Our friend and ally Alexa wrote a piece called Late For The Sky on her blog, NION. She expressed her frustration with John Edwards, understandable that many people feel this way.
Now I have maintained (for the most part) radio silence on this whole non-issue, while most of the blogoshpere drools over it, while saying it is an issue because, get this: People drool over it.
I decided to expand on my answer to Alexa’s essay, and then answer the rest of the blogoshpere’s babble about it below.
Truth be told, the reaction of the Left (in general, not you Alexa) frustrates and disappoints me more than his actions.
I’ll start with my off-the-cuff reply:
I still have a really hard time with the fact that America persecutes people for what really is a matter based on religion and puritan standards. While some places still have adultery on the books, I am sure, it is none of the public’s business.
As a recovering Catholic, I long gave up the idea of sin per se, and have long embraced the separation of church and state.
I am sick of the double standards too, of sex being taboo, of men being forgiven their drives and women condemned… and far too old at 45 to know that despite “societal standards” that are indeed embedded and brainwashed into my brain too about monogamy… it really isn’t our natural state. I’ve seen far too many people slip up for that, despite our taboos.
Now, did it make him any less sincere about the common man’s plight, his populist stance because he has sexual urges too?
Jesus, thats like saying because I masturbate I cannot care about Darfur.
I refuse to be part of this anger, this righteousness that Americans have about sexuality, this duality of teasing and condemning.
I understand your frustration, with so much at stake, and having to live in this Country as it is, rather than how it should be… but I can’t help feed a fire that is wrong to begin with.
Americans have the sexual maturity of titillated 13 year olds, and the Church Ladies who teach them.
“She said tit, heh heh, heh heh.”
“Shame on you, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap!!!”
Both those replies are infantile.
Our use of shame to repress people’s natural sexuality is legendary. In an adult world, no one would have to signal by stance their attraction to another human being.
People can deny its about the sex all they want, but in America, without the sex, it is a non-story. When is the last time Cheney’s Halliburton ties, the money trail made FP news and had the outrage levels of this non-story? You can fuck a country, but no fucking between consenting adults. (Or to slaughter Carlin, “You can be a prick, but don’t play with your prick.“) In the end, which really matters? But we cannot get over our obsession.
A megagazillion porno sites prove my point. Whether its dollars or public humiliation, no matter the price for sex, humans want it. America makes you pay for it.
Worse yet, even the Left tries to drag this baby into it, like it is our GOD-GIVEN (or American Puritanical, same, same) right to know what happens in their family, our right to intrude on this mother and her child because we have made her choice of partners our business. It is NOT our business. Is this so different than bringing a rape victims sexual past into court? Is this so different than saying if a woman gets drunk she deserves rape?
This child should NOT have to pay for our craven curiosity. This child should not be a fucking pawn in the American Olympics of Persecuting Bastard Children, whether or not celebrities are involved. What next? Peeking into its diaper? Whispers in the schoolyard of “Love Child”??? This is perversion.
It is reprehensible that as a thousand bloggers CONTINUE TO WRITE about it, with the righteous indignation of a Missionary making indigenous peoples cover their “dirty bodies” all while “wishing this story would go away.” I am equally sure those Missionary’s Bishops loved those letters detailing their outrage too, in the 1700’s, even without polaroids, only fountain pen sketches. Hypocritical enablers of the worst in society.
Will we ever grow up?
We make sex dirty, we make human bodies dirty, we demonize young women who enjoy sex, we ostracize non-hetrosexual people, twisting the American psyche into Voyeuristic Perversion.
In societies without Puritanical repressions, rape is almost non-existent. In societies where women cannot be blamed for “making men do the dirty thang” hatred of women is not epidemic. Do the math. If sex isn’t dirty… there is no PRICE TO PAY, dig it?
Then there is the money angle. It is apparent this woman did work for the campaign. What she is paid is their business. Whether former liaisons or just best friends, in what world do not the favored of the rich get larger pieces of the pie? In what world does not Bradgelina’s entourage make gazillions, or Politician’s kindreds get better contracts? Let me tell you, even had this woman been a Mother Theresa who volunteered and lived on white rice, Americans would find that a reason to use that to condemn Edwards as well.
It IS all about the SEX.
People of the Left bitch about the “One man, One woman” definition of marriage…. (Marriage being basically a religious institution in the first place. We sure as fuck outlawed polygamy, didn’t we?)… and yet, is that not the basis of our outrage?
