NYCweboy

On Hookers And Secret Services

Okay... so where were we?

I've been sort of chomping at the bit to comment on various stories - Ann Romney, George Zimmerman, you name it - but nothing is quite as captivating as the scandalous non-scandal of The Secret Service in Cartagena, now, is it? (And really... Cartagena? Other than Romancing The Stone... who's ever cared about Cartagena?)

My raction to the Secret Service story hasn't changed much since it broke: so... apparently after work the agents like to drink, carouse a bit, and maybe pick up a local resident for some R&R. And that's bad... why?

I'm not trying to excuse hooking, but in my own curiously twisted thinking on sex and sexuality, it's not people paying for sex that bothers me. What bothered me, say, about the Elliot Spitzer scandal, and made it scandalous, was both the outrageous prices he paid (which was simply foolish) and the fact that being Attorney General means enforcing the laws he was breaking at that time. That's hypocrisy, and that, it strikes me, is scandalous.

(Also, going to prostitutes while married strikes me as tacky and poor moral character, but that's a separate issue.)

So here's my thing: if the Secret Service agents were, say, using counterfeit money to pay hookers... then maybe we'd have a similar case; but  drinking in bars and bringing someone home for sex doesn't strike, entirely, as a firing offense. Again, tacky, perhaps; but not quite the federal crime it's being made out to be. Indeed, I'll be curious to see if some of these attempts to discipline Secret Service employees stand up as proper for a federal employer. Is off hour behavior really fair game for the government as an employer?

In any case, there's been a lot of huffing and puffing to try and dress up what is basically a salacious exercise in peeking behind other people's bedroom curtains as somehow a major breach of national security. You can almost see the visible relief of many media organizations reporting today's triumph "hooker may have been in President's hotel!" That's, you know, serious. It's almost like, you know, she was in the President's room. Except, you know, she wasn't.

All the heavy breathing doesn't amount to much, and can't really make the agent's behavior seem much more than what it is - tawdry, mostly, with a side order of tasteless. The idea that patronizing hookers might "lead to blackmail" is an old saw that was always meant to comment more on sexual behavior than any actual threat - it's the same nonsense that was trotted out about gays during the Red Scare years, and just as dopey. It's a suggestion that sex is dirty, embarrassing, and rather than be humiliated for a peccadillo, most people would, I don't know, pay thousands and reveal state secrets. Evidence of this actually happening isn't just mostly scarce... it's basically nonexistent. It's the stuff of movie plots and bad novels one buys in airports.

More to the point, these ideas of salacious blackmail seem especially absurd in this era where people's nude photos wind up on internet websites. Shocking? Embarrassing? Does anyone even know what these words mean anymore? The small number of people actually "shocked" to discover that Secret Service agents hire hookers lead especially sheltered lives and are, in general, awfully naive (almost as naive as the people who seem to think this only happened, once, in Cartagena). There's nothing especially shocking, or possibly even embarrassing about the President's guards getting randy after hours in a foreign country. The trope that this "could lead to national security breaches" is pretty much nonsense, and most sensible people, I suspect, get that, even if they hate to admit it. Because once you admit it... then we also have to admit that this story is getting way more play than it ever deserved.

I don't think, as Americans, we'll ever get over our nosiness, our voyeuristic tendencies, or our confused notions about sex generally. That's our culture, and that's how we define who we are - simultaneously wildly open and free, and puritanical and judge-y, all at once. By all means, go overseas and go wild with the foreigners. Just don't get caught. Or we'll really be mad. And if it helps us to pretend that somehow this is crucial to our "national interests", it's just a reminder of the lengths we go to when we need to justify our prejudices. Mostly, I suspect, the excessive interest in this story is about envy. And that's never pretty. And we're lousy at hiding it.

 

This American Lie

Maybe it's just a matter of timing - I didn't see it until late Friday afternoon, and the paid blogosphere does seem to cut out before Happy Hour on Fridays - but I'm surprised that the exposure of Mike Daisey as something of a fraud isn't resonating more on the right.

