite make the news anymore? It’s not news. It’s not new. It’s not even uncommon. This week, South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford, confesses to chasing a skirt all the way to Argentina for a romantic affair. (He claimed it was to end affair. This, after claiming he was going to Appalachia to work on a book. Well, it many never get to be book-length, but he certainly was working on a story.) We all go bananas because he left his wife and four sons cooling their jets at home. We feign particular indignation because he conducted the tryst over Father’s Day weekend. (The monster!) Then he comes back to business as usual: making a sorry political apology for being a sorry bonehead. We make a show of being up in arms about it, even though he made his move hot on the heels of a similar announcement from Nevada Senator, John Ensign, who conceded his own inamorata was a staffer in his Senate office. (It’s not as exciting as a Latin lover. But it has a more familiar … uh … feel.) Ensign fesses up with practiced political penitence. We again take our cue, act appalled, and life goes on. Next! On top of all that, both of these bozos turn out to have been prospective presidential candidates. Ladies and gentlemen, one need not be a purveyor of perspicacity to know: this is no surprise.
These banal boneheads are doing nothing but following the example set by one William Jefferson Clinton, remember him? We deemed it wholly acceptable when he was engaging in White House dalliances with everyone but the First Lady. We had the smoking gun. We had the stained garments. We had the parade of debauched damsels. We elected him twice, and even his wife stuck around. He was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate. Coquetry in the White House was condoned. Why, then, the constant news reports? Why, then the outrage? These two lightweight Lotharios didn’t even make it to the Presidential campaign trail, let alone the White House. And we wouldn’t care if they did.
Why should we? This is modern-day, relative-scale, go-for-baroque America. We’ve long ago separated behavior from judgement. (”Well, yeah, he was playing sex games in the Oval Office while we were paying his salary – and paying for the Oval Office. But that didn’t keep him from being a good President.”) We’ve long ago conceded the rule, as children do with parents, of do as I say, not as I do. We wouldn’t know what to do with a moral compass, even if we found ours. And we couldn’t put ourselves back on the path of self-respect with a GPS. We’re not looking for direction. We’re looking for sensation, for puerile titillation, for every there-but-for-grace-of-God fall of others who lead less fortunate, more public lives than our own. After that, we’re looking to forget everything for the chance to do it all over again. It’s only a year since our outrage caused Eliot Spitzer to resign as Governor of New York. But as another famous New Yorker said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Errant Eliot will be back. We’ll love him for it. And we’ll be counting the seconds until he does something for which we can turn on him – again – as long as there are neither cameras nor mirrors pointed in our direction.
The late Hunter S. Thompson characterized another Washington wolf, Gary Hart, this way, after the erstwhile Presidential hopeful was caught aboard the yacht, Monkey Business (I’m not making that up), with one Donna Rice. In so doing, Thompson summed politicians’ predilections for prurient peccadilloes for the ages:
When it comes to “womanizing” in Washington, Hart is an amateur. Four generations of Kennedys have roamed naked and crazy like satyrs on Capitol Hill, and Wilbur Mills wallowed and howled like a rhino in the Tidal Pool with a mainline stripper from Boston named Fanny Fox … but nobody called them perverts, and only a few people called the police.
So, step right this way folks. The show’s been running forever. Today’s performance was pretty good. You can be sure it’ll run again tomorrow – and for as long as we remain a loyal audience, faithfully and willfully suspending our disbelief as the folks we elect and pay to take our spears bleed publicly and melodramatically. Just one favor: remind me again who the boneheads are.