First, check out this segment:
I think her rankings in the “Post-Bill Clinton Modern American Political Sex-Scandal Consequence-O-Meter” are wrong. In particular, she seems to have a real problem with prostitution and thinks that it alone makes something creepy and prosecutable. For example, she finds David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer, who only had adulterous, consensual sex with prostitutes, very creepy and prosecutable—far more creepy and prosecutable than Larry Craig, who was trying to have sex in a public restroom. Personally, I find people trying find sexual partners in airport bathrooms far more creepy than a man paying a prostitute for sex—and this has nothing to do with the homosexuality Craig’s act. I can see that Vitter deserves to be higher on the creepy scale than Spitzer (and he isn’t), given the great hypocrisy of his behavior. But Craig shares this hypocrisy with Vitter—in fact, Craig’s hypocrisy is probably worse.
And there is the case of Mark Sanford. I understand that the guy cheated on his wife and it shows hypocrisy. But the man was in love. Screwing around behind your wife’s back is bad, but it is hard to find a man falling in love with another woman all that creepy. As creepy as Larry Craig? I don’t think so. She also places him far lower on the prosecutable scale as the details of his misuse of funds shows. They are far worse than anything John Edwards did, who she maxes out on both scales. I disagree with her about how creepy his affair was, too. I don’t think that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sex scandal is all that creepy. I guess I just don’t find guys having affairs all that creepy. They do it all the time.
Finally, we come to Anthony Weiner, who Maddow places low on the prosecutable scale, but rather high on the creepy scale. I do think it’s a little creepy. It is more creepy than Spitzer, surely. But it is certainly less creepy than a married, anti-gay rights politician actively seeking gay sex in a public bathroom. Let’s not forget here that Weiner did not actually have any sex. This is basically all about online flirting. Much ado about nothing? Very little anyway. I’m not really sure what the whole point of this segment was, except to bring up all the major sex scandals of the past few years. So it isn’t just that Maddow is wrong; she is also disappointing; she is better than this.
Update
On the next day’s broadcast, Maddow claimed (rightly) that Mark Sanford’s and John Ensign’s transgressions were worst than Anthony Weiner’s. But the day before, she placed Sanford below Weiner on her creep scale. Ensign was only slightly higher. What’s with that?
