Let me start with a simple proposal that may sound radical to the right and the left of the political spectrum:  politician’s personal sex lives should not be an issue in an election.  The distraction violates their privacy and waters down or completely silences discussion of the real issues in an election by the hypocritical and sensationalized news organizations known as our main stream media.  The New York Times last week sought to lower their bar yet again and displayed a striking arrogance when the editorial board wrote a piece calling for Anthony Wiener to drop out of the New York City mayoral race because more details and photos of his “sexting” practices became public this past week.

Anthony Weiner was  a congressman from New York in the U.S. House of Representatives  who resigned from his position on June 16, 2011, after a sex scandal broke out that revealed he had been involved in “lewd” and nude conversation  and picture sharing – sometimes referred to as “sexting” –  with a number of women online.  Living in New York and being a proud progressive, I admired Anthony Weiner’s political passion and willingnessllllllll; to fight for liberal causes, like health care reform, when he was our congressman.  Not helping him weather the scandal was of course, his horrible decision to originally deny the pics and texts and his and claim that his Twitter account had been hacked, on the Sunday morning political shows and the whole media round, when he knew this was not true and he was lying.  When the truth came out, President Obama publicly stated that Weiner should resign, and caving to immense political pressure, he did resign.

And that was a mistake.  A republican won his seat in a special election, one more loss to the lost House.  Thanks President Obama, on this rare occasion when you decide to get involved in local politics, it’s only to scold another democrat’s sexual conduct and attempt to demonstrate like a hypocritical republican, your supposed moral high ground.  And now you have one more obstructionist in congress to deal with, and no surprise, your moral high ground posture didn’t make one single republican like you anymore than your golf trips and endless concessions to them have.  Mr. Obama once declared as a candidate that he would put on his walking shoes and join protesters to make a difference in Washington, but for the most part he has been very meek and reluctant to speak out against the many abuses of power occurring in states run by republican governors.  The distraction is apparently the easiest political stand to take, and it has served well in our propaganda driven conversations in the media.

And the arrogance of the New York Times to call on a candidate to drop out of a race for mayor, as if they hold the lever to decide for the voters who they can vote for, is astounding.  It is bad enough to have our choice of candidates decided by wealthy donors.  Weiner has vowed this time to stay in the race and let the voters decide, and that is exactly what he should do.  The New York Times should feel free to call on those already elected in office to resign if scandals break out that make the case for resignation debatable, but to act as if they are the ones that should be choosing our choice of candidates?  Beyond arrogant.  And they had the audacity to say that ” the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.”  Apparently the fact that it is the New York Times and all the other “news” organizations that are displaying his marital problems and sexual behavior in the public eye non-stop instead of moving on to the issues of the mayoral race are Mr. Weiner and his wife’s fault, not the media that refuses to report on anything else.  There are gossip papers and the E Channel and other useless rags to play the sensationalized card for ratings, but it is time for the so-called real “news” organizations to take some responsibility for their editors’s choices of what they report and focus on.

Politicians on the left and the media are also inconsistent and hypocritical on what they deem as sex scandal that matters and what they don’t feel should matter.  The most glaring example is that many politicians, editorial boards, and the American public think that the impeachment of President Clinton’s lying about having “sex with that woman, Mrs. Lewenski” while under oath was not deserving of impeachment.  I agree.  He never should have been compelled to answer those question under oath to begin with, they were only relevant to a political attack disguised as a civil suit.  But then why now should Mr. Weiner drop out in disgrace?  The standard answer is that he lied a second time about the scandal by not admitting that his compulsive “sexting” had not stopped the day he resigned – big shocker – and this makes him untrustworthy.  I think the standard rebuttal to this should be that President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condelezza Rice, and  Donald Rumsfeld all  lied about the details of 911 and lied about “weapons of mass destruction” to lead us to a war of aggression and choice in Iraq.  If that is not an impeachable offense, to deliberately lie to congress and the American people for leading us into a war that has cost over a trillion dollars, killed thousandbounds of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and ruined the lives of millions more, I don’t know what is.  Lying about oral sex or sending nude pics and explicit texts to other willing adults? I don’t see how.

What politicians chose to lie about is gravely more important and relevant to their character and the welfare of our country than their lies about their personal sex lives and relationships with their spouses.  Most people lie about sex, or chose to keep it private, and would not want the salacious details of their sexual activity, in person or via “sexting” made public.  The fact that Mr. Weiner’s sexual conduct is considered weird or compulsive or unfair to his wife should not play into the factor, any more than Bill Clinton’s preferred use of a cigar and Monica Lewenski’s saving of a dress containing the president’s semen should have mattered then or now.  The media needs to grow up and take responsibility for what they cover, and voters need to remain issue driven and not distracted by the static.