I think the oligarchs are overplaying their hand

The oligarchs have made peaceful revolution impossible in the United States as well, but until our economy collapses most citizens are unwilling to recognize what has happened to them. Perhaps, to paraphase the neocons, it will take an economic Pearl Harbor to awaken the masses to their predicament.

Either him or Marine Le Pen it seems…

It is not just strauss khan and the betrayal of social democratic parties either. Look at all the sex scandals destroying lefites, Edward, Spitzer, Weiner. Look at the weird happenings in Australia with the party replacing their prime minister without an election. Things are deeply wrong and you dont have to be a far right teabugger to see it.

Those Hellenes seem to have their very own ‘Democrat Party’ problem; how prescient of the ruling US ideologues (in their contempt) to have pointed that one out, and nobody copped on to what they meant.

Politically the Greek ‘Socialist’ have become dead men walking once the effects of austerity and the robbery of privatization are felt by a population that has not been lobotomized by ill-education, pseudo-patriotism and banal-belief. One thing can be counted on, the Greek head, unlike their US counterpart, is not (often) filled with lard.

DSK was a loose cannon and had to be immobilized, how handy some known proclivities can be, hoisted by his own petard can be hard to ‘splain in the heat of battle. Do not expect another director of the IMF outside the ideologically ‘safe’; the drift away from employing the shock doctrine was existentially threatening for the PTB.

The corruption of the political process was so efficient, thorough and effective that government has been removed as an obstacle to economic power, state sovereignty has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate power and can no longer act to contain or direct the economic process.

Looking into the spectrum of human behaviour one finds a pathology in extremes, extreme wealth is no exception as is extreme power no exception. The combination of wealth and power has reached a point that the office of POTUS is little more than a hit-man for eliminating opposition, a minion of inconsequence having no moral, or intellectual substance but able to lie with the ease of breathing.

Such conditions cannot be resisted or controlled by any opposition; the possessed force has become overwhelming and unstoppable; the self-regard, self-importance impenetrable; the shallowness of character conjoined with ignorance unbreachable. However, these conditions are not unknowable, that knowledge provides the way to defeat these formable but still finite powers, with wisdom, without direct confrontation, using the very weakness of such power, that key exists wherever there is power, the challenge is to find it.

Power cannot be maintained without consent, however that consent is derived. Remove consent and the power becomes ephemeral, only an illusion of power remains until that too evaporates. Numerous are the ways of removing consent, most involve not granting consent itself to the agenda of power. Make a conscious game of finding ways to remove consent, those are the ways to salvation against power. If it now takes a tank of gas a week to live, re-order your agenda so that two weeks pass before filling up again, you have removed consent from power.

Prepare for power, power exists, power is immortal, power is ubiquitous. Controlled, power is a useful servant, uncontrolled, power is a witless master. Prepare to become the sovereign of power and to codify that sovereignty over power (the constitution was written as a means of sovereignty over power but was abandoned for the promise of a handful of beans and political illusions); power is an enemy, know that enemy and, as Pogo once observed, prepare to having met the enemy to find the enemy is ourselves.

Some wisdom is contained in observing that no one is wealthy until they can afford a friend who can tell them ‘NO’. That works for the wealthiest country on Earth as well.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/151494/rape_isn't_funny:_on_making_excuses_for_dominique_strauss-kahn_and_blaming_the_alleged_victim__/?page=entire

Its coming… be afraid. “Wherever the rights of people are not mere empty titles ostentatiously laid out in a simple declaration, the ransacking of a few shops and the hanging of the monopolists at their door would soon put a stop to these frauds, which reduce five million men to despair and make thousands perish from want! Will the people’s deputies ever do more than talk about these wrongs without ever suggesting a remedy? Let us forget about the repressive measures of the laws: it is only too evident that they have always been and always will be ineffective; the only effective means are revolutionary measures… A little patience and the people will finally grasp that great truth, that it must always save itself… as for those vile hypocrites who work so hard at destroying the Nation by pretending to defend the rule of law. Get up on the stand with this article in your hand and denounce me – I’m ready to take you on.”

As in the many states where the Tea Party Republican agenda is being put in to practice.

More food for corvids.

Both the Euro and the dollar are under assault at the same time, and yet it doesn’t seem to be a coordinated attack–even the sources of the problem are different. As in history, coincidences that would not be credible in realistic fiction are occurring in real life.