That may sound odd, but bear with me.

The discrediting of NPR has been an odd hobbyhorse of the right's most ardent screechers, something about the confluence of soothing voices, liberal boilerplate, and perceived objectivity, from what I can tell (roll that all up in a ball and you get... Nina Totenberg). James O'Keefe, in one of his more amusing sideshows, helped take out the head of fundraising at NPR with a tape of a conversation with a fake Middle Eastern investor, which led to a stunning series of off-point comments from senior officials at NPR that mostly made matters worse. NPR was also at the center of the Juan Williams "scandal", in which Williams was dropped as a commentator after telling Bill O'Reilly that he harbored suspicions that Muslims on his flights were possibly terrorists. 

Given all that, surely someone on the right will spend the weekend chortling as This American Life, one of NPR's most popular shows, has had to retract its most popular podcast, an episode recorded with Mike Daisey about Apple's dubious record manufacturing iPads and iPhones in China. Adapted from his monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" garnered a lot of attention, and started a string of modestly bad press for Apple, which has tried to minimize the fallout while trying to beef up standards at its plants (and I say "modestly bad" because none of it has really hurt Apple's sales or profits). 

Daisey's claims - that Apple's plants were rife with child workers and exposure to dangerous chemicals, among other horrendous practices - had been questioned by knowledgable reporters (though the practices were also confirmed by their reporting), but it wasn't until this week that Marketplace, PRI's business show (also on NPR), found Daisey's chinese translator who was with him on that trip, who said much of what Daisey claimed to witness - speaking to child workers, or observing workers injured from chemical exposure - never happened. Daisey calls it "dramatic license", now, and TAL is red faced.

But this isn't really just about This American Life; the New York Times has already had to issue its own correction to an online op-ed Daisey wrote making similar claims, and the Associated Press is looking at retracting coverage they did of Daisey on the topic as well. Others will surely follow. Even New York's Public Theater, where Daisey's show has been running, had to issue a statement generally supporting Daisey, but admitting that the show is not exactly entirely accurate (and that's okay, cause that's how drama works. Or something).

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this - this is a "Mainstream Media" disaster of large proportions, undermining a popular storyline (corporate malfeasance! Cheap Chinese manufacturing practices! Labor rights!) that the right already can't stand. And this, really, is a classic unforced error: no James O'Keefe fakery needed, no dicey ideologue like Juan Williams to make the scapegoat. This was, as Ira Glass admitted, simply shoddy journalism that tends to undermine the credibility of a show like This American Life - failing to ask basic questions, check primary sources, or to make sure that information was fully confirmed. It doesn't help that TAL often comes off as smug, slightly sanctimonious, and hipper than thou on most topics it covers; this was hubris waiting for a fall.

Conservatives may shy away form this because it is, after all, Apple; on the one hand, an emblem of exactly the kind of capitalism they want to enshrine, while at the same time, a do-gooder sort of firm that liberals love to shop because it seems hip and cool and socially conscious. Embracing the discrediting of Daisey, when Apple still faces unpleasant questions about its corporate actions and conditions in factories, could easily be a two-edged sword, and it may just be that conservatives miss the connections: all that raling against MSM and bad journalism is less potent when there's no obvious political payoff.

On the other hand, it's the very clean spin of the Daisey case that I think should give lefty defenders of NPR through the previous scandals some pause: it's one thing to have been pranked by O'Keefe and his ilk, it's no fun having to defend the notion that Juan Williams didn't deserve all of what he got... but the through-line here is much like the unraveling of the NYT after Jayson Blair: lying to your editors shouldn't be this easy, and it's just arrogance to have missed the signs that this report was seriously flawed. Many lefties will, no doubt, want to take the line that Daisey's real disaster is undermining the efforts to investigate Chinese factories. But this, really, amounts to "he may have stretched the truth, but he wasn't wrong" and that's not true. This wasn't stretching, it was fabrication and falsehoods. Journalism can't let that stand. And NPR, as a whole and not just on one program, probably needs to reexamine its mission and how that mission is pursued. 

