What I witnessed Tuesday on Dan Abrams show (which is generally pretty good, BTW) was short of breathtaking. Abrams had Tucker Carlson and Emily Heil of "Roll Call" on to discuss Sen. Vitter. More specifically, the hypocrisy that is Vitter's tenure as a public official.
At first Tucker tried to employ the tried and true political dodgeball that so many of his ilk have used in the past. When that didn't phase Abrams, Carlson decided to play the "gender card."
You can read the transcript here. But I just want to go over Carlson's slights-of-hand before I get to his desperate and insulting reasoning. First, he tried attacking the media for reporting the story (a dodge):
This is not hypocrisy, because he is not being asked to be judged by a different standard. He is holding himself to his own standard. HE said this is a terrible sin. He has asked his wife‘s forgiveness. This is not a rejection for marriage. The guy wants to stay married, obviously, and he is taking great pains to remain married. This is not to excuse what he did, which is obviously wrong, but it is to call B.S. on the press which is jumping in and judging this guy. That‘s hypocrisy. I don‘t know a single group of people with weirder sex lives than people who work in television.
Abrams pointed out that the media doesn't (as a whole at least) tell Americans how they should conduct their sex lives. So then Carlson ducked and tried to rededfine the nature of the issue (GOP hypocrisy):
I am saying that David Vitter is saying that it is a good thing to remain faithful to your wife. He is still saying that. He did not remain faithful to his wife and he is ashamed because of it. It is not clear to me exactly how he is a hypocrite. He is a sinner.
Abrams then ponders on whether the "Hey I'm sorry, ya'll" response is enough under these circumstances. So with little hesitation, Carlson dips into the Bad Analogy Handbag:
I‘m missing that. When you are in A.A., you are not in the company of a bunch of people who have never had drinking problems. These are drunks. These are people who know what it is to have stumbled..
[snip]
If I smoke cigarettes, and I get lung cancer from it, and I continue to smoke, and I go talk to a class of young people, and I say don‘t smoke. I know it‘s the wrong thing to do. I am not a hypocrite. I am giving you the benefit of my experience. How is this a public policy issue post we, in the press concluded after Clinton that it was wrong to go and hold this guy‘s private life up to public ridicule for no reason other than our ratings. That‘s what we‘re doing today.
See how he slipped a "Clinton did it too" in there? Pretty sneaky, huh? Well, he didn't stop with bashing Bill:
If someone is preaching gun control, and I remember Dianne Feinstein, big gun control person, someone on her staff was found to have begun. Dianne Feinstein is trying to prevent me from having a gun therefore that actually is a news story as far as I am concerned. David Vitter was not out there.
Around this time, Abrams (finally) lets Heil chime in and they double-team Carlson on the main point: Vitter has been telling the American public to live their sex lives a certain way, a way that even he doesn't adhere to. This is where Tucker Carlson becomes "He Who Shall Protect the Private Lives of Others:"
ABRAMS: He was trying to prevent people from having sex.
CARLSON: Come on. That is not true. He is not trying to prevent adults from having sex and he is not proposing stiffer penalties for Johns, people who use prostitutes.
The principle here is—hold on. Even public figures deserve private lives. I think that is a principle worth upholding and defending. The point that—if you were going to go through Congress, how many people with a weird sex lives could you find? Probably 535.
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Now let me stop right here, because Carlson just dove into a pool of lies right now. I could make this diary longer with quote after quote after quote from Vitter that's clearly referring to restricting or punishing the sex habits of adults, but I won't. But I will link to story by Glen Greenwald, which pretty much debunks Carlson's "Vitter was just talkin' 'bout the kids!" theory.
Oh, what the hell; I'll drop this little Greenwald nugget:
So, to recap: in Louisiana, Vitter carried on a year-long affair with a prostitute in 1999. Then he ran for the House as a hard-core social conservative family values candidate, parading around his wife and kids as props and leading the public crusade in defense of traditional marriage.
Then, in Washington, he became a client of Deborah Palfrey's. Then he announced that amending the Constitution to protect traditional marriage was the most important political priority the country faces. Rush Limbaugh, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich supported the same amendment.
So in as few words as possible: if Vitter's public quest was to "crusade in defense of traditional marriage," there is no way in hell he could do that without "trying to prevent adults from having sex" to some noticeable degree. Now Back To the Program.
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Now, Carlson became adamant with his new defense here (most likely because he thought it would stick):
He has not told adults not to have sex, so far as I know. And I have not seen any tapes of him telling people not to go to prostitutes. Moreover, the problem here with this guy, like a lot of people in Washington, lives away from his family. So if there is a takeaway on the public policy side, it is this.
Members of Congress should not live apart from their wives and children. That‘s bad. Men when they lived apart from their wives and children tend to commit adultery as you know. That is just the way men are. I think maybe David Vitter could get up tomorrow and say, if your family is living back in your district, spend the extra dough and bring them to Washington .
Carlson slithers from "adults were exempt" to "he was away from his family" to "MEN, WHEN THEY LIVED APART FROM THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN TEND TO COMMIT ADULTERY" in the blink of an eye. And he runs with it:
HEIL: I do not think voters are going to accept the excuse that is just the way men are.
CARLSON: But that‘s true. That is just the way men are. And I don‘t care whether we‘re admitting that in public or not but you know as well as I do that is the way men are. Not all men cheat.
ABRAMS: Not everyone is as intellectually honest as Tucker Carlson.
That‘s the problem.
CARLSON: You know that is true, Dan. Come on.
Now the "not all men cheat" makes this whole exchange even more confusing. I can only guess that Carlson decided, last minute mind you, that he should add the caveat that these "sinners" only sin because they are away from their families.
Of course, this brings up a ton of questions: Why run for office if you can't handle the pressure of being away from your family for so long? Why haven't there been more scandals involving sexaully open-minded Congresspeople? Why couldn't Vitter have his wife flown in to...save their marriage? If Vitter cared so much about having sex only when married, why doesn't he want gays to get married? Why should Vitter's sex life be so personal when he (and others) made Bill Clinton's so public?
You get the idea. I still can't believe Carlson would stoop to the "Boys Will Be Boys" defense, as if Vitter's actions were beyond his control. I just hope we don't hear this excuse when other Republicans are caught (politically, of course) with their pants down.