I think you hominids are living in a magic realist novel.

Charles D.

Perhaps, to paraphase the neocons, it will take an economic Pearl Harbor to awaken the masses to their predicament.

I can’t fathom that happening. We had something like a Pearl Harbor in 2008, where the oligarchs got scared, but the fact that “saving the banksters” = “saving the country” precluded that. In 2009, Obama passed just enough stimulus to keep the ship from further sinking for everyone else for a few years, but not more.

If (I should say when) we double dip, with the Republicans in charge, we’ll have another bailout. Note I said “Republicans in charge” because the current crop of Democrats are all too eager to cave on whatever the Republicans demand and push the Overton Window in the direction they wish. Obama’s position on the current debt ceiling negotiations is essentially close to the Republicans original demand. And that’s bad enough; with the cuts going on among state and local governments, that will send us into double dip. Which is exactly what the Republicans want, to win in 2012.

Obama is essentially a defeated president, due to his unwillingness to take the correct steps in 2009 when he held all the cards. There is precedent in FDR’s tenure for both enacting Medicare-for-all and a WPA as emergency measures by executive decree. (Most people aren’t aware that the WPA was created by an executive order). Stopping the bank bailouts and forcing the rich to take their losses would have not only saved money, it would mean that the Chamber of Commerce and Koch brothers would have had considerably less money with which to buy elections. More money would have been raised by revoking the Bush tax cuts and ending the wars–so it would have been possible to both come to the aid of ordinary Joes and Janes without busting the budget. All of this would have been immensely popular: once you gave Americans jobs and health care, the pressure on Congress would have been enormous to make these permanent and instead of Democratic defeats in 2010, the Dems would have cruised to easy victories.

That alternative history didn’t happen. Now the only thing left to Obama (and I doubt he’ll do it) would be to say “no” to any spending cuts and to use the 14th amendment rationale as his justification to keep payments flowing. But with a conservative Supreme Court packed with judges picked to actively play politics in service of the Right, that kind of executive power (as opposed to spying and curtailing of civil liberties and war) he’ll probably lose.

So what’s to keep us from giving the banks bailout after bailout? It looks like at least some Republicans are willing to slash military spending in order to keep the bailouts to the oligarchs coming in.

-StewartM

A reputable newspaper in Ireland has this story on line, reporting on the investigation of the alleged victim of DSK ‘rape’:

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/dsk-accuser-may-also-be-prostitute-2812026.html

It is always best to find as many facts as possible before accepting any allegation of rape as true based upon the accusation alone, particularly when there are no witnesses to the act. Actual rape is just as highly damaging as being falsely accused; neither is easy to recover from. Looks like DSK got ‘Spitzered’, for about the same motives.

In particular the Greek “bailout” was a mistake. A horribly punitive measure, with virtually the entire “Socialist” party voting for it, it wasn’t a bailout of Greece, but a bailout of investors.

If the Germans had the sense of the Icelanders (possibly a sense that comes from necessity), then they would take advantage of their trade surplus to run a gov’t. deficit and use that gov’t. spending to start a jobs program for the unemployed of Europe on developing the replacement for the fossil-fuel foundation of the European economy. Germany has committed itself to eliminating its use of nuclear power in a decade. It should take advantage of the low cost of labor by employing people in those countries and by allowing labor to come to Germany to work in the jobs programs.

a dissenting view on the DSK case http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2011/07/you-cant-be-raped-if-youre-a-bad-girl-but-you-can-walk-if-youre-rich.html

… it wasn’t a bailout of Greece, but a bailout of investors.

Here’s a simple course of action (a modest proposal?):

Step 1) Sell off the country to the billionaires.
Step 2) Pay off the debts.
Step 3) Pass a property tax of 30% per year on the properties sold to the billionaires.
Step 4) When the billionaires refuse to pay, seize the properties for failure to pay taxes.

Calvinball can be fun!

Step 3) Pass a property tax of 30% per year on the properties sold to the billionaires.

The usual argument against high taxes (“It’s bad for the economy! It will hurt jobs!”) does not apply. The billionaires from other countries do not care about your economy or your jobs, Greece.

