Tolerance, Moral Outrage and Weiners

With the alarming rate of high profile people getting caught in high profile sex scandals, I sensed that, like countless other moral issues that have become politically incorrect, many among us would eventually become numb to this one and begin to, first, "tolerate" it, then make excuses for it, then finally indulge it. Unfortunately, the latest reaction from the media to Weinergate is the latest illustration of this moral downward spiral.

For me, the only thing that has been even more disgraceful than this creep's "virtual infidelity" to his wife - by tweeting lewd pics of himself to strangers half his age and having "Facebook sex" with other strangers, then pathetically attempting to cover it up with a bogus story about his twitter account getting "hacked" - has been listening to the media make excuses and apologies for this "public servant's" behavior and lies.

"It's not as bad as when so-and-so did such-and-such."

"Everyone's doing it, he just got caught."

He didn't "do anything to violate the oath to his constituents."

This is just "between him and his wife."

Barbara Walters: "It may be that he took that picture and sent it to his wife to say 'this is how much I miss you.'"

I thought I had heard it all until I read an absurd Huffington Post article written by Alec Baldwin. Here are some highlights:

"My thought on Weiner is that he is a very busy man ... Like other politicians, he needs something to take the edge off ... For high functioning men like Weiner ... that leaves one tried and true source of a reliable high. The affirmation that comes when someone lets you know they want to sleep with you. Or even cyber-sleep with you.

This is sex for many people now. No time for Mateus and cheap spaghetti. No time for slowly moving toward one another with a combination of hope and caution, lust and integrity. One can push a button and get something beyond porn ... Appointment sex with your spouse doesn't always arrive when you need it most. A modern cell phone, loaded with contacts of willing fellow players, has a table with a red checkered table cloth ready for you at virtually any time. We tell ourselves that these devices help us communicate more effectively. What they actually do is allow us to bypass the person lying right next to us, across the room from us or at an airport heading home to us, in order to meet our immediate, even inconvenient, needs.

Weiner is a modern human being. So he ensnared himself in things that modern humans do."

What sad, tolerant, apologetic and seductive logic. Notice how, under Baldwin's definition, "modern human" = cheating, lying sleezeball. Long ago, Alexander Pope precisely cautioned against this very sort of moral relativism and decay:

Vice is a monster of so frightful men,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Similarly, Neal A. Maxwell said that, "When something is wrong, increasing its commonality cannot really confer respectability ... In today's relativistic society, we see indulgence masquerading as intolerance. We see the primacy of the 'politically correct' substituting for righteous indignation and for moral outrage. Instead of genuine and pervasive concern for the public good, we see intense devotion paid to niche causes ... the new math of the new morality is even more disturbing than it is fuzzy."

It will be interesting to see, assuming Weiner doesn't step down, how many of the constituents of Queens, NY will want Weiner's continued representation on the next election day. How many will continue to "tolerate" this, or how many will be morally outraged?