Yesterday, a fellow writer was talking about Representative Weiner and crotch-gate. She is one of these kneejerk types who thinks she's deep but really just keeps saying stuff that shows her inability to think things through. I've found this kind of thing to be very prevalent but when it's an older black woman I feel a deeper kind of shame. It's almost as if she wants the world to think she's hip, as if she still is too wound up with the world's ideas of morality.
Anyway, she asked: what if mrs. weiner said: "i know about it. i don't care about it. and there's nothing wrong with it. he's never even met these women. we laugh about this stuff. it's just good 21st century fun. we work hard. we deserve our privacy. so stop making me the victim in something scandalous and get back to your own lives."
Aaargh!
I replied:
If she knew about it, then that's an interesting issue. If she didn't know about it, then it's a problem. If one can lie to one's family member, one can lie to one's constituents. It takes great skill to practice lying continually to the face of a person one loves. So many people who say "it's about privacy and who cares what people do in their homes" don't seem to know what it means to live with a skillful liar. I suspect other politicians lie as well and yet have not cheated on their wives. But while it sounds very free-thinking to say morality doesn't matter...the lying part, the deceitfulness bothers me. My dad was slick at lying. Drug-dealing and drug-taking friends were liars...and lying affects everything it touches. Not to mention NO pregnant woman would want the guy she's sleeping with to risk bringing home an STD from someone. From what we've seen from the whole John Edwards issue.... some of these guys don't exactly use protection.
Honestly, this kind of "it's all privacy" silliness is a complex one. Sure, some things are private and the government and media meddle into people's lives. But on the other hand, sometimes there should be a kind of public shaming and assessment for "private" behavior.
I think about the Terry Schiavo incident. Removing the plug from a dead person is one thing, removing it from a brain-damaged but living person is quite another. Terry was mentally disabled, that's all. But her husband had his common-law wife and their two sons and all that money he had gained in the lawsuit and he wasn't going to give the money to her folks to take care of her. And of course the media -- which is ruled by the prince of the power of the air-- didn't tell all that. They made it seem as if pain-in-the neck religious people were just intruding on the lives of a good man who wanted to do his wife's bidding. So everyone out there in TV-land was on the side of the husband to "let his wife have a decent death" as opposed to "letting those religious parents get their evil way."
It's amazing how a story can be framed. It's amazing how lacking in justice this world is. It's amazing how the world cannot accept truth. I mean, honestly! There wasn't a lot of sane thinking going on in the majority of the populace, was it? I mean, seriously: if you got brain damage and could smile and eat but your spouse couldn't deal with a wife like that (although he promised God to take care of you in sickness and in death) and had a new woman and two kids...does that mean he should kill you based on some "quality of life" idea? I get very annoyed with stuff like this because some folks say that disabled kids have a poor "quality of life." Heck, everyone has a poor quality of life in this world!
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