The problem that Greece has is the one that we all have, namely, that the people who hold office do not consider themselves to be in the same socioeconomic class as the population that they “represent.” So, the problem for the population is to find a way to get people in office who do not belong in the oligarchy’s socioeconomic class, and to keep them from being invited to join that class once they are elected. Not even Iceland has solved this problem (recall that Iceland’s political class recommended that the people of Iceland pay the debts of the private Icelandic banks).

Stewart M and EverythingsJake,

Yes, yes, yes.

As for DSK, I still don’t see why everyone thinks he would’ve done something grand and noble or, indeed, different had this sex scandal gotten in the way. I don’t buy it.

And no, none of us were in that room so we don’t know what happened. Just like we don’t know what happened for any other crime we aren’t witness to. But trashing a rape victim is a time-honored, indeed exalted, tradition, and that link that T-Bear posted above bears this out in spades:

. . . quoting an unnamed source close to investigators for Mr Strauss-Kahn’s defence team.
Mr Strauss-Kahn had hired two international private investigation agencies to trawl the woman’s past. “There is information… of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it’s not for bringing extra towels,” the source told the newspaper.

Gee, an unnamed source close to the defense team? Really?? Quel surprise. Hired two private eyes to “trawl the woman’s past”? No, say it ain’t so! And “if you know what I mean” — wow, how very delicate, how original! Wink wink nudge nudge.

My past is pretty bland — unlike DSK’s — but I’m sure a private eye could come up with something damning. Or two or three or four. You don’t want to be credulous about the accusation? Fine. Then don’t be credulous in either direction. That article is slanted.

The fact that prostitutes service men in fancy hotels is nothing new; perhaps he was expecting a prostitute when the maid showed up. I don’t know.

And this isn’t the first time DSK has been involved in shoving his manly man-ness onto a woman. Ask Tristane Banon:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/strauss-kahn_scandal_an_embarrassment_for_france_20110518/

By the way, I think Julian Assange is a whole different ballgame. I think he’s being framed.

Sorry, this has gotten way off economics. I’ll reiterate that I don’t for a minute believe DSK would’ve done anything different vis a vis Greece.

And before anyone says anything about populism in Europe, I am speaking primarily of the US situation which has a social and cultural history that cannot be left out of the discussion. The situation as regards “sexual aggressiveness” and economic politics, however, is probably not all that different in Europe. In fact, DSK’s history suggests that it is worse among French economists, at least.

With DSK, of course, both things can be true – he can be a predatory rapist and the prosecution was political. It appears he’s been doing this sort of thing for years and getting away with it. Although I, too, don’t think it would’ve changed anything with respect to Greece even if he’d been head of the IMF.

As for your larger point, I think you’re right. It reminded me of this post by Susie Madrak (which was a take off on your post “Suck It Up”). It is amazing these days how many people even in this country talk about a revolution coming. I’m not at all sure it’s a good thing, but I think it does show how desperate people feel and how little the system seems to offer an outlet.

Take NJ where the Dems just helped Christie gut public unions. Now, with Christie’s approval ratings falling, you’d think the Dems would want to present a clear difference and would oppose such unpopular measures aimed at a key part of their base. But they can’t even bother to pretend they care about protecting their voters anymore. They’d rather protect potential funders.

I will also add that I think that in addition to any bailouts, what’s also going to destabilize things is environmental issues. I don’t necessarily mean climate change, I mean the clusterfucks that keep being caused because the oligarchs can’t be bother to spend the money to make nuclear power, pipelines, and deep water drilling safer. It’s not just that we seem to have one disaster after another, it’s that every single one of them seem to be characterized by: 1) massive suffering of regular people, 2) caused by some sort of cost cutting measure, and 3) covered up by completely unconvincing official lying. That’s going to put added pressure on elites because people do tend to react badly when things affect their children.

People keep getting distracted by the shiny.

Don’t blame the people for this*–blame the idiots who did this. They know that the corporate media plus the right wing will pounce on anything like this, and yet they used no intelligence or discretion or judgment in choosing to do it anyway. They know what “the rules” are.

*Yes, it most certainly is a distraction (so was the execution of bin Laden).

And no, none of us were in that room so we don’t know what happened.

There is this paraphrasing of a translation of a recording between the woman and her boyfriend:

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

link (h/t yves smith)

“I’d be willing to wager that plenty of other politicians around the world are having sex with people who are not their spouses (both men and women). We have not heard about those instances because they are not being phenomenally stupid about it.”

