Cheating is OK: As Long As You Look Good Doing It and Nobody Likes Your Wife

Firstly, I have had a particularly long week, so there is not a Guatemala entry this week. We will start wrapping that up next week. Promise. And then we will start Asia 2011v1.

This week, we’re going to be talking about the following statement from the Facebook page of one Patrick O’Conner (and by the way, any political debate or speech is more fun if you’re following Patrick online at the time):

“I find it interesting that people who have no heartburn about calling themselves feminists or progressives while supporting Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton now wanna act like any amount of evangelical support for Newt Gingrich just proves what worthless, soulless sellouts the other side are.”

We’re not really going to debate that statement, because debating hypocrisy in politics is kind of pointless. We are, however, going to discuss why some affairs count more than others.

Let us acknowledge that different incidences of adultery in politics are treated with different levels of disgust by people of all types. Not all offensive affairs (though all affairs are offensive) are considered the same level of offensive in the mind of the general public. I’m going to skip Ted Kennedy and instead focus on four recent examples of known, exposed affairs of politicians and then explain to the Jocelyn Saurini Affair Brutality Matrix. So, we’ll be looking at:

Bill Clinton

Newt Gingrich

John Edwards

Anthony Weiner

YES! THAT’S RIGHT! YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE BEYOND WEINER, BUT I’M BRINGING IT BACK. SUCK IT, BITCHES!

I’m going to argue that the moral superiority flounced upon the perpetrators of these affairs can be related back to a fairly clear ranking matrix. The matrix consists of four points. But first, let’s start by examining how America reacted to these four men and their infidelities.

In reality, when Bill Clinton had a nasty affair (IN THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL OVAL OFFICE) with some pudgy, bad-skinned intern and then made us all mentally visualize his freaky cigar habit, we pretty much moved past it quickly. Remember, the focus shifted almost instantly from “He had an affair” to “He lied about an affair.” The lie was the center of that scandal, not the affair. When that affair happened, how many times did we hear:

“Powerful men have been having affairs for centuries! Chill out! FRANCE!”

Or:

“All of the Presidents have had affairs. KENNEDY.”

Or, my personal favorite:

“THOMAS JEFFERSON. MULLATTO MISTRESS.”

Nobody cared that Clinton cheated on Hilary. If he hadn’t lied, that story would just have gone away in three months. You’re about to see though, that Bill Clinton ranks highly in all categories of the Jocelyn Saurini Affair Brutality Matrix.

Newt, on the other hand, has had his affairs used against him for years. As ammunition. Regularly. Now, it’s fair to argue that the fact that Newt continues to unapologetically have affairs plays a role here. But he’s not the only person having affairs. Or the only person who’s ever had an affair. But every time his name comes up, so do the affairs. When you think Newt, you think three things, and they are usually in this order: Stay Puff, Chronic Adulterer, Really Smart.

Then there’s Weiner. You may remember, I argued that what Weiner did was just as bad as having a physical affair. However, let’s keep this in perspective. This man didn’t really cheat on his wife. He had a cyber affair and unfortunately tweeted his junk. While that’s a)stupid and b)gross, it’s not grounds for a moral lashing the level of, say, leaving two wives for women that you’re having affairs with and then (allegedly) demanding an open marriage. Yet Weiner lost his office. Newt may be your next president. It really comes down to item number four in the Jocelyn Saurini Affair Brutality Matrix.

Finally, we can’t overlook John Edwards. This guy was almost our Vice President, and there’s an entire section in his Wikipedia entry devoted to his extramarital affair. John Edwards is somebody that I might argue we look at with the most disgust on this list. And he ranks appropriately poorly in The Jocelyn Saurini Affair Brutality Matrix.

So let’s get into the matrix, shall we?

Do You Look Like Women Should Want You? Would We Be Grossed Out At the Idea of Your Having Sex? Naked?

I’m going to concede right now that this is somewhat objective. Let’s not forget that I spent years working in San Francisco peddling adult products, and I know what some of the general public (and, uncomfortably, some of you) get off on. And I don’t think it’s okay or that “everything is normal and people just have healthy fetishes.” And also, later when I finally find the free time to port all of this legacy html over into Wordpress, I’m going to rename this blog “Jocelyn Saurini Judges You From Her Virtual Rhinestone-Encrusted Pedestal.”

