Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

When liberals chastise politicians who are caught with prostitutes, they have to be creative with it. After all, many liberals don’t really care about prostitution, per se. So with Spitzer, most people have been calling him arrogant, douchey and a hypocrite. This is a classic liberal denunciation of a politician caught in an affair. And by “liberalism” I mean an ethical system whereby you evaluate the morality of actions based on “harm” and “reciprocity” as opposed to whether these actions conflict with “ingroup” “purity” or “hierarchy.” For example, a conservative would say that flag burning is wrong because it conflicts with “ingroup” – patriotism/loyalty – why a liberal would have no problem with it.

With cheating and adultery, things get tricky. Liberals aren’t going to say that prostitution or cheating is wrong because it’s just “immoral” as conservatives phrase it or because of some visceral reaction against breaking the covenant of marriage. Also, many liberals wouldn’t describe sex work qua sex work as wrong, but just the coercion and exploitation invovled. It’s not that selling your body for sex is necessarily wrong (purity), it’s the conditions under which prostitution occurs (harm and reciprocity).

Samhita seems to have gone the “full liberal”, so to speak, and thinks that we really shouldn’t be condemning male politicians for “having a sexual kink.”

What I don’t want to do is chastise a man for potentially having a sexual kink (I’ll let the wing-nuts hypocritically take care of that), not because I am all for protecting Eliot Spitzer’s sexual kinky rights (ew, barf, ew), but because I think it tells a bigger story of patriarchy, heterosexuality, legalization of sex work and the ethical treatment of sex workers. As Ann discussed a while back, as progressives, we shouldn’t jump to attack politicians when we find out that they committed a sexual “indiscretion.” As someone who supports the decriminalization (hello prison nation!), I don’t think we need anymore fodder for the right-wing”I hate sex” machine to use in their purity crusades.

I certainly agree that if a politician is in to kinky sexual stuff (multiple partners, biting, whatever) it really is none of our business and liberals shouldn’t condemn them for it. This is a classic way of applying the liberal moral sense that Haidt talks about. Is there any particularized harm from kinky sexual practices? No. Is there any violation of fairness or reciprocity? No. So, politicians of America, I will never criticize you for whatever you want to do in private. But adultery is different and breaking the law to commit adultery is really different. Because in the case of adultery, there is an aggrieved party: the politician’s spouse. Adultery means violating a public oath to another person in the most egregious manner. Furthermore, it’s incredibly insensitive and displays a very loathsome arrogance and selfishness. I don’t think liberals should be afraid of harshly denouncing someone who embarrasses his wife and three teenage daughters in such a public way. There’s also the little matter of him, formerly the chief law enforcement officer of the state, breaking the laws that he enforced so zealously. Sounds like an offense against reciprocity to me.

I think there’s plenty of room in a relatively non-judgmental Millian liberalism to say that being an asshole is wrong. And so we liberals ought to say that Spitzer is, in fact, a total asshole.