We have swallowed the hook, line and sinker of American Theocracy. We are angry he “cheated” on his wife. We imagine our outrage and betrayal if our spouses sought a moment of pleasure with someone other than ourselves, when clearly marriage is an ownership contract in America as defined by the Book itself. We are incensed by the possibility that someone could actually love more than one person too, with their whole hearts. Do you only love wholly one of your children? Can you not even fathom the possibility that maybe this man found two soul-mates for differing reasons, and that it is NOT our business. NO! That must really threaten America’s control-freak factor, its religious frothing even among some atheists. Just who decreed “one man, One woman” then, and why is having more than one partner evil?
Hypocrites of the Left, I salute your ability to fool yourselves.
One man, one woman. You bought it.
What people do with their genitals, their elbows, their computers, their cell phones, their PC’s, their Hibachi BBQs, their time, money and hearts is not our fucking business.
Our business as ADULTS in this World that is on Fire is to put out the Fire.
Not drag Babies into it. Not drag sex into it. Not drag a woman going through cancer treatment into it to validate our outrage…
Thank you, John Edwards, for speaking for me during this campaign, along with Dennis Kucinich and others who spoke about the real Class War that is the root of all evil in this country.
I’m sorry you had to lie and tap dance for the 13 year old Populace on the Right and the LEFT.
Who you love, who you seek pleasure with is no ones business but your own, and the people directly involved in it.
I’m sorry you had to “confess” and be branded with a Scarlett Letter. I’m sorry your lover is now despised like a character from “A Handmaiden’s Tale”.
I am sorry that child is being treated like it is Public Property.
Mostly I am sorry that Liberals themselves continue to act in the exact way that furthers their own repression, lessens the freedoms of people to express themselves sexually without the tool of SHAME that America wields over them.
I am sorry about the way you have to Pay For It.
Mostly I am sorry that I too, had to give this ink, furthering the cycle.
Someone has to speak for the Adults in America.
I’ll try later, when I’m done surfing porn.
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From WWL and to OWL, StC, Dd, and NION
“sex scandals” is the way in which the wives are always expected to cast themselves as harmonic angels forgiving the beastly instincts of their husbands.
But cheating does hurt. I have been on both ends in my past. The fact is that adults seek out sex for various reasons often having little to do with who is or is not “hot.” Desire is a funny thing it can hit you at the oddest moments with the most unexpected people.
Years ago when people died young, roles were more fixed and constricted particularly for women, and birth control was less available and reliable monogamy was easier to maintain. People claim to value it and spend an awful lot of time disproving themselves.
I find the “public confession” grating and unnecessary, it smacks of deep insecurity. Oh, I am a “bad person” do you still love me. I would have respected Edwards more if he had simply kept it a private manner but I suppose his hand was forced. I apply that standard to all public figures not just him.
But in actuality I don’t see it as a “fall from grace”, only because he is a politician and I just don’t fall in love with them any more.
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From WWL and to OWL, StC, Dd, and NION
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This was not a response to her essay, as such, in fact her frustration was one of the few I found reasonable.
Other people made the case about “bad cheater” but I wanted to start from a POV (yours) I thought valid. Your frustration with what was at stake was understandable I said.
Her case was more about the donations people made, when this was looming and his denunciation of Clinton.
Sorry if I mis-portrayed my case in trying NOT to name other bloggers POV’s I found reprehensibly backward.
We’re simply not a sophisticated society! If we were, we wouldn’t be dwelling on the sex lives of others, which is none of our business to begin with.
Personally, I don’t care to know or hear about any of these Enquirer-like stories.
The Repugs thrive on these stories, even seek them out in order to destroy the lives of such people.
You’re right, it’s an American obsession and it’s used for media shock value, selling cosmetics, clothing and just about every product you can imagine. Maybe, we simply lack substantive content and what is superficial is all there is!
when societies go all rabid and repressive, the sex goes weird. Victorians being a good example. That was one kinky era. The clothes alone say it all. The right and their ‘the family is the basic unit of society’ and their tying it up with fundamentalist religion just creeps me out. Sex isolated from mutual enjoyment and expression becomes just a breeding for state and God function.
This is not what any God I would think up had in mind. I guess is your God is a white bearded nasty old dude who is into punishment for enjoying the gifts of life and he proclaimed the knowledge of said pleasure the original sin then this insanity would be the natural state of things.
Church and state those two pillars of authority that are run on a code that assumes an order that is all about laws that profess to be for humans welfare and in actuality are about male aggression and control. Meanwhile the business of forbidden fruit rakes in the money and the priests/preachers, pols and celebrities lead double lives for the masses to alternatively throw stones at and get vicarious tittillation. The public loves a crying confession of I have sinned and a public pillory, the ever popular show of shows.
get so much play because we just aren’t a coherent society any more. We consider broad based discussions about policy “boring” and “wonky” and best left to the elites which of course is partially an explanation for why we have such crappy and oppressive social policy in this country.
America is about the least family friendly western country to live in.