Politicians And Sex–Why Are Some More Tolerated Than Others?

Let’s face it, Anthony Weiner is a smarmy, charmless, and unattractive politician with a big ego and a complaisant wife.  Taking pictures of his hairy, circumcised putz and sending it to women on the Internet is about as gross as it gets. Now admittedly, we don’t have the full story. For every repressed, twisted male, there is a female; and it is possible that this was a consensual affair.  He sends her pix of Mr. Johnson; and she sends him pictures of her pussy . They both get off and go back to their mundane, ordinary lives. The NY Post reported as early as 2011 that he had corresponded with a real person – a Nevada woman whom he planned to meet – and The Dirty recently broke the story about his online ‘affair’ with another woman who so far has chosen to remain anonymous.  So what’s the problem here? Weiner was simply being a 21st century man. No more pickups in East Side bars or hustling in the Hamptons.  Faster, easier, and better to use Big Data hookups.

Most men saw JFK as a role model.  He was young, athletic, handsome, powerful and sexually attractive, and bedded as many beautiful women as he could.  We all wanted to be like him. The winning smile, summers at Hyannis, touch football, a close family, a privileged life, and Marilyn Monroe is what we wanted. 

Women went gaga for him.  He was the Prince of Camelot, gloriously masculine, heroic, and mythic – the answer to their dreams. He was casual, sportive, and alluring. 

Who else had such allure, such a cavalier attitude; such self-deprecating humor? He had what men aspire to and women fall for – supreme confidence – and no one since (or likely before) could match him. Floppy-eared, drawling Lyndon Johnson? Never.  Although reports were legion of him tomcatting after midnight aided and abetted by the Secret Service, no man really wanted to be him. He was the epitome of intimidating power, but men wanted JFK’s power over women not LBJ’s over the Congress. When we think of LBJ we think of him jawboning and threatening some Midwestern Congressman, not seducing a beautiful young starlet.

Most people assumed that Richard Nixon saved all of his testosterone for fighting White House enemies and bombing North Vietnam. Even the idea of him in bed with a woman was disgusting.

Jimmy Carter admitted to having impure thoughts, and we all took him at his word.  Lusting after women if only in his mind was a sin, a betrayal of his wife, and a moral failing. Although we could imagine him sneaking off and getting some behind the tractor and under the pitchforks in the peanut shed; we assumed that he never did.

George H.W. Bush was a man of New England rectitude, principle, and honor.  He served his country as a solider, diplomat, and civil servant. We may not have liked all of his policies, but he was a good man and an honest one.  He was clearly devoted to his wife, and once again, although we could see him in his cigarette boat with a beautiful blonde, we never did. He had a patrician masculinity and presence, a legacy that we hoped would not be sullied by sneaking off into the woods.

Then we come to Bill Clinton. Yes, he screwed around like JFK, but his problem was a liking for trailer trash.  Jennifer Flowers was no Marilyn Monroe.  When his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky became public, Europeans laughed at him for getting blown under the desk at the Oval Office and diddling the intern with his cigar.  Their politicians fucked women properly and made no bones about it. American men had the same disgust. Bill Clinton may have been a sexual adventurer, but with whom?  He was no JFK.

The point is Americans, both men and women don’t really care if politicians screw around.  Everyone does it, after all.  The big question is how and with whom.

Eliot Spitzer is of a far higher sexual rank than Anthony Weiner because he actually had sex with women.  OK, they were prostitutes, but high-class ones; and the transaction was not consummated with some street hooker but high class ‘escorts’ at the world-famous Mayflower Hotel near the power alley of Washington, DC.

Spitzer is lower on the sex scale than Clinton.  At least for the President most sex was apparently consensual (although a lot of trailer trash sex is ‘consensual’ as long as a six-pack of Bud goes along with it), while Spitzer had to pay for it.  What kind of man has to resort to chippies to service his sexual needs?  He was a former Governor, a State Attorney General, and a man of power and influence, and he couldn’t do any better than hooker sex in a hotel room?

LBJ and MLK are quite a bit higher on the list, for these Lotharios, despite their indiscriminate pussy-hunting, at least were red-blooded American men. Most men had their own indiscriminate days.  In the heady years of the Sixties sex was sex, and it was all part of a groovy community.  Even outside those libertine communes, sex was never turned down.  “Hey, it’s not like a commitment thing”.

Whether JFK, MLK, or LBJ, there was something healthy and admirable about their insatiable sexual urges.  Not so for Clinton, Spitzer, or especially Weiner.  There was something definitely unhealthy about their exploits.

Some politicians who stray get no sympathy.  John Edwards cheated on his dying wife, had a kid with his mistress, denied everything, and asked an aide to take the fall. Newt Gingrich has a similarly scurrilous past.  We Americans don’t mind the screwing around, but there is a limit.

Repentance and public apology is always a good thing, and if a politician marries his little hottie as former SC Governor Mark Sanford did, you are home free.  It wasn’t sex after all. It was love.  Sanford is now back in office.  Weiner fell even farther down on the sexual scale because of his self-serving apology the first time he was caught, and because of his even more shameless apology the second time when the dragged his poor wife up on the stage to stand by her man.

Whether or not sexual indiscretions disqualify a politician from office is another story altogether.  Surely Americans are darn lucky that John Edwards was never elected President, for although there was nothing wrong with his screwing other women, his lying, duplicity, and refusal to accept responsibility was immediately disqualifying. The same with Spitzer, Clinton, and Weiner. Given Americans’ willingness to forgive and forget, if they had said, “Yeah, I did it.  It’s my personal affair just like it is yours”, they would have been in and out of the headlines in a flash.  Clinton made his smarmy affair far worse by parsing “It”; and all the rest of lot tried to cover things up in an era of social media and brutally aggressive paparazzi.  Anthony Weiner didn’t know that there is no privacy on the Internet?  That ignorance alone disqualifies him from office.

The moral of the story for politicians is to go ahead and have extra-marital sex, but first and foremost have real sex and not this virtual diddling and cigar antics.  Second, have real sex with the right class of women.  Most Arkansas rednecks are unhappy that Clinton chose one of their own for canoodling. They would have much preferred an assignation with Scarlett Johansson or Angelina Jolie.

The only good news to come out of all this is that finally American politicians are having their sex scandals.  It used to be that only Europeans were scalded in the press for their sexual dalliances while Americans were caught with their hand in the till.  At least we have caught up…Sort of.