Sex and politics (2013 commentary by Hendrik Hertzberg)

[MBS]

Just ran across this article. Even though it's from August 2013, and mainly about Anthony Weiner, it seems generally relevant to the current Republican campaign.
Also it's the first political article that's made me laugh in a really long time, and, in this scary political season, I'm grateful for that.

I'm a big fan of Hendrik Hertzberg anyway, but this is one of his wittiest ever.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/too-much-infotech

It’s been another political season of impressively gaudy sex scandals, further confounding America’s hard-won reputation as a nation of censorious puritans. The paradox isn’t so surprising, when you think about it: the broader the range of sex-related activities deemed immoral, unnatural, or icky, the greater the scope for righteous indignation; the freer the press, the looser the libel laws; and the more reflexive the general contempt for politicians as a class the greater the chance of public exposure of private misbehavior. Neither of our political parties is immune to sex scandals, of course, because both are composed of human beings, but once upon a time it was taken for granted that Democrats were more likely to fool around. (Republican turpitude, beginning with the Grant Administration, was thought to revolve around money.) Not anymore. Studies suggest that, over the past decade, the majority of political sex scandals, by a wide margin, have featured Republicans. True to the spirit of the age, none were bipartisan.

Here in New York City, our sex scandals are almost always Democratic, but then so are our politicians. In the earliest days of the Republic, we New Yorkers had the field pretty much to ourselves, thanks to Alexander Hamilton, who left President Washington’s cabinet in the wake of paying hush money to a cuckolded husband. (Moving back to New York, Hamilton took ironic revenge on the future by founding the Post.) We’ve kept our hand in through the generations with periodic forays—Grover Cleveland’s purported illegitimate child, Jimmy Walker’s showgirl mistress, Rudy Giuliani’s marital musical chairs, and a whole lot more. Still, despite our indelible reputation in the heartland (including upstate) as Gomorrah on the Hudson, we’ve lately lost ground not only to usual suspects like California and Louisiana but also to unlikely competitors like Arkansas and South Carolina. Yes, our current mayor and our current governor both live with women they are not married to. But mere cohabitation, straight or gay, doesn’t cut it anymore.

This summer, though, all of a sudden we’re No. 1 again. We’ve achieved an epochal breakthrough: the first completely digital big-time sex scandal.