With the media interest in the affair by non-candidate, non-Senator John Edwards, HuffPo has a very illucidating article by clinical psychologist (and political pundit) Drew Westen about the amount of media interest. Meaning, the media has made the Edwards affair a journalist feeding frenzy, while McCain’s affair(s) are anything but front-and-center.
I don’t think anybody’s sex life has any bearing on a campaign, except to the extent that the candidate runs as a hypocrite, extolling family values, fighting gays while fighting his own gay demons, etc. But John McCain is increasingly making this campaign about character, and his actions over many years suggest some worrisome patterns that fly in the face of the entire story he tells about himself. Setting aside his cheating on his first wife, what about his attending to something other than the people’s business as a member of the Keating Five (and ultimately contributing to a bailout that cost middle class American taxpayers the equivalent of nearly half a trillion in 2008 tax dollars — imagine the middle class tax break we could offer if we weren’t still paying off the principal and debt on that boondoggle); or hiring the most dishonest, amoral campaign team money could buy in 2008; or generating one fabricated or grossly misleading charge after another against Obama in the last three weeks (as in his sleazy new tax ad where, for example, he says Obama would raise taxes on small businesses when Obama has never proposed anything of the sort)? Like George W. Bush, he doesn’t seem like a man who once was lost but now is found. He seems more like a man’s whose principles are soluble in self-interest.
More interestingly from a gay perspective, he goes on to opine
If McCain tries to mobilize anti-gay sentiment, or (more likely, since I suspect he’s more libertarian at heart) colludes with those who do, it would be perfectly fair to ask him where in the Bible God prioritizes homosexuality as a sin over adultery, since there’s a Commandment about one but not the other, and adultery is a far greater threat to the institution of marriage than gay people entering into committed relationships (McCain’s first marriage being Exhibit A).
And he ends with a suggestion that bloggers call journalists on the carpet the next time this happens – describing details of journalists sex lives and sex lies. After all, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