But we look at men, and we judge whether they are the kind of men who women should find desirable. And if so, people of both genders find greater forgiveness in their affairs. After all, these people are so desirable that we can’t expect them to not yield. And, in truth, the prettier you are, the more breaks you get in life. That’s not me being a jerk and saying that. There are plenty of sociology studies to back me up. You can screw up a lot more if you look good doing it (no pun intended). In the case of adultery, looking good gives you an even bigger advantage because the nature of your sin requires us to ever so momentarily think about the idea of your having sex. Possibly dirty nasty sex.

Bill Clinton, he has an advantage here. He’s a good looking man. He’s a good looking man even now. I’d still want to sleep with him if he were single. He’s tall. Even when he was fat he wasn’t offensively overweight. He has a full head of hair. He has a kind of sexy southern accent. He carries himself with poise (unlike the frantic energy of some of the men below him in this list). Bill Clinton is empirically attractive. Assigning a numerical value from one to ten on how high he scores on this line of the matrix, we’d have to give him a ten.

John Edwards actually ranks well in this category, too. That’s an attractive man. For a brief while, it played to his favor (remember, the media stayed away from this story for a while). He almost ended up our Vice President! He is incredibly attractive. Well educated. In fairness, I’d probably also give him a ten in this category.

Next we’ve got Weiner. Not only is it rough to think of that little daschund-looking man having yappy sex, but it’s even harder to imagine him getting off in the shower. But the latter is what we were forced to imagine via vivid email chats. Part of why we were all so horrified by Weiner is that it could really have been any of us who inadvertently saw his junk, which was splashed all over the internet. And we did not want that AT ALL. Matrix score? Let’s give it a 3.

Then take Newt. If you can think about the idea of Newt Gingrich getting it on, even in the most vanilla, missionary style possible (and let’s face it, we all kind of know that Newt probably has some disturbing kinks), then you are WRONG IN THE HEAD. I can refer you to some porn as well as some anime for your fetish. His head. His head is HUGE! The billowing rolls of rice paper white and thin flesh over top of soft, squishy fat just rolling back and forth. WE ARE ALL HORRIFIED BY THIS VISUAL. We do not want to think of Newt coming into a bedroom in a silky bathrobe with a glass of cognac and some oil for a foot rub. I am ruining your day with these descriptions even as we speak, and that is a great joy to me! Newt ranks incredibly low on the “Do you look good enough to justify extramarital sex” scale. Score? -2.

So, at this point, the total matrix score is:

Clinton 10

Edwards 10

Weiner 3

Newt -2

The Wife Factor: Don’t Screw Around on Julianna Margulies

Next comes the wife factor. Here’s the short version of this: If the public feels that your wife deserves to be cheated on, they will forgive you more easily. We all love Julianna Margulies. Part of the reason that we watch The Good Wife is to see her prevail. If her character were played by Megan Fox, we’d think differently.

Clinton for sure has the advantage here. People hate Hillary Clinton (and by people, I don’t mean me, because I still want her to be my president, badly). But, even with the return of her “Stand By My Man” hairstyle (tm MKB), Hillary is a lot of the things that many people who care about whom other people are sleeping with hate. She’s bossy, opinionated, successful on her own, probably smarter and a stronger person than her husband, and clearly always had her own agenda at play as well. OF COURSE HE CHEATED ON HER. Who wouldn’t? You’d feel sorry for a man married to that she-beast too, if you were the kind of person who didn’t like independent women. On the “Did your wife deserve it?” scale, Clinton once again comes home with a ten.

Nobody else scores well here.

Weiner maybe gets the next best score, because his wife is ethnic. She has a name that you can’t pronounce. But, at the time of the scandal, she was a fairly new, young wife. We felt sorry for her because of that. So let’s say that on the “Did your wife deserve it?” scale, Weiner gets a 5. The fact that she reminds America of terrorists worked in his favor, but cheating on your young, pretty wife is never good.

Newt takes it pretty low here. It’s pretty hard not to feel sorry for the wives he left behind. Wife number one had cancer when he left her. Wife number two was just diagnosed with MS. And wife number three looks like forty-something-plastic-surgery Barbie, so both previous wives now have to feel bad about getting left for some stupid standard of blond and plastic. On the other hand, he doesn’t dip into the negatives here because you don’t quite feel so sorry for wife number two. She knew what she was getting into with him, and she’s also a little rough to look at. So on this line of the matrix, we’ll give Newt a solid two.

