Between Dr. Hager's forced sodomization of his narcoleptic wife, John Bolton's penchant for swinging, Jack Ryan's repeated attempts to force his wife into group sex, Rush Limbaugh's multiple divorces, and all the rest of it, don't you think it's time to admit that many Americans, both the decorous right wingers and the bohemian lefties, grapple with extreme perversion and sexual impropriety? Some, like Rush, don't bug me, at least aside from their hypocrisy. Some, like Hager, should be locked away forevermore. But I do wish that, in simple pursuit of honesty, our country would come to terms with the idea that figures public and private, right and left, have sexual lives and that such an admission, in and of itself, is not abnormal.
What Hager did, I guarantee, will not spill 1/1000th of the news ink Clinton's petty dalliances attracted. Now, Clinton was the president, his coverage will necessarily be greater. But I further promise that the outrage amongst the right won't touch the howling indignation they expended over a consensual blowjob. To some degree, that's simple partisanship. But they can only get away with it because we, as a country, have essentially classified everything beyond monogamous, heterosexual sex as deviant, and any acts that fall outside that narrow category are fair target for outsized outrage. Therefore, we've given partisans the ability to minimize the worst acts, like Hager's rape of his wife, and demonize the merely improper, like Clinton's infidelity to his wife. There's no scale.