Most imortantly, though, is that listeners probably need to also ak more questions, and take less reporting at face value. That's the reality of our current American Lives.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: And I'd Rather Be On A Yacht In Greece

Cory Finley, a recent Yale graduate, applied to work at Bridgewater Associates, a large Connecticut-based hedge fund, during his senior year of college. Mr. Finley, 23, said there was “definitely something tempting” about the structure and prestige of a high-paying finance job. But he decided to follow his dream of becoming a playwright instead.

            - Kevin Roose, "Wall Street's Latest Campus Recruiting Crisis" in the New York Times.

Now, look, I'm sure that the financial crisis and the pressure on banks and investment firms to limit bonuses has changed the career plans of some college seniors... but come on. The kid who says "I thought about investment banking, but then decided to be a playwright" is hardly a serious example of what, I suspect, is a dubious trend article anyway. Aside from Finley, Roose has found about one other college grad to speak to their recruiting experience, and padded the article with obvious quotes about how this week's disgruntled resignation letter in the Op-Ed section proves no one wants to work at Goldman Sachs. Is that a trend? Probably not. But back to our poet. Nothing says "I don't need to work" like a 23 year old who can take all the time he needs to craft a play. I know I wanted to take some time off after graduating college and write a novel. Unfortunately, I also needed to do things like eat, and have a roof over my head. Still do. But if anyone wants to fund my foray into novel writing, let me know. I'm totally worth it.

The Payroll Tax Break Is Kind Of Dumb. And So Is Not Extending It.

So a while back, the Democrats wanted to pass a tax break for "working families" (I'm sorry, I am a lifelong Democrat and I will stand up and cheer when someone, someday, kills off the phrase "working families". It just makes my teeth grate), and they came up with this kind of silly idea: they would lower the payroll tax.

It's a dumb idea because, first, the payroll tax is the funding mechanism for Social Security. This is the same Social Security that politicians like to claim is in "danger" when it isn't- though funding Social Security payouts long term has some fiscal problems... in any case, the way to keep Social Security solvent does not involve underfunding it.

That's okay, one can reply, because the Payroll Tax Cut had a funding mechanism in which the lost revenues are replaced by "general funds". This is usually called Robbing Peter To Pay Paul, or in this case, using tax receipts collected for one purpose to pay for other tax receipts that should have been collected but weren't, while borrowing money to make up for the shortfall.

This is really dumb. This is why department stores won't let you buy gift certificates, and then use the gift certificates to pay off your department store credit card bill.

Anyway, it's also a dumb idea to cut the payroll tax by a small amount because the small windfall most taxpayers receive is a) largely unnoticed, and b) probably not used to do things like pay down debt or improve savings. Because our economy is consumer driven, what they want people to do is shop. Which means buying things you don't need and probably can't afford. As opposed to taking some of your paycheck, and paying it into a savings plan that will pay out when you retire.

Oh, never mind.

The problem is that the payroll tax rteduction was put in place for a year, and it's now set to expire, and when it does, everyone will notice that their taxes went up. And Democrats - or more specifically, the President's reelection team - is worried that less money in people's paychecks will make them grumpy and grumpy people vote for Newt Gingrich. Or Rick Santorum. Or something.

Naturally, Republicans are in no mood to extend a tax break that makes the President look good (cue the natural segue into how Republicans Hate Working Families), and also are kind of mad about several other things, notably this plan to build a pipeline across the country north to south so that Canadian oil shale can be efficiently delivered to refineries in Texas. Oil shale is also a pretty dumb idea (slightly less dumb than fracking, but still), and the pipeline could probably be rerouted, but mostly, this "debate" is a lot of the smae thing we get these days of terrible, useless Washington politics. One dumb idea in exchange for another. None of which really addresses the problems we actually face.