Edwards takes it home here, though. His wife was beautiful, kind, did tons of volunteer work and was dying of cancer while he had an affair, fathered a child (that my still be allegedly, who knows), and then broke the law using campaign money to cover the affair up. And then she died. There’s no coming back from that for John Edwards. Score: Negative ten.

So, our running tally at this poing:

Clinton 20

Weiner 8

Edwards 0

Newt 0

Did You Leave Your Wife? Did Your Wife Leave You?

Because in America, an affair that destroys a marriage is somehow worse. This of course, is because despite our divorce rate we like to act like the sanctity of marriage is a key value in American society. So if your affair ruins your marriage, it’s way worse.

Clinton stayed married, supported his wife in a run for president, and just had an amazing wedding for his daughter. Sure, it may or may not be a sham, but they still present the picture of a family that persevered through a mistake. Score: Ten.

Weiner: He’s still married, but she’s ethnic. You can’t even pronounce her name. It’s not the same. Score: 5.

Newt: Not only did it break up his marriage, but it broke up TWO marriages. And then he asked for an OPEN marriage, which isn’t even a marriage. Score: Negative Five.

Edwards: His wife died. And he (allegedly) said jackass things during said affair such as “When my wife dies.” Score: Negative Ten (and that’s only because I can’t realistically go lower without throwing the point of the matrix off.

Running Tally:

Clinton 30

Weiner 12

Newt -5

Edwards -6

Did You Get Out of the Way?

Then there’s the issue of how you manage the affair. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that if you take responsibility and get out of the way, you’ll be better off. This is the one spot on this matrix where Clinton fails and Newt succeeds. It’s kind of the old adage “If it’s not a big deal to me, it won’t be a big deal to you.”

Clinton: We all know that he fumbled big time here. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is the biggest joke of the century. But Clinton got a break here. Because of the impeachment desire, the focus got shifted pretty quickly to the lie rather than the affair. He got a break, really. And he was smart enough to make the entire thing about a Right Wing conspiracy to get him out of office to deflect conversation. We’ll give him an average score of five.

Weiner: My Twitter account got hacked? Dude. We can see in those pictures that it’s you. Now you both look dirty and stupid. And desperate. I’d go so far as to say that it was Weiner’s handling of the situation (no pun intended) that really ruined him in the end. Score? Negative Ten. Why so low? It’s because there are still pictures of his junk on the internet.

Edwards: Yet again taking it to a new low. Stealing money to cover up the affair. Potentially convincing an employee to lie about being the father of the mistress’ child. There’s…I mean, just wow. Score? Negative Fifteen. There really is no score low enough here. 

Newt: But Newt owns this category. “I have affairs. Deal with it.” Does he want to address those issues? “No, not really.” Newt makes this a non issue because he just refuses to treat it like an issue. This is where he pulls out ahead of the rest of this sorry pack of ball-less wonders. Score: Fifteen. Yes, I’ve been scoring on a ten point scale here, but he manages this so well that he gets bonus points. He has affairs. He’s not going to stop. AND YOU WILL VOTE FOR HIM NONETHELESS BECAUSE HE WILLS YOU TO DO IT.

So, our final total.

Clinton: 35

Newt: 10

Weiner: 3

Edwards: -16

You can really apply this scale to any politician.

JFK? Sure, we loved Jackie-O, but in categories one, three and four, JFK would score off the charts.

Bob Dole? Nobody wants to think about senior citizens having sex, so low score on one. We all love Elizabeth Dole, but let’s be honest. She looks a little manish, so we understand. His marriage stayed together, and in the end nobody has ever mastered item number four as well as Bob Dole. He turned the whole thing into a Viagra endorsement and a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears. He owns all other cheating politicians here. Even Newt.

So, you see, my point here is that the hypocrisy about affairs and who has them is less about policy and political agenda than a much more complicated matrix that most of us would not like to admit that we subscribe to. No person wants to say that he or she is more forgiving of Clinton because they’d like to see him in his red, white and blue boxer shorts. But we’re all pretty comfortable condemning the flaccid guy with the ailing wives and the Real Doll™ -looking new wife.

It’s not about hypocrisy. It’s about how the human brain is wired. And we often don’t like to admit how that wiring works.

Do you want me to make a chart? I’ll make a chart. A color-coded chart. Shut the hell up, I will.

And also, if you cheat on me, I will hunt you down at your home and cut your penis off. Believe it. And not with some kind of low-pain, quick-cut Ginsu knife.

Patrick O’Conner got to inspire a blog entry? I havesomething that I want you to write about, and it’s…