For nearly two weeks, the media has been having an apoplectic fit over the sexting peccadillo of Congressman Anthony Weiner. We have already blasted our media colleagues on how they've acted on that topic - but like many stories these days, it seems a sub-section of Americans won't be truly satisfied and ready to move on until Weiner is broke, out of office, crouched in a fetal position in the gutter, alone, and waiting to die.
These paragons of compassion are often the same people who will be the first to tell you how ethical they are.
America is filled with people who are hypocrites in the worst way, in part, because Americans often display a desire for things to be as they can only be in the movies, in books, and on TV - fictional and unrealistic.
Politicians - all of them, from every party - are all, to a greater or lesser degree, liars. Frankly, so is everyone reading - or writing - this commentary. We all lie. We tell ourselves that a little white lie won't matter all that much, or that THEY lie but WE are virtuous. The fact is, we all lie.
We lie when we tell ourselves that one more slice of pizza isn't that big a deal or when we dump in a little bit more sugar in our coffee. When we say we'll make it to an optional religious ceremony, business meeting, or kid's school function and then don't show, we say, "Meh. It was OPTIONAL. No big deal."
To your business colleagues, your spiritual leader, your kid - or your waistline - all of those may have been a big deal after all. You knew that - and you lied to yourself anyway.
We're all human. We make mistakes. Some mistakes are easier to fix than others. Eating better and exercising more, for example, could fix that waistline lie you've been telling yourself.
Taking prurient pictures and sending them over the internet to anyone - and then explaining it to your spouse? Having an inappropriate sexual liaison with an intern? Impregnating your housekeeper and not telling your wife for thirteen years? Or how about leaving your cancer-stricken wife while she's on her deathbed to go marry your next wife? Those "little mistakes" are a bit harder to explain - and to fix.
What about getting your country involved in multiple questionable wars, with no single significant reason, while putting the cost of both wars on your country's credit card - and allowing millions to be killed or maimed because of your little "slip-up"?
As you can see, some mistakes were built to last - and not every mistake is the same.
We'll admit - Anthony Weiner screwed up. He shouldn't have been taking lewd photos of himself, and sending them to anyone, anywhere - including girlfriends when he was single, or even his wife after they were married.
But that's not our point today.
We don't elect our leaders in America to be anything other than what they are. They ARE liars - and if we think they're not, then we're liars, too. However, there are degrees of lying - and those degrees DO matter, especially when judging the performance of our elected officials.
If an elected official is lying about a war, or about whether they are being paid under the table by a corporation, or whether they're shifting laws to benefit their family...? Those are the kinds of lies that matter.
If an elected official likes sending pictures of themselves in their undies - or even in the buff - to a private friend or two...? We think it's stupid behavior - but we really don't care. In the case of Anthony Weiner, he didn't even end up in the sack with someone other than his wife, so we're truly unconcerned about him.
The people we worry about are the real clowns and twisted individuals in office who are attempting to abuse our system until it's dead and buried. Those individuals are the truly twisted ones - and they're the ones screwing us all.
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