In case you missed it, the other day the sky boiled with lava and winged monkey creatures came down from the clouds tossing Molotov cocktails at pedestrians. Pestilence broke out, crops spontaneously combusted, and children started randomly developing stigmata.
The cause of this all, of course, was Senator David Vitter’s confession that he had once partaken of the services of a D.C. prostitution service, helpfully provided to us by Grand Inquisitor Larry Flynt. You know, Larry Flynt, the canny investigative journalist behind Hustler who forced that rabid mass murderer Bob Livingston to resign from leadership of the House in 1998 because he strayed from his marriage.
I really get hopping mad at revelations like this. Why? Because I firmly believe that it’s none of our fucking business what our politicians do with their personal lives.
Guess what? I don’t care that Senator David Vitter is hanging around with prostitutes on his spare time. I really don’t. Also:
- I don’t care if he’s cheating on his wife
- I don’t care if he’s gay or bisexual
- I don’t care if he litters
- I don’t care if he’s getting audited on his taxes
- I don’t care if he cheats at cards or golf
- I don’t care if he got bad grades in college
- I don’t care if he’s got a gambling problem
- I don’t care if he smoked marijuana in college
- I don’t care if he still smokes marijuana on his own time
- I don’t care if he uses the “f” word or tells someone to “go f— yourself”
- I don’t care if he did cocaine or heroin a long time ago
- I don’t care if he uses the “n” word from time to time in private conversation
- I don’t care if he calls somebody by an obscure French ethnic slur in the heat of a campaign event
- I don’t care if he drives an SUV or a Prius
- I don’t care how big his house is or how much electricity it uses
- I don’t care how much he spends on haircuts he pays for out of his own pocket
- I don’t care what his wife does for a living
- I don’t care what religion he is
- I don’t care if he’s friends with lobbyists
- I don’t care if he’s a hypocrite
- I don’t care if he flirts with the wrong people
- I don’t care if he watches or downloads pornography
- I don’t care if he owns a Confederate flag
- I don’t care if he’s a closet racist
- I don’t care if he’s a closet sexist
- I don’t care if he’s a closet homophobe
- I don’t care if he smokes
- I don’t care if he has a drinking problem
- I don’t care if he makes an egregious statement or two, as long as he promptly apologizes
Now here are the things I do care about as regards Senator David Vitter:
- I care about the policies he advocates
- I care about the votes he casts in the U.S. Senate
- I care if he’s charged with a crime that’s not a misdemeanor
Let’s make up a new rule. When our politicians step out of the office at the end of the day, they’re private citizens. Which means that just like you won’t splash it all over the newspaper that your next-door neighbor is having an affair, you won’t do the same about a politician. You shouldn’t follow a politician around or snoop on his personal life or try to dig up dirt on him. Now if he kills someone or actively cheats on his taxes or stashes bribe money in his freezer, then I want to hear about it. Until then, shut the fuck up.
Larry Flynt tries to cover his exposés of public officials with the paltry fig leaf of claiming that it’s all about hypocrisy. Well, guess what? I don’t care if politicians are hypocrites. Public discourse is cheapened by making it a clash of personalities. All that should matter is the content of the bills Senator Vitter proposes and the speeches he makes and the articles he writes, not the quality of the messenger. Even if the bills he champions specifically clash with his own personal behavior, I don’t care. In all but the rarest of cases, it doesn’t matter if a politician secretly disagrees with a policy he’s promoting. Larry Flynt’s lame excuse that David Vitter should be exposed because he campaigned on the sanctity of marriage (i.e. anti-gay marriage) is just that — lame.
This means that we desperately need to stop this idiotic parade of third-rate Freudian analyses of our politicians’ every utterance. I find it disgraceful that Trent Lott was forced to resign his leadership position in the Senate because of a single slip of the tongue. I find it disgraceful that Bill Clinton was dragged before the Congress for evasively answering a personal question he should have never been asked in the first place. I find it disgraceful that John Ashcroft was branded a racist because of his tenuous association with someone who favored segregation. I find it disgraceful that every time Ted Kennedy opens his mouth, right-wing talk radio has to call him a drunkard.
Why isn’t it possible to respectfully disagree with someone and not start piling on about their perceived personal flaws? Why do we have to morally judge these people’s activities at all? Why can’t we just concentrate on the policy?