Academic

It's Always the Politicians, Rebublicans, and Evangelists

By Kevin Maillard

Personal guilt of a self-articulated crime has become common parlance of contemporary political life. Gov. Spitzer?s recent allegations of involvement with a prostitution ring, high-class or not, only prove this truth further.

The most righteous of public figures have the farthest elevation to fall. The velocity only accelerates as the candidate approaches final ground. Thuds are much louder when the person holds the weight of fame.

Extremism, or even avowed profession, establishes a historical touchstone for deviance. Even in the most understandable and believable declarations of fortitude or disgust, nonconforming behavior can exist. As early as the seventeenth century, British author Samuel Johnson asked ?How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?? Very public enunciations run in tandem with very private transgressions.

Sex scandals cannot survive without the salacious impact of shock. Perhaps it is especially delicious to discover homophobic senators soliciting gay sex in airport bathrooms, or to find outspoken divinists in cahoots with women of the night.

Widespread reporting of one?s public/private schizophrenia, particularly in regards to sex, reminds us of the fallibility of public figures. But the American public places high expectations on the private lives of politicians that leaves little room for moral error.

The tabloid celebrity culture that pervades news reporting revels in the erroneous and also boring humanism of famous people. Stars? They?re just like us! Buying toilet paper and pushing strollers has so captivated human interest that the concept of ?newsworthy? demands reinvestigation. However, spying Charmin and Maclaren in the arms of celebrities likes far outside the beguiling velvet rope of sex scandals.

Celebrity is concomitant with sex. Following the dating, marital, and reproductive lives of the well-known exists as a highly profitable media industry. Questions of sexuality or its lack thereof surround even the most D-listed celebrities. Gay or straight? Single or dating? Happily married or shockingly divorced?

But artists, singers, and actors (aside from certain

California

republicans) largely avoid political action. Involvement is rather directed at ?causes?: homelessness, addictions, and the environment. These activities invoke noble and effective ideologies, but they do not engage normative ideas for policy change in the same way as direct political action.

If Washington DC (or Albany) stands as the Hollywood for the intelligent and moderately unattractive, then similar scrutiny certainly exists. For political figures that indeed base their careers on publicly avowed ideologies, the intrigue of scandal intensifies.

Making sense of the contradiction of moralistic ideology and nonconforming sex does not require a reckoning of incompatibles. Public repression and denouncement of constituencies and practices heighten their power for deviance. Continued focus on the subject brings it into the realm of the personal.

Evangelist and Super-Husband Ted Haggard loves his meth and men. Dixiecrat and former segregationist Strom Thurmond slept on both sides of the color line. And the Thorn Birds seems brutally real.

The arc of extremism always points back towards its adversary. Fetishizing the repugnant deviance of the other side makes for bedfellows indeed, but not strange ones.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).