The congressman’s actions speak to moral decline in a once-upstanding nation.
By Bill York
The first word that came to mind was curiosity. The second was disappointment. The third word covering the same exposé was disillusionment. The most accurate word of all was disgust. I’m referring, of course, to the behavior of Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who tweeted lewd images of himself to women across the country.
I brought my children into this world confident about the morality of American people. That is changing. We are becoming more immoral. Many of those whom we elected to serve the people have forsaken their oath of office. Where is the indignation?
The Oval Office cannot be re-sanitized. The governorship of California has been sullied. Many people in public office have resigned because of wanton infidelity. One candidate for president impregnated another woman while his wife was dying of cancer. A Northern governor resigned because of having paid for sexual services while he was married.
The sickness of infidelity has contaminated many facets of American life. What has happened to the oath, “forsaking all others?” What has happened to integrity? The lamentable certainty is that power corrupts and sets examples for other morally effete people to mimic. Where’s the outrage?
Unmarried couples are interviewed in Hollywood proudly displaying a new baby as if they had accomplished something commendable. Bugs do the same except they do not flaunt it. A golfer was unfaithful to his wife who was home caring for the children. Holes have been uncovered in the walls behind mirrors in motel rooms so some stranger can sate an insatiable lust.
One judge in Georgia was manacled for arranging to have a sexual encounter with teenage girls. Politicians, transmitting nude images of themselves on the internet, perpetuate the revilement of Americans by societies across the world.
There is an absence of shame in the United States, that any loathsome behavior is acceptable. In the 1930s businesses attempting to sell explicit sexual paraphernalia would have been torched by vigilantes.
When I was a youngster the divorce rate in the United States was 17 percent and most often caused by alcoholism or slovenliness on the part of husbands. When interviewing a divorcee I was told that the divorce was caused by sexual demands she considered offensive.
We have molesters searching for victims in order to purge their warped aberrations. We have strip joints with cubicles in back for deviant dalliances, wife-swapping clubs and odious bathhouses.
This moral irrationality is projected over the world and refutes those claims of being a cultured society, when we are actually sinking into that primitive cadence of fertility rituals. A wife filed for divorce upon finding secretive holes drilled through the walls of her bathroom so her husband could spy on her privacy.
Children emerging from childhood are exposed to this macabre picture of parenthood and they assume that such conduct is acceptable thus causing burgeoning teenage pregnancies and throw-away babies. We find scurrilous pedophiles preying on naïve kids who are seeking cool friends in the wrong places.
We see perversions sweeping across this nation burying society in a tsunami of lewd debauchery. Movie, television and store check-out aisles display nakedness, triggering a decadent mentality.
I see moral decay and the increasing moves away from the virtues that made this nation the beacon of hope on a troubled planet. We are duplicating the last days of the Roman Empire, plummeting into a cesspool of abhorrent behavior.
Bill York, a writer and retired furrier, lives in Stone Mountain.
Infidelity is as old as civilization and endemic to U.S. political life.
By Mary Sanchez
Here is a tweaking of some biblical wisdom we’d do well to consider in our age of lurid political scandal: “Let him who is without sin cast the first vote.”
It’s about time the nation came to grips with reality. Adultery happens. It’s why God put it in his Top Ten. He knew we would.
And with politicians, the evidence is so embarrassingly public. Even people who normally don’t take an interest in politics could tick off a list of public servants who couldn’t keep their zippers zipped or their fingers from sending hot and heavy texts and photos to people not their spouse.
Arnold Schwarzenegger. David Vitter. Mark Sanford. John Edwards. Eliot Spitzer. Set a timer. See how many office-holding cads you can list in 30 seconds.
Some on that list no doubt will be men who were excellent public servants, others not so much. The fact is that a man or woman deficient in marital loyalty doesn’t necessarily equate to a bad politician.
Consider President Bill Clinton, who put cheating in a whole new category by numerous affairs. How did he treat women by policy and appointments? Pretty good, judging from his record.
The question should be: Do we really need politicians to be role models for all of our values? Or might it be prudent to focus more on how they might wrestle the nation’s gargantuan debt, cut the unemployment rate, fix crumbling infrastructure, promote our security and interests globally and many more matters germane to the health and welfare of America?
Don’t read this as excusing the philandering of Rep. Anthony Weiner. His marital behavior is appalling. He cast aside a new marriage with a woman many would consider “the whole package” — brains plus beauty — by tweeting images of his package. What an idiot.
And now a true innocent is involved: their unborn child. But I’m not convinced Weiner has completely imploded a political career.
Political sex scandals ought to be weighed carefully. If it’s just about adultery, I’m not sure the guilty politician needs to bow out of office in shame. A comment one often hears in these cases is, “It’s not the sex that bothers me; it’s the bad judgment.” And indeed, here we have a member of Congress using social media to send images of his private parts, an act he surely must have known would create permanent, endlessly reproducible evidence that could be used to ruin his career. Again, what an idiot.
Some would say such bad judgment is reason enough to disqualify Weiner from high office, but I tend to see it as evidence of Weiner’s narcissism and entitlement, two traits not in short supply on Capitol Hill. Frankly, I am less concerned about this kind of behavior than hanky-panky that involves actual law breaking, such as using campaign funds to pay off a mistress, or having sex with a minor or a prostitute.
When these affairs are exposed, the humiliation extends to the philanderer’s family. The wronged spouse must suffer not just the betrayal of her husband but also the harsh judgment of those who see her as an enabler. And then there are the daughters, who learn harsh lessons in how some men regard their gender. And the drama is a multimedia experience.
Which makes me question not so much the bad behavior of the Lothario involved, but rather that of the press in giving it lurid 24 /7 exposure.
A friend recently was discussing how much she liked the image of Mitt Romney, a strong family man.
I countered that he shouldn’t get extra points for that. After all, married men are supposed to be faithful to their wives.
So I asked my friend what she thought of Romney’s stand on health care. Silence.
And there’s the danger. Voters too often are soothed by the veneer politicians present. Is it any wonder we often get deceived, along with their spouses?
Mary Sanchez is an opinion page columnist for The Kansas City Star.