I don't really care about any of this - which is why I don't write daily about the dramatic brinksmanship going on in DC - and frankly, I'd be fine if the payroll tax went back to normal and someone actually took brinksmanship over, and past, the brink. Perhaps then, something might change, a bit. I know, it's a foool's notion. But I remain optimistically foolish. Just for spite.

In any case, the payroll tax break is a dumb idea, but extending it is probably better than not extending it... but frankly, it's the fact that we're all standing around talking about this stupidity that just floors me. And also why I'd probably rather eat Christmas cookies, watch reruns of SVU, and hope the whole thing just goes away. Who's with me?

Not Knowing Herman Cain, And Knowing Him Well

Like so many things about his campaign, Herman Cain's suspending of it was a lot of theater with no payoff. I'm not sure he fully realizes the power of presence he brought to his public appearances, and how those very expectations are, much of the time, what derailed him. In any event, I suppose, it kind of hardly matters now.

I've been sort of fascinated - and I've said as much a couple of times - with the fascination with Herman Cain, next to no one's idea of a really viable candidate for President. I think Cain brought a wild card note to the race last seen, maybe, with Ross Perot: the very unlikely quality of the choice to run, it seems, can make you a serious contender... until you're not. Then the crazy starts to catch up with you, and your past - which probably reflects similar bouts of hard to explain behavior - catches up to you. Or something.

The soap opera quality of the Cain implosion - first with the multiple cases of sexual harassment stretching back to his years running the National Restaurant Association, then the recent revelation of a 13 year "relationship" outside his marriage - was obvious catnip to political reporters, especially since this race has been dull, dull, dull, and everybody seems to sense it. But like so much else, the soap opera didn't mean much; the black Republican businessman with no real chance of becoming President aparently has issues with women. As Michael Douglas said in The American President... and what was the fourth story on the news?

Cain's candidacy was probably most interesting because it was, well, interesting, in a year when not much about politics is interesting. Cain spoke too often and too loudly, and tended to suggest things that made no sense - an electrified border fence, a plan for a national sales tax, a general failure to know anything about the nuances of foreign policy. These off the cuff remarks make for great television, and give pundits things to discuss... but they reflect an inherent lack of seriousness. 

A lot of people, it seems, could never figure Cain out, when it came to that unseriousness: was he just shilling a book, aiming for a Fox News pundit gig? (frankly, he neednt have gone to those lengths, I think.) Was it just, as Rachel Maddow claimed, a "performance art project", a wink and a nudge to the wasted time spent watching candidates be generally boring? 

I tend to think neither - I tend to think that Cain, much like Perot, tends to believe his own press. I think he thought he'd make a fine President. I think he thought that the more he polled well and the more people out in right wing-landia took him seriously, that their seriousness made him serious. I think he honestly believes a lot of those wild ideas (including, and especially "9-9-9"). And I think all of that speaks to the vast divides between right and left these days, which made Herman Cain, in many ways, a wake up call to the left, that actually woke a few people up: no really, they're serious. And he's being taken seriously.

Until he wasn't. The bigger problem for Cain, I suspect, is that behind all the bluster, all the self confidence... I'm not sure Cain knows himself all that well, and I don't think he was all the interested in having the public get to know the real him all that well, either. In that, I suspect, he was more like Obama then either one might care to face: I think black men in this country, outside of the entertainment industry (and media hounds like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, maybe), tend to be leery of the spotlight, the public eye, of getting to be too well known (come to think of it... how about Colin Powell?). There's a reticence, and along with it, I think, a fear of bad things. Everyone knows, in some sense, that bad things happen when a black man thinks he's won the public's heart.

As much as he liked people paying attention to his bluster and his "forthrightness", Cain was obviously uncomfortable with a lot of personal questions (which cropped up long before the harrassment and affair allegations), and generally viewed the press' role in examining public figures with disdain and distaste. Yes, in some sense that played well in the "anti-MSM" mood of pop culture, especially on the right... but it also backfired. It's what helped let the charges stick, and it's what hampered his ability to get his version of events out to the public. If you don't like being questioned, if you don't trust reporters, if you don't want to be known... how on Earth can you really fight the fight Herman Cain had on his hands?

