Chris Hedges: What’s Sex Got to Do With It?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080809_whats_sex_got_to_do_with_it/

What’s Sex Got to Do With It?

Posted on Aug 9, 2008

By Chris Hedges


If I had to choose between George W. Bush, naked and neighing on all fours while being ridden around the Oval Office by a spurred cowgirl Condoleezza Rice, or enduring his shredding of domestic and international law to wage an illegal war and bilking of the country on behalf of his corporate backers, I could learn to stomach a wide array of sexual escapades.

Let our elected leaders and candidates have quick homosexual encounters in airport bathrooms, bring as many hookers as they want to their hotel rooms, and screw around with their campaign staff as long as they exhaust their libidos on lusts other than war, torture and economic mismanagement. Adolf Hitler, after all, was an abstemious and monogamous vegetarian who loved his German shepherd.

But, unfortunately for us, and hapless politicians like John Edwards, our press finds it more lucrative to report salacious sex scandals than the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, although the mainstream press showed, for once, a remarkable restraint until Edwards was forced to confess. We hear more about pricey hookers and the bathroom code of cruising homosexuals than the revoking of habeas corpus, the use of torture as an interrogation technique, and the plundering of our country by rapacious corporations. Television dominates our news content, and its ethical standards hover around those of the National Enquirer.

The press has become our arbiter of personal morality. Have an affair and they will trap you in the middle of the night in a Los Angeles hotel bathroom; they will dig up the escort you met in a Washington hotel room and splatter your private foibles across television screens and news pages. These stories gratify our prurient fascination with illicit sexual liaisons. They are part of the blurring of news with the tawdry world of reality shows and television entertainment. They produce titillating rituals of public humiliation and disgrace. They also lacerate the secret guilt of those who have felt or acted upon lust while in committed relationships. It is all Jerry Springer, all the time.

snip//

There are worse things done by politicians than illicit sexual adventures. Ask an Iraqi. Ask an Afghan. Ask a detainee at Guantanamo. Ask an unemployed steelworker in Ohio. But in an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not want honesty or even reality but the reassurance of old clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives. We want leaders who are willing to pretend they live in a make-believe world of happy couples and perfect relationships. We want to feel that they like us and we want to like them. This gives us what television gives us, a simplistic narrative around which to frame our lives. This narrative defies the messiness and disorder of the real world. If politicians adhere to this ridiculous narrative of personal happiness and fidelity, designed to reassure us that the world is ordered and neat and constant, they can commit egregious war crimes and strip us of our power. If they do not we will find better actors.

Edwards’ dishonesty does not compare to Bush’s impeachable crimes. But Edwards’ political career has been cut short, unlike Bush’s, because he had the bad luck to get caught out of character behind the curtain.

This is what I wish John and Elizabeth Edwards had said in their public statements, but alas, John was
reduced to sniveling and apologizing ... because of this idiotic M$M obsession with this "simplistic
narrative .. of personal happiness and (sexual) fidelity." how sad for America.

1) Take news coverage that exposes a major political figure's dark secret.
2) Contrast it to war crimes/death/destructon.
3) Conclude that since #2 is worse than #1, the people covering the story should be ashamed.

Pathetic, and formulaic.

If your argument is that there should be more coverage about the war/war crimes/death, then fine.

But claiming other news stories are invalid because there are "worse things" going on is a complete fallacy.

You simply don't like the news story and are trying to rationalize your reason for so doing with this illogical argument.

what's important. That hasn't changed. This is just another example.

Despite the numerous protestations and the ongoing hand-wringing accusations of salacious puritanism (go figure), past events have taught us that Americans are more than willing to forgive and look beyond sexual affairs. It's the extraordinary hypocrisy and dishonesty that we can't seem to abide. When a politician presents himself or herself as a fine, upstanding family person and trades on that reputation to win elections, even going as far as to offer up the spouse as a spokesperson for said candidate's strong moral character, then he or she better be prepared to face the consequences of straying so far from those glorified values.