No, we haven’t heard about them because 1) they did not just release documents showing SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas had lied on his tax returns about unreported income to him and his wife and other “conflicts of interest” like Weiner did on the day it all blew up for him and 2) they did not take on POTUS George W. Bush over predatory lending, along with all 50 Attorneys General, like Spitzer did within days of him writing an Op-Ed in WaPo.

David Vitter, caught with his diapers down… still in the Senate.

Yes, Edwards cheated on his wife. That is between him, the dearly departed dead, and the creator. Everyone else who gives a shit is a purile gossipmonger.

What makes it Gingrichian is that his wife was dying of cancer, he knew it (“So sorry about your dying and all, but I really need to get laid”), and he was asked point blank about whether he was the father of a child and lied about it. I used to admire his political campaign.

What you have written applies to Clinton, but not to Edwards.

And the point is not that people “care about it” (I don’t in Clinton’s case), but that they know that it will be used against them and yet they stupidly do it anyway. It’s as if they say, “Yes, I know that hot stoves burn, but I’m going to touch the stove. Ow! That hurts!”

If the Germans had the sense of the Icelanders (possibly a sense that comes from necessity), then they would take advantage of their trade surplus to run a gov’t. deficit and use that gov’t. spending to start a jobs program for the unemployed of Europe on developing the replacement for the fossil-fuel foundation of the European economy.

They also have a responsibility for this due to the fact that a large portion of their trade surplus is due to their automobile exports. So, the deficit would simply be part of the economic “externality cost” of internal combustion engines that run on fossil fuels.

Here is a chart that shows the relative size of Germany’s current/annual gov’t. deficit relative to its GDP (0.3%) compared to Japan, the U.K., and the U.S.: chart The chart is from the Financial Times. (h/t automaticearth)

Germany can either wait until “extend&pretend” fails, and then consider bailing out its banks, and still not have a replacement for fossil fuels. Or, it can run a deficit to employ people in the depressed countries to (at least begin to) buy something it needs (a replacement for fossil fuels) with low-cost labor, and let them use that income to pay back more of the debt.

“The rules” are created in large part by the left. The right shrugs and says “he’s a reliable vote for what I care about so no, we’re not going to force him to resign.” The left shrieks and carries on and demands human sacrifice. The result is constant blackmail and the knowledge that anyone stupid enough to champion the left will be destroyed if he or she has ever done anything that even resembles dubious, whether it bears on their performance as a legislator or executive or not.

Risk takers do stupid things sometimes. Boring drones who would never do anything risky, will also not risk themselves to do the right thing.

It very much depends, now, on which “rules” we’re talking about here, and which “left”. If you’re talking about the rules created by the left, well, would be having this discussion if these were corruption scandals? No, we’d all be united in condemnation.

Despite its screeching, the right lets its men get away with sexual scandal for a reason. The economic right and the social right are united in either full-throated belief in male sexual prerogatives, or at best indifference. Yes, even the moralizing cultural/religious right is ultimately based in a worldview of male sexual prerogative.

You are not so subtly demanding that the left adopt the same indifference to sexual double-standards while DSK’s alleged victim is raked over the coals for dodgy asylum papers.

Risk takers do stupid things sometimes. Boring drones who would never do anything risky, will also not risk themselves to do the right thing.

Now that he is out of legal jeopardy, it would be good to see Spitzer put up a campaign to challenge Obama. He can brazen it out, if he’s a risk taker. I would like to see him do it. More than ever, Ian Welsh’s observation that “Obama needs to be defeated and seen to be defeated by the left” applies.

It wouldn’t be easy. His biggest accomplishment was that he prosecuted people on Wall Street, but it would be difficult for him to campaign as someone who thinks that people should follow the law. He would also be subject to the same criticisms that democrats made of Ralph Nader: he’s unrealistic, he’s in it for his ego, he’s only a spoiler. And, of course, Spitzer could not expect any campaign funds from Wall Street, whom he would presumably be campaigning against.

“Assassination by sexual/legal scandal is quite a clever innovation, really.”

Abraham Zapruder and his damn 8mm camera sort of made it necessary. If TPTB could do it over, they would have sandbagged JFK with a sex scandal. They’d learned their lesson by the time Nixon took office.