And so, we lose Herman Cain - though he threatens to stick around, the reality is that this dalliance was already ending, and in general, politics and the press has moved on and won't look back. And, in the end, I think we really don't know much more about Herman Cain, really, than when we started. Even as we think we knew him well.

The Waiting Game

The waiting is the hardest part.

For days, weeks, depending on where one puts the start of it, the Occupy Wall Street supporters have complained about being ignored. As it turns out, "critical mass" is not something a movement can define for itself; and the past few days have moved the various Occupy protests - I know, hundreds! - to center stage. The question becomes... now what?

Waiting for an answer to that - whether these protests gel into something more coherent and concrete, dissolve and wash away, or possibly get out of hand in some form or fashion - is the hard part. America is an impatient culture, full of impatient people (which is why, on the edges, I worry most about the "get out of hand" aspect), and nothing is quite so impatient as a social movement full of energetic people lacking a sense of where to go.

Of course, one reason Occupy Wall Street is attracting more coverage is because, just now, there's so little to cover. It's talk about OWS... or offer deep thought on Herman Cain's rise in the Republican polls. Or live coverage of Amanda Knox. Or live coverage of the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor. Can you sense the excitment? 

As we have been for much of this year, there's this pervasive sense - I'm not making this part up - that we're stuck. every few weeks, between what seem like awfully long recesses, Congress blows into DC, they all stand around and point fingers about who's failing to address the economic crisis, and then they do vey little. Before OWS, there was a lot of anxiousness around the "debt deal" and the "Super Committee." Now, I think, a lot of people are realizing what some us figured out when the Super Committee was announced: that plan to kick the can further down the road (so many cans, so much kicking... such a long road) was pretty much a plan to deliver failure. And right on cue... it seems clear the Super Committee will never reach any kind of a deal.

And if that seems like a problem... you may not want to know about Congress' failure to pass spending bills for next year.

This endless breath-holding, standing on the precipice, I think, is really making us turn blue; we're running out of breath to hold, time to wait, patience to wait any longer. That, as I've said, seems like a lot of what's caught on about Occupy Wall Street as a pop culture event, in New York and all those other places - nothing to do? feeling bored and impatient? Come down to the urban core and hold up a sign! There's food! and frisbees!

None of this is to dismiss the underlying seriousness of these protests - and BTW, I happen to favor food, frisbees and sign holding - but like many (and we are many)... I wonder what we're waiting for, what we're waiting to have happen here. We can't go on playing the Waiting Game forever, despite the way many in Congress seem determined to never address spiraling debt, revenue and spending problems, but I think a lot of people sense that after waiting... might come the abyss.

And if that's our option, I think a lot of people would choose to wait a while longer... thank you very much. Trouble is, aside from the bad parts about us holding our breath til we turn blue, we are running out of time to do nothing... but wait.

 

 

It's Not The Occupation Of Wall Street, It's The Time Spent Occupying

"Occupy Wall Street?" Seriously?

I've honestly been struck near speechless by the daffiness of the "Occupy Wall Street" protest. I can only imagine how inane it looks on Facebook; on Twitter, I get minute by minute tweet updates, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing at all.

But hey... don't blame Twitter.

There's a reason to be worried about "Occupy Wall Street", though the idea that it will have any kind of impact on government policy, financial regulation or banking reform is beyond absurd. If there's a reason to worry - and G-d knows, I hope at least police officials are worried - it's the question everyone should be asking about the occupiers... why are so many people so able to spend pretty much all day every day hanging out in a park in lower Manhattan?

Our political life in this country is in such a brain dead state that yes, it's easy to misconstrue Occupying Wall Street as doing something brave, bold, and confrontational. In fact, it's mostly tae, unfocused, and incoherent. If you don't like the way things are going in this country, if you hate what rich bankers are doing to the financial system... hey, let's stand around for a while!

