No man has ever willingly paid $300 for “just a massage.” Ever.
You appear to completely miss my point. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The point is that Tobias is not just a hypocrite. He is a living datapoint that disproves the theories on which his own policies are based. That is the point of my alteration of the analogy involving your mother. The change is one that takes your mother from being a mere hypocrite (in your original analogy) to someone who is propounding a theory that is based on facts that they know, from their own life, to be incorrect.
Boyo
Your theory seems to depend on the johns lying on the stand in an effort to preserve their reputations, and thereby protecting her. But if those guys get to the witness stand, they are already boned. And would then be in a position to visit some grief on the woman who put them there.
Ah. Bone her for the boning they’re getting for boning her bags of bones?
Sorry, I get your point, I should have made that clearer. Yes, he’s a datapoint, as there are millions of other datapoints that the policy he managed doesn’t work. No argument there.
However, personalizing the policy down the level of the failure (or hypocracy) of the manager of those programs is, in my view, a simple ad hominem argument. The point I am trying to raise is that it doesn’t matter who runs the abstinence only programs, whether saint or sinner, the data show the program isn’t working.
Personalizing the failures of policy into the failure of one person – and vice versa – is, IMHO, a pretty low form of political discourse. Yeah, it makes for great campaign ads and stemwinder blog entries, but I believe that in the longer view, this trend of making so much of politics into personal issues is bad for the country. It is good for people to disagree on issues, but I think as people we should treat each other with a bit more charity and compassion by attempting separating politics from personalities.
Serving up criticism of the program based on Tobias’ actions is – well, it isn’t a cheap shot, but it is teeing up criticism when there’s a more important story to be told. Which is really more relevant: some guy in Washington nobody will remember in two weeks who got “massages” and couldn’t practice what he preached; or the millions of people around the world suffering from deadly STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on because of an ineffective policy that is costing well-meaning taxpayers tens of millions each year?
In all the press I’ve seen about Tobias lately, there’s been about two column inches about the latter point. And that is the point that can actually change people’s minds about the failed policy – do you really think ANYONE is going to think different of abstinence only education policies because some rich white guy in DC saw a call girl? I just don’t see it happening.
That’s one possibility. Another is that the john will be more pressured to lie, with no legal penalty at all, if an ABC News crew shows up at their door or ambushes them on the way out of the offices. If they sputter a denial to the TV news, there is no risk of a perjury charge, they have probably taken themselves off the list of potential witness for the prosecution, and they have laid the groundwork to reinforce the lie later, at trial, should that come to be. If you’ve lied once, you have to feel a lot of internal pressure to keep it up – otherwise you’re a john, a liar AND a waffler.
You are right, however. She is gambling heavily on these people being hypocrites about their personal foibles. I’m just saying that’s a very good bet.
By comparison, in all the press I’ve seen recently before the Tobias-massage-DC Madam scandal broke, there’s been about zero column inches about the latter point.
However you feel about playing politics with public figures’ private lives, there’s no denying that the Tobias scandal is drawing more attention to the larger issue of sexual-morality restrictions in US foreign aid policy than would otherwise be drawn to it.
I’m not saying that that in itself is a valid justification for exposing a high-profile sex scandal; I think the blatant hypocrisy in this case provides all the journalistic justification needed. But if focusing public attention on ineffective reproductive-health foreign aid policies is what you want, you have to admit that the sleazy Tobias massage scandal is delivering more in that regard than the pre-scandal media were managing to do.
According to news reports, ABC has records of thousands of telephone calls (reports vary from 10,000 to 15,000 telephone numbers). Of these, whom should ABC News expose?
- Political appointees of the Bush adminstration?
- Elected officials?
- Anyone known publicly?
- Anyone who has ever received a government paycheck?
- Anyone who has significant contacts with high officials?
- All Republicans?
- All religious conservatives?
- All supporters of the administration’s sex education and contraception policies?
- All celebrities?
- All married men?
- Every last one of them? Even those who have no governmental role whatsoever?
How should ABC News weigh the public interest in such exposure (case-by-case? categorically?) against potential professional, personal, or financial harm to those exposed?
Likeliest answer: Whoever’s revelation will boost their ratings.
I would start with ministers and priests
And how does that calculation word out with regard to the public interest? How are ministers and priests significantly different from anyone else when it comes to their non-public behaviour?
Whom should they expose?
More fun.
I want to know the names of any political dumbass that has the gall to blither on about sexual morality in any context whatsoever-senators, reps, heads of agencies. IMO these people shouldn’t be allowed to spend public tax dollars or be responsible for cutting them off.
Because I am hateful, I also want to know the names of any govt worker at a higher civilian grade than me using her services. I’ll be eligible in another 2 to 3 years and I want to have a good argument prepped for why a criminal ought to have a GS-14 but I’m not. They’re starting to get stingy with them. Social interest? Mine.
Well, if the massage was of his penis, using her vagina, then perhaps.
Whichever ones get BIG LAFFS!
Because a priest or minister’s public behavior involves telling other people how to conduct their non-public behavior. Therefore it’s not unreasonable to hold up their (the priests and ministers) own non-public behavior as an example of the feasibility of those instructions.
I wouldn’t go that far – not hiring a hooker isn’t exactly “unfeasible”.
I’ll concede the point, given your extremely generous definition of “just a massage.”
I agree on the feasibility part, but I think my statement still holds. If you tell people how they have to conduct their private life (“don’t hire hookers”), and pass judgment on them based on whether or not their private lives meet up to your standards, then you should be ready to have your own private life held up as an example of how well practicing what you preach.