OK, maybe it's just me:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

But why is it that sleeping with a woman he's not married to is all it takes to get a CIA director out of office? I mean it seems a rather underwhelming offense given how many people who retain their positions in office *coughDavidVittercough* happen to have done much worse things and retain their position and shamelessly keep doing the same kind of foolishness they got in trouble for beforehand. In today's America where the self-appointed defenders of traditional marriage cheat on their cancer-stricken wives to establish the bases for their third marriages and where sexual mores have changed for the better, how is this is at all a cause to dismiss anyone or for anyone to resign?

Sure, it might be bad 'if they talk' but then again, people like J. Edgar Hoover got away with much more than this. I really don't know what to make of Petraeus's resignation, so I'm basically asking you guys:

If someone in that position is boinking someone who's not his wife, should that alone be enough to lead to his resignation? (I admit to gendered bias in the question here but there aren't too many female politicians involved in sex scandals yet so that can be excused). I don't think it should be and I find the whole reaction to have more to do with puritanical pseudo-moralism than anything inherent in the offense. What do you think?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Just because something should be seldom means it is.

[404.livejournal.com]

Just because people routinely break laws/rules/code of conduct/etc. doesn't mean that we shouldn't have them.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Someone might have told Newt that before he prosecuted Clinton for a BJ.

[brendala.livejournal.com]

Someone might have told Newt that before he prosecuted Clinton for a BJ.


I don't see how Newt Gingrich was a hypocrite there. Gingrich had affairs. Bill Clinton used barely legal interns as comfort women and then had his staff commit perjury to cover it up. There's a big difference.

Sorry. It just bugs me when people act as if the evil, prudish right wing wanted to impeach Clinton ONLY because he got a BJ from someone who wasn't his wife and that Clinton was only guilty of being a slut and nothing else.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It was because he was getting a BJ in the Oval Office, presumably in the old school style of getting it on with someone a lot younger than he was, as opposed to illicit affairs with illegal immigrants while claiming to oppose illegal immigration. Someone who is on his third marriage has no business criticizing the affairs of someone still on his first. Otherwise we might as well attribute to a hyena lessons on hygiene.