Mellissa McEwan wrote Friday:

I really don't understand the concern trolling from other progressives about how Occupy Wall Street needs to have a "cohesive message" or a "set of demands" or a "list of proposed solutions" or wevthefuck. There's a lot to be said for a good, old-fashioned awareness-raising event, and, with 90% (ninety percent!) of USians saying the economy stinks, this protest ain't happening in a void of evident motivation. Making some goddamn noise is as good a place to start as any, and better than most options we've got anymore.

...which is, for my money, about as good a sum-up of lefty uselessness as we've got, just now. Occupy Wall Street doesn't "raise awareness" - plenty of people are goddamn well aware that the economy stinks, that financial companies are profiting on people's misery, and serious reforms are needed. "Making noise" is an ineffective approach to activism, and activists - surely someone as knowledgeable, focused and capable of self expression as Melissa - should know well enough that anger requires action, and action requires a sense of purpose. Occupy Wall Street lacks all of this.

Here's a shortlist of ideas you could propose, just off the top of my head:

1. We could centralize lefty anger around an alternative candidate for President
2. We could agitate for the return of Glass-Steagall
3. We could hold Democrats in the House and Senate accountable for their failure to promote an ambitious reform agenda, and replace a generation of aging leaders who have become to tied to the inner workings of Dc and party politics, and lost their connections to the real concerns of real people.
4. We could have significant tax reform, ending the Bush tax cuts across the board, and closing the major loophole that allows Hedge Funds managers to book their salaries as profits on investing, for starters
5. We could back "too big to fail" legislation that would require the breakup of large, poorly performing entities like Citigroup and Bank of America, returning banking to a more locally based enterprise.

I resent the suggestion that just because one is on the left and finds a pointless exercise like Occupy Wall Street to be absurdly off point, that one somehow does not care passionately about financial reform. We need reform desperately. And its a disservice to the issues we have and the reforms we desperately need to throw up a black box around the seriousness of these issues and say, hey, it's fine if you just run around and scream aimlessly. No, it's not.

Still, the point of concern is that all these people milling about is, in its way, significant. The ability of Occupy Wall Street to generate a crowd of people, milling about, angry and bored, is the start of a recipe for a kind of social unrest that could be terribly destructive on societal order. That's obviously fine by a lot of proto-anarchists who think that "tear it all down" is a starting point for our discussions of how to make change; but I've said before, and I'll say again, Americans are deeply insulated from the unrest much of the rest of the world is experiencing, and the potential for violent uprisings and conflict is a kind of arson to our social fabric that more people should take more seriously in all its negative prospects. The potential for Occupy Wall Street to get out of hand, for things to heat up and spill over is very real; and that, really is the underlying problem of inequality, unemployment, and economic hardship that's become the reality in so much of America today. It's why thinking, well spoken activists really ought to be ashamed of not doing more to fight for serious solutions, and seriously holding people we trust more to account. The "Occupation of Wall Street" will, most likely, fizzle, if we're lucky; but if it does, that's really only a temporary reprieve... and I don't think anyone's got a good answer, still, about how to affect the kind of change that would give the Occupiers something to do instead, long term.

What's Black And White And Red All Over?

I promised myself not to write anything about the News of the World "phone hacking" scandal until Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News International, resigned. I did that because, ultimately, any piece before she did would amount to " Rebekah Brooks will have to go".

And now she has. And she's been arrested to boot.

I've been following the phone hacking story for months, at least; I kind of remember being interested back when Sienna Miller first filed suit in 2007, claiming her phones had been hacked, messages deleted, and details related to the messages showed up in the News of the World. But since then, watching this story unfold, it's fascinating and truly compelling to see how one minor incident has snowballed  into the calamity that may take down Rupert Murdoch's empire, his livelihood, and possibly his career. 

But if you're lloking for me to join in vocal outrage over the phone hacking details... well, you should know I don't do outrage a lot. Also that I tend not to take the familiar, obvious line; in this case, I'm not especially sympathetic to cries that "reasonable expectations of privacy" are really the story of the phone hacking scandal. Indeed, the unfolding of the phone stories has reinforced a faith I have that the belief in a "right to privacy" is actually kind of a vague all purpose shield that tends to wilt under close scrutiny.