Simply put, once Nixon attained the presidency, he struggled for his independence, and began doing things that displeased his former sponsors…
Nixon suspected the CIA of surrounding him and then setting him up. From his own days supervising covert operations as vice president, he recognized that the Watergate burglars and their bosses were seasoned CIA hardliners with ties to the Bay of Pigs invasion and events linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nixon battled the CIA for files on what he called the “Bay of Pigs thing,” but never could get access to them.
In sum, I found that the very people who created Nixon and used him to advance their own political interests ended up destroying him. Nixon’s famous paranoia, in other words, had a basis in reality.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Watergate_and_Future_News_for_2009_1222.html

Mandos

You are not so subtly demanding that the left adopt the same indifference to sexual double-standards while DSK’s alleged victim is raked over the coals for dodgy asylum papers.

Double standards? The very idea that rape, as something that can only be done to women (or minors/children) by men is something of a double standard by definition. To some extent (but not all, I admit), the conception of rape originates from male supremacy, that women and children are the property of some male, so rape then becomes a crime of sexual trespassing.

I believe that many of the post-left feminists like Dworkin, in their diatribes against pornography, against ‘date rape’, and against even sex itself, are in fact reinforcing male supremacy, not combating it. Whether they realize it or not, they are in essence reinforcing Christian notions of sexuality, which very much subjugate women. That’s why they find such ready allies in the Christian Right.

A superior alternative was the goal of the sexual liberationists, which regards sex into an activity just like any other between people, one not requiring the blessing of the state or anyone else to happen. (There is a legitimate state interest in preventing unwanted pregnancy or disease, but that’s about it). While forcible rape will and should always be condemned and prosecuted, misunderstandings between individuals involving sex will be of lesser importance (because the sex itself isn’t a big deal). By doing so, rather of making us all hedonists, this deemphasizes the importance of sexual matters as “not a big deal”. As I’ve said, that would be a positive development in our politics.

-StewartM

Leaving aside the “purity” argument for a while, I think this is actually far less a left/right cultural thing and more a class thing. Even the high muckity-mucks that are ostensibly on the left tend to be high muckity-mucks. The whole bit about access and power and perks that Ian brought up applies. You get used to being a made man, who has protection from your missteps. Get out of line, and your protection is withdrawn. I think that’s a lot of it. People talked about the affairs of earlier leaders. They were known, it was just that withdrawing protection wasn’t considered kosher then for some reason.

There’s an old psych principle that I believe hasn’t been refuted – it is much easier to get someone to do something by threatening to take stuff away than by offering it. (i.e. – Offering someone a million dollars to do something is less effective than giving them a million dollars and then threatening to take it away if they don’t do it.)

Mandos:

The world went from setting boundaries on women to preventing women from setting boundaries, and leftist men from all versions of 60s movements were apparently enthusiastic participants in this.

Again, really? More so than others? Leftist men may have been more verbal about this, but was their behavior really any that different than that of other males? I think Dworkin was overreacting.

(I’m a critic of the counter-culture too, you might know, but for different reasons; its reliance on philosophical idealism was the reason it failed. No, you can’t simply “will” yourself to make a new society from ideals, as societies have evolved the way they have because of their material (“infrastructural”) base. The Farm on Tennessee, for instance, mores have evolved to be not too far removed from those of the Amish–not surprisingly, as their lifestyle and mode of production is similar, their outlook and mores follow. It’s why on The Farm babies are good and premarital sex, birth control, and homosexuality is bad. Sound familiar?

Such places are also a testament to the fact that despite one’s intent on establishing a “new way of life”, one never entirely escapes the culture indoctrination one was brought up under. It’s the blind spots that always hit you).

Sex is just one human activity among many others, despite our obvious bonobo-like preoccupation and interest with it. In our daily activities, we struggle for autonomy, we struggle to set limits we don’t want others to trespass. Often we fail and our wishes get trespassed anyway. Most of the time such trespasses we don’t regard as counting for much other than irksome inconveniences, we don’t think they merit legal inquiry and prosecution. To say that sex is something different, something vastly more important, something that *does* require legal permissions to properly happen, something that can only happen by some form of legalistic contract and terms, is a conservative doctrine, not a leftist one.

