[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Link.
Now, you tried to cover yourself by saying you really don’t care - you’re just pointing out the hypocrisy of others. But frankly, it’s clear you do care, and it is equally clear you’ll excuse plenty of hypocrisy on one side while being hypervigilent on the other.
Personally, I think people ought to vote their preference and take everything they need to make their decision. But that’s just me.
[/QUOTE]
That’s me, too, but your comparison isn’t really analogous and you keep shifting the hypocrisy goalposts.
First of all, having some tail on the side is not the same thing as being an active participant in the dissolution of a marriage. Last I checked, the Clintons were still hitched (so obviously, there was/is some kind of understanding between them). I don’t think it’s unfair to characterize the first Mrs. McCain a bit more of a victim of her husband’s philandering than the (admittedly humiliated) Hillary. Why were the GOP marriage-defenders aghast at Clinton’s unfaithfulness when McCain’s was the one that left his first marriage in tatters? Because it’s OKIARDI.
The second is that the consequences of the two situations are totally different. One can still abhor adultery on principle and still think it should be divorced from a legal and political witchhunt. Was the lying under oath and attempts at a cover-up wrong? Of course; I won’t deny that for a second (though to call it “Nixonian” is frankly preposterous conflation). But the only reason it ever got to that point was that Starr came up empty on Whitewater and was fishing for anything he could nail Clinton with. Clinton quite graciously gave Starr enough rope to hang himself with, and the fault there is 100% Clinton’s.
But I didn’t read DtC’s quote as defending the morality of adultery at all (or lying under oath for that matter)–just defending anyone’s right to do anything behind closed doors they want if it’s not hurting anyone. YMMV on that notion if the doors are those of the Oval Office, but Clinton lied about something that was nobody’s business, and while that may not excuse the lying, I remember quite well that the public, chest-thumping moral outrage concentrated on the sex first, the lying second (though obviously, it was the latter that was indictable).
Which is, of course, why we never heard anything about Paula Jones or Gennifer Flowers or the anonymous mother of his alleged illegitimate child while he was running for office. Oh, wait–we did! Incessantly. Sure, he was painted as a liar (and sometimes exposed as one as well), but it’s not like the sex angles were buried on page 12.
But you’re ignoring the hypocrisy that everyone is decrying in this thread. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so if it was open season on Clinton (which it was long before the lying under oath), why is McCain immune? If the fundies were so outraged by Bill’s immorality, drug history, and financial “improprieties” (long before he was elected, let alone before anything impeachable transpired), where’s the proportional ire for the GOP’s prospective First Lady? Nowhere, because it’s OKIARDI
I never said any such thing–nor ever remotely implied anything of the kind–and never will. My indignation is that now that the shoe’s on the other foot, the self-righteous, self-appointed guardians of morality on the Right have gone mysteriously AWOL.