The glorious spirit stick of inappropriate sex scandal has finally been passed back unto its champions: the Democratic Party.
Throughout the ’90s, from Clinton to Marion Barry and all the way back around to Clinton, the Democratic Party managed to snatch almost every round of interleague play away from the Grand Old Party. As of late, of course, the tide has turned, and from Mark Foley to Larry Craig, the GOP has had its fair share of unfortunate turns. But, like clockwork, the Democratic Party has managed to produce a public relations disaster during a critical election year.
What’s alternatively troubling and hilarious about the sex scandals of the 21st century, however, is the irony that drips off each successive one, to an almost staged degree. I half expect Thomas Paine and Voltaire to publish a little pamphlet from their respective graves to guide today’s voter through the expected outcomes of their elections. Campaigns against gay marriage? Solicits oral sex from a police officer in an airport bathroom! Campaigns for ethics reform? Bankrolls a prostitution ring! It’s like Caligula’s Rome.
Certainly, politicians are no strangers to scandal, particularly of the sexual variety. That tendency, however, doesn’t explain why certain elected officials have been drawn to behavior that completely stands against not only their offices, but also their own stated personal beliefs — nor does it explain why it’s happened so often in recent years. Perhaps the media has changed the way these scandals are depicted; or maybe, in the glare of that media and the pressure of maintaining a comprehensive image in spite of mass communication, character flaws become something larger, and societal deviance becomes an outlet for a select group of politicians who cannot cope properly with the pressure.
Naturally, further complexity develops around the question of whether these officials should, as Suzanne Sugarbaker of the ever-poignant ‘Designing Women’ once said, “get some black wigs and get the hell out of town.” The question typically renders itself moot, as the constant flux of mass information hammers every minute detail of each scandal into the scandal-happy public until such point that the official is forced by his party to take his hat and leave. Spitzer’s crimes, hilarious and illegal though they may be, don’t have much to do with his office. Deception, of course, remains undesirable.
Mainstream media often express concern about the “Daily Show Generation” and how our love for news entertainment, rather than hard news, has translated into a wry ambivalence, or else idealist misinformation, about actual issues. That line of thinking seems legitimate, until you find out the governor of New York is Rich Uncle Pennybags to the best, most ethically reformed little whorehouse in New York. Because, at that point, it becomes funny. Perchance, my unequivocal glee about Spitzer and the Emperor’s Club has to do with partisanship, or maybe it’s a coping mechanism to process corruption’s insatiable appetite in the American political landscape. At the end of the day, however, an old-fashioned political sex scandal seems too wonderfully American to take it with too much seriousness. Who knows, maybe we can even get a Governor Rudy Giuliani out of this.