No, what's really unfolding out of the revelations of phone hacking is something much more fundamental, especially for the British, whose culture, after all, is actually quite different from Americans. What's fundamentally unraveling in England, and may drift over to American shores, is a fundamental reassessment of just what constitutes news and what we deserve to know. In some ways, yes, that's the flip side of "privacy", but it's really the more relevant, more controllable question. Just how freely should the press rummage about in people's lives, and what amounts to going too far? 

That's the real question that "phone hacking" has generated. And it's why, really, the phone hacking scandal probably begins and ends with Milly Dowler.

Anthony's Song (Tweeting Too Hard Gives You A Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack)

I started this blog - purely by chance - as the sudden scandal and resignation of Mark Foley unfolded. You remember Mark Foley, right? Congressional pages? Male pages?

Never mind.

America is a nation with a curious culture when it comes to sex. It's about puritanism, and guilt, and voyeurism, and capitalism, and it screws with our heads, ruins our public discourse, and fascinates us, all at once. We are the nation that the French think of as uptight prudes, and the ones with enough experience and sense to arrest Dominique Strauss-Khan rather than look the other way. We are the nation of some of the most virulent antigay bigots and the largest gay pride parade in the world.

In short, girl, we are a hot mess of a nation when it comes to sex.

Some people say it's Republicans who can't handle allegations of sex and scandal in their public officials. I tend to disagree - I don't think they like it (and I do mean sex), but I think they know how to handle it. Democrats, on the other hand, like to think we can "handle it", but I think part of the lefty charm is actually that Democrats are often deliberately, sweetly naive. We don't have any idea what to do with affairs and sexting and fetishes and so much more (SO much more), because, every time, it all just seems so new and unexpected. Arnold Schwarzenegger cheated on Maria Shriver? Bill Clinton let an intern flash her panties? Anthony Weiner sent some girl a picture of his hardon?

Really?

It's not that liberalism is somehow equivalent to "no moral compass"; it's just that, well, we need a minute to put the new data into some sort of perpective. This can often be labeled "overthinking it."

Democrats like to say we "handle sex scandals differently" - than those uptight, prudish Republicans - but really, we don't "handle" them at all; and in that, I think, we reflect, more fully, the national muddle when it comes to sex and acting out sexually: mostly we'd rather not know... and when we have to know, it's mostly how can we make this go away, and quickly. It would be a much better story, really, if the liberal view of sex were, in fact, demonstrably liberal: that we felt people should talk, freely and openly about sex and sexuality; that the free expression of love and desire among people is perfectly natural and understandable; that what we deplore is sexual acting out that involves force, coercion and lack of consent.

We don't do that. But liberals like to pretend, often, that we do.

Anthony Weiner's place in our odd discussion of sexuality is not new; his song and dance about "I couldn't possibly have sent some girl a picture of my hardon that accidentally wound up going out over the internet to everyone on my twitter feed" is not new and didn't seem true pretty much the minute he said it. He lies badly. And hypocrisy, really, is the standard for American scandal that can't really be overcome.

There will be a lot of "I can't judge Anthony Weiner" comments from lefties, which isn't really true, either (Rachel Maddow's take on the scnadal was a good barometer, really, of how to deftly manage the "I'm not judging" while reveling in every tacky seamy moment of his fall). Of course we judge. Of course we look. Of course we stare. That's what we do. That - the staring part, the quietly judging part - is who we are as a nation. Voyeurs, who think it's rude to stare, but would often pay extra for the privilge of staring longer.

