French Letters

Look how our politics degenerates: prurience hardly worthy of a grammar school playground substitutes for policy debate.

So what if Sam Hoyt had affairs with legislative interns? And who cares about the Internet rumor that Byron Brown is gay? Why should I care about any of this? What sort of people use this sort of stuff to undermine each other in their workplace? What kind of journalist, serious or half-baked, spends time on this tripe?

Seriously, Artvoice advice experts, tell me why I should care? Am I missing something?

—A. Paul DeVoter

Ruthless says: You’re nobody ’til somebody loves you…or starts an internet rumor that you’re gay. And what’s with these interns anyway? Working for free and sleeping with the boss = “unclear on the concept.”

I’d tell you to ignore it, except there’s not an English-speaking person over the age of four and in possession of hearing faculties who could avoid the subject. Sex scandal is our national obsession, and apparently the principal pastime in the political world. Other cultures don’t seem so inclined to talk about it, to dwell on it, to investigate the minute details of it…I’m sure I don’t need to go on.

I’d tell you to move to Canada, but they don’t want you anyway. And Canadian TV, while maybe not as degenerate, is really pretty boring (forgive me, SCTV).

Dr. Sigmund Fraud says: The other day I was speaking with someone who lived through the Great Depression, and she told me that back then everyone knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a mistress. Nevertheless, the man was elected so many times that they had to change the law to limit the number of years a president could serve to eight. Back then, the majority of Americans apparently didn’t care what FDR did with his personal life.

At first, they were probably too busy starving in bread lines to care, and later, as the New Deal put the unemployed to work on all kinds of public works projects, they were too busy putting their shoulders to the wheel for the betterment of the nation’s infrastructure.

We live in a sadly different country today. Prudish finger-pointing is commonplace. Those with no specific moral compass can at least ground themselves by pointing at others who may or may not have broken their matrimonial vows. These gossipy distracters are like unpopular teens that try to bring down the cheerleaders by starting vicious rumors. If they can catch the quarterback going to a movie with a girl from a rival high school, you bet your ass they’ll be broadcasting the fact with a flow of text messages more steady than a stock market crawl.

This sort of nonsense doesn’t fly elsewhere. In France, Francois Mitterrand’s 1996 funeral was attended by his mistress—by whom he had fathered a daughter named Mazarine—and it wasn’t viewed as the makings of a sentimental country song. The man led the country for 14 years.

I don’t know and I don’t care if these rumors about Brown and Hoyt are true or untrue. They are private issues that should be kept private. But since you brought it up, and assuming the stories are true, they are merely following in the footsteps of other great, philandering politicians like FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton.

Which is one more reason why I say I’m proud to be a Democrat.

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