Mister Tee wrote:It's certainly satisfying on a gut-level to see a hypocrite hoist on his own petard. But I confess to some unhappiness that the sex police seem to be growing ever more powerful. Many of us thought, when Clinton stood up to the press-urged impeachmnet wave, that this country would adjust to a more mature, realistic standard on sexual behavior. But the witch-hunts have, if anything, expanded, and too many have resulted in immediate resignation rather than what I'd prefer, a quick "Fuck off, it's not your business".
I agree with this. This unending string of mainly Republican, heavily hypocritical scandal revelations in recent years yields some satisfactions, of course, but really I'm more of the mindset that these things aren't anyone's business. It's not lost on me that these moral crusaders are making it difficult for other Americans to have their "own business." But our finger-pointing and nosiness can get a bit too gleeful, too zealous. Part of the problem is that left-liberals are often more uptight and puritanical than they should be and than they will admit to being. If you ask me, hypocrisy in matters of sexual morality should not be the primary arena of combat against the right wing.
The cultural critic Lauren Berlant had a line somewhere that went something like, 'Every time I hear about a new sex scandal, I feel bad for sex.'
Jack Nicholson's response, in the wake of the Clinton scandal, was, 'What, do you want a president who doesn't have sex?'
Writing about Ezra Pound's mistress Olga Rudge, who demurred from being seen in public with him to avoid humiliating EP's wife Dorothy, Guy Davenport asserted, 'Lives were private in those days, and our animal nature was accommodated with a respect we can hardly imagine.'