I swear if I hear this line of power corrupting men in this news cycle again I'm going to put my fist through a wall. Every time a famous man is involved in a scandal involving sex people get behind the phoney conclusion that men behave badly because of their power. This argument would only make sense if you lived in a vacuum completely separate from reality. Do men of limited power and resource not cheat on their wives? Do they not get caught having sex with the office assistants, the babysitter, or wife's sister? I'm so tired of this bogus spin that power somehow makes men act out sexually. It's not that they are powerful men, it's that they are men!
When I saw the South Park episode Sexual Healing, I thought they were exaggerating. Sure, the media likes to talk about it when a man who is well known or in a position of power is involved in a sexual scandal, but that is only because it wouldn't be newsworthy if they weren't famous right? Well maybe not. Since yesterday, I've seen men all over the airways act stunned at how any man in authority could do something like that. Today, I heard a newscaster pose a question that in a nutshell was why do men in a position of power have sex with women who are not their wives; and then he didn't break out laughing. As if the reason would be any different than why any other man who had sex with a woman who was not his wife.
To be honest, I don't believe humans as a species are monogamous. I find this whole idea of commitment to one person not only selfish, but against human nature. So any time I see a man or woman cheat on their spouse, I roll my eyes and question why they got married in the first place. Of course, I already know the answer to this; it's because society idealizes the "family values" notion of one man and one women living together with their children. However, I'm not writing this article to rip society for trying to force people to live by standards that a vast majority of people have no hope of living up to.
When journalists like Martin Bashir go up in front of the camera and pose the question of why do men with power behave badly; they are perpetuating a scam. They are trying to make you believe a man in a position of power is, for whatever reason, different from any other man on this planet. They are trying to deceive people into believing that these types of things only happen to people in power, or somehow happened because that man was in power. If a man is going to cheat on his wife in a position of power, he would cheat on his wife if he didn't have that power. The only difference is that his position gives him more access to women than he might not otherwise have had. If you want to criticize a man for having an affair, go ahead and do so, but don't say that his power or fame led him to do it. When Tiger Woods had sex with all those women, people talked like it was his success that made him cheat on his wife. It wasn't his fame, it was the fact that he was a horn dog and he would have cheated on her if he had been a nobody.
Now, the fact that people are using Wienergate to propagate the spread of this "power makes men cheat" nonsense is even more twisted by the fact that what Wiener did is not tantamount to cheating. Cybersex, if that was even what Wiener was having, is not a physical relationship. While it is possible to forge emotional bonds over the internet, it doesn't sound like Wiener did that either. Having internet sex does not make a person a cheater any more than watching a dirty movie or reading a smutty novel. The only difference is that it is interactive. It can affect a marriage, but so can porn, but it still doesn't mean it's cheating. As for the idea of posting pics of his junk being cheating, that's even more laughable. If he feels comfortable with putting his assets on display, that's his right, he's not violating his marriage contract by doing so.
If you think sexting or posting racy pics affects his ability to do his job, you're out of your mind. I would have no problem voting for a person who did either of these things before they went into office, so why would I have problem with him doing it when in office. Even congressman are entitled to a personal life, and quite frankly I'm more worried about John Boehner's 100+ rounds of golf in a year. Sexting and posting naked pics of yourself require little time or effort. As for whether this was affecting his job performance, in the past three years I've seen Wiener at the top of his game, becoming one of my favorite politicians. If his performance was somehow affected by his sexting, then maybe more Democrats should try it out because we could use more fight and charisma on the house floor.
If the lying bothers you, it was a lie about his personal life; nothing that negatively affects his ability to represent the people of his district. I don't think lying about your sex life, be it about an affair or being a closet homosexual; is the same as lying about politics. Jon Kyle lied on the senate floor about Planned Parenthood, and that's a lie that should actually matter to people; and now it's out of the news cycle. So all of you who are worried about Wienergate being a distraction, just calm down. This will blow over as well. Furthermore, as one of only a handful of strong liberals in Washington, who exactly is he distracting? Most of the Democrats seem to be perpetually distracted, Wiener was one of the few who was actually fighting hard and loud for progressive causes, and I have no doubt in a few months he'll be back on the front lines of America politics again, serving the conservatives a heaping helping of truth.