Now, this of course does not apply to forcible rape. Having a gun or knife or weapon pointed at you or being physically brutalized and overpowered, apart from any sexual contact, is traumatizing. (I’ve known people who suffered from that, sans sex as part of a burglary, and one couldn’t bear to be alone at home the rest of her life). But the morning-after he said/she said or “I was drunk, I couldn’t consent” type of “rape”? Please. Trying to imagine myself in their shoes, even if I ended up having sex with someone I didn’t really want to have sex with, that is far, far, far down on the “I was wronged” list of complaints of what I can be imagined being done to me. Objectively speaking, being unfairly fired from my job would be far worse. Having my home burned or my property destroyed is far worse. Being defrauded of my life’s savings would be far worse. Being physically assaulted and crippled for life is far worse. Orgasm or not, my having sex with some I didn’t particularly care to have sex with is small potatoes apart from matters such as pregnancy or disease. To treat it as more serious and more an infringement of my personhood and to punish it socially and legally worse than those counter-examples is simply irrational.

And in a moral world that someone like Dworkin has helped create and reinforce, is it any wonder that Weiner’s sending a young woman a photo of himself in his underwear is some unforgivable trespass requiring the strictest of sanctions, discussed endlessly by pundits all over the news, whereas the banksters actually defrauding people of their homes and life savings, or wars we fight which entail the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians, that is buried deep in Section A? A lack of any rationality to morality, of morality based on tradition only, is what the Right wants.

-StewartM

the post-leftist branch of radical feminism has always struck me as frenetically anti-sex and anti-human, and not too far removed from Christianity and its obsession with celibacy. Maybe that’s why they made alliances with the political and social right, no? I don’t think of them as “leftist” in any sense: cultural, political, social, economic, whatever. Real women’s liberation gives women equal power to men, in sexual matters just as much as economic matters, rather than trying to change human beings into something they’re not.

Totally agree. I’ve been stunned at the similarities between the sex-is-always-about-power feminists and the sex-is-good-only-in-marriage radical right. Very bizarre.

No, Weiner shouldn’t have resigned, but no surprise that the Dems once again shot themselves in the foot by demanding that he do. Pillage, plunder, lay waste — all okay. Send naughty pictures to faraway girls — intolerable.

By the way, I guess you guys have seen that DSK now faces rape charges in France via the aforementioned Tristane Banon.

By the way, I guess you guys have seen that DSK now faces rape charges in France via the aforementioned Tristane Banon.

Yes, here is a link. I guess he’s a “risk taker,” not a “boring drone.” Just don’t leave him alone with any women or girls that you care about.

So, I’ll be blunt: that’s the kind of defensive reaction I had quite a long time ago when I started reading this sort of thing, and it took some effort to start to read it in a detached manner, particularly difficult when one is a member of the class being judged as oppressor. And while I took the time to do this, I do not necessarily subscribe to all or even most of the solutions to these problems that they propose(d).

The truth is that in rape cases, the accuser is often just as much on trial as the defendant; we assume that only women of the utmost probity can truly be raped to an extent that we wouldn’t if the crime instead were robbery or murder.

Why that is, is very interesting.

The point is not to prevent the legal defence of the accused. Some radical feminists would like to toy with standards of evidence. That is a bad idea, I agree. But the truth is that there are behaviours that fall short of criminal that make me wonder whether a person has the judgement that I would trust in government to look after the interests of large swathes of vulnerable populations. A lot of would-be heroes ultimately end up looking after their own class, if that.

Do we take sexual/gender oppression seriously, or only as a secondary concern?

add Hemingway to the list of people our secret police have manipulated

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/629320/did_fbi_surveillance_contribute_to_ernest_hemingway%27s_suicide/

When we talk of squeaky clean purists who would never risk a scandal, the first person I think of is Roberts, the Chief of the Supremes, and look at how well that has worked out.

I’d have to disagree with anon about men not being as discreet, or smart, about shady sex as they used to be a few decades ago. I’m more inclined to think media policies have changed. If Kennedy or FDR had run for office these days their indiscretions would be trumpeted as such matters have been for Wiener or Spitzer and they would have been run out of office too.

OK. But then it follows that there are no other politicians who are having non-marital sex right now (or, in Weiner’s case, not even that). After all, if they were, then the corporate media would catch them. Do you want to make that argument?

Also, you would be countering Jon Stewart’s argument that the corporate media are lazy, because they need to be following all politicians and finding out whether they are having non-marital sex. Do you want to make that argument? The reason that Weiner, Charlie Sheen, and others become notorious is because the corporate media is lazy. They would rather simply repeatedly talk about something like this than work for a living.