Whether Anhony Weiner stays in Congress or resigns in disgrace - or some other yet to be seen scenario unfolds - doesn't really fascinate me (I'd love to say the naughty pictures don't fascinate me... but pictures of boys on the internet are life's little joy, these days). What fascinates me about this "scandal" is what makes it "scandalous" - a notion about sex as dirty and hidden and shameful and naughty that we can't, as a culture, seem to shake. And our choice, really, is to adopt, as conservatives already do, a kind of rigid, inflexible standard for behavior that's often unrealistic and needlessly cruel, or adopt a kind of senseless, messy "anything goes" notion of permissiveness that creates as many or more problems than it solves.

Or we could, painfully and mostly haltingly, try to continue a national process of growing up, of treating sex and sexuality more openly, a little more honestly, and with some sensitivity and humanity. That kind of approach might, in the end, help us to separate what's not so important in this case - the fact, say, that he was aroused - from what might be kind of inappropriate - sending unwanted, highly sexually charged messages to people we find attractive.

I mean it's just a thought. And it seems like a waste of time... but that's what it's all about.

That's That

Overnight, the months-long story of Republicans flailing in a weak sea of bad Presidential candidates became much clearer. Republicans may as well pick a decent sacrificial lamb (I'd go with Mitt Romney, myself) and give in to the inevitable: the near-certain reelection of President Obama.

If there's one thing you get for being the Democrat who got Osama Bin Laden, it's reelected.

It may seem crass to immediately take a major event like finding and killing Bin Laden and reduce it to simple political arithmetic, but what else is there to do? Hours, days, months will naturally be spent un packing and taking apart what Bin Laden's death means to international relations, future concerns about terrorism (God forbid there's another successful terrorist event in the US in the next 18 months), and the US role in the Middle East... but the tangible result of ending "The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden" is reallly much more directly and succinctly summed up in what it means fo the President. Success is rewarded. And this, clearly, defines "success."

Republicans have only themselves to blame for setting up this level of expectation, having taken the aftermath of 9/11 and used it, unapologetically, as a sledgehammer for political gain. "Democrats are soft on terrorism" has been their rallying cry ever since that day. If anyone had the nerve and instincts to find Osama Bin Laden and stop him cold, they said, it was some sort of gun toting Republican ideal. From the underpants bomber to the Fort Hood shooting to the Times Square car bomb that wasn't (and numerous examples in between), conservatives have spent the Obama Presidency searching out examples of "failing to fight the War on Terra" to buttress their case. And underpinning all of it was an argument that barely needed uttering: Osama Bin Laden is still out there - probably in Pakistan - and the Obama Administration would never find and stop him.

Overnight, the notion that only the right wing could handle fighting terrorism fell apart.

There's a case to be made - several, really - against reelecting President Obama. The problem, as I keep insisting, is that there's no one to make it. Republicans have been in poor shape to offer a compelling alternative despite the gains made in the 2010 elections. For years, conservatives and Republicans have ignored the disintegration of their own side, papered over their inherent problems, many of which stem directly from the disastrous, failed Presidency of George W. Bush. And failing to find Osama Bin Laden - the one job he he said people could expect him to finish - is just the most basic, lurid, example of his failures.

Republicans can't put together an argument for retaking the Presidency in 2012, because they haven't got one. They can't even seem to stop the sideshow that is Donald Trump (and how irrelevant does the idea of a Trump candidacy look this morning, anyway?). And now, combine the wildly unpopular choices of Paul Ryan's budget proposals with a lost argument as the only people who can fight terrorism... and seriously, they've got nothing. You can't fight something - even something as visibly flawed as the Obama Presidency - with nothing.

Nothing I say here should be construed as chest thumping, rah-rah support for "getting Osama." Sending in a covert ops team to hunt down and kill an "enemy of the US government" on foreign soil is an act so rife with questionable choices that it makes my blood, too, run cold. That said... as someone who lived through 9/11 in New York City, I know enough of what it was to go through those dark days to know that "we found Osama Bin Laden and had him killed" will satisfy something very basic and primitive in the American psyche. I'm not happy about it, I'm not proud of it... but I'm not blind to it, either. This is justice, and it was overdue. That's that. And being the President who got Osama Bin Laden on his watch? That's pretty much a guarantee of reelection. Game over.