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[h3lblad3]

She's... she's grabbing him while he's grabbing her?
Twelve to sixteen year olds are so mature. :3

I see no problem.  </lie>

[Nikov]

It could reflect poorly on their character or expose them as hypocritical, though, depending on the situation.

The fact remains is that his wife is one of the people whose rights/wellbeing/whatever he's supposed to be upholding.

Maybe I'm just too goddamned idealistic.

I share your idealism.

[Leafsnail]

This isn't really "idealism vs pragmatism" so much as a disagreement over whether someone's personal life affects their professional one.

[Bohandas]

It could reflect poorly on their character or expose them as hypocritical, though, depending on the situation.

The fact remains is that his wife is one of the people whose rights/wellbeing/whatever he's supposed to be upholding.

Maybe I'm just too goddamned idealistic.

I share your idealism.

I don't. To me your entire value system seems deeply flawed, and even disturbing, at a very fundamental level.

[Vector]

I don't. To me your entire value system seems deeply flawed at a very fundamental level.

Please, do explain.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Oooh oh! I'll volunteer.

It's obvious peoples' entire value system can be gleaned from and judged in one internet post. That's how it works.

[Bohandas]

Oooh oh! I'll volunteer.

It's obvious people's entire value system can be gleamed from one internet post. That's how it works.

Not just one internet post. Not even just this one topic. Not even just Vector. This is a systemic thing.

Human society has taken something so fundamental and mundane that it is found almost ubiquitously in all five kingdoms^* of living organisms and turned it into a golden calf that most be proitiated by means of elaborate ceremony, and pompous ritual ...despite these things ultimately being empty and devoid of inherent meaning (not to mention WHOLLY unnecessary)... before it may be approached or interacted with.


^* Technically six kingdoms if we seperate the genetically distinct eubacteria and archaebacteria, but that is irrelevant to this discussion.

[Darkmere]

I'm with you so far. Do you have a proposed alternative?

[Bauglir]

Being a criminal doesn't affect his ability to execute his duties either, unless of course the crime is either Obstruction Of Justice or Malfeasance In Office. Which it isn't

Being convicted of a crime and serving the sentence, however, would quite possibly affect his ability to execute his duties. And I really, really, really hope I don't have to spell out why politicians shouldn't be immune to prosecution. Now, whether or not this is legally a crime or not, I'm not entirely sure; I doubt it, since there's not a chance in hell he'd have admitted it in public if it were. I'm not sure that I'd object, though, if unsolicited junk shot mailing fell under some sort of sexual harassment category, though I'm hardly qualified to argue over what the penalty ought to be.

To be clear, I'm not saying a politician's sex life is any of our business because he's a politician or because the dude's sexual proclivities are the defining characteristics of his morality. I'm saying a politician's sexual harassment history is our business because sexual harassment is Not Okay.

[Africa]

If you're complaining about people being sensitive about sex, well, welcome to the human race.

But like I said before, this isn't news unless he broke a law. If he's doing his job as mandated by voters, then that's all we should care about. And I fucking despise the media for being incapable of using judgment, like grownups, to distinguish between important, relevant stories and fucking tabloid celebrity-gossip material that barely disguises a juvenile fascination with toilet humor. Is there not something going on with, say one of the two wars that we're in that wouldn't merit more screen time than somebody's damn dick? And as I also said before, if we're going to harp on and on about something bad that a politician did, how is corruption not more important than this?

[Bohandas]

Being a criminal doesn't affect his ability to execute his duties either, unless of course the crime is either Obstruction Of Justice or Malfeasance In Office. Which it isn't

Being convicted of a crime and serving the sentence, however, would quite possibly affect his ability to execute his duties. And I really, really, really hope I don't have to spell out why politicians shouldn't be immune to prosecution. Now, whether or not this is legally a crime or not, I'm not entirely sure; I doubt it, since there's not a chance in hell he'd have admitted it in public if it were. I'm not sure that I'd object, though, if unsolicited junk shot mailing fell under some sort of sexual harassment category, though I'm hardly qualified to argue over what the penalty ought to be.

To be clear, I'm not saying a politician's sex life is any of our business because he's a politician or because the dude's sexual proclivities are the defining characteristics of his morality. I'm saying a politician's sexual harassment history is our business because sexual harassment is Not Okay.

I'm not saying that politicians should be immune to prosecution. I'm saying that if necessary they should be permitted to vote on the passage of legislation from their prison cells.

[KaelGotDwarves]

You know what the particularly cool thing about human beings is? Our ability to give things meaning. It separates us from non-living things. So even inherently meaningless concepts like "society", "justice", "honour", "marriage", "love", and "humanity" have a systematic meaning that allows communication.

Otherwise we might as well lead hedonistic lives and do what our desires and penis command us to because why the fuck not? It's all meaningless.

To argue that everything is ontologically and epistemologically subjective is just silly, as we can never agree on meaning.

[Bohandas]

You know what the particularly cool thing about human beings is? Our ability to give things meaning. It separates us from non-living things. So even inherently meaningless concepts like "society", "justice", "honour", "marriage", "love", and "humanity" have a systematic meaning that allows communication.

Otherwise we might as well lead hedonistic lives and do what our desires and penis command us to because why the fuck not? It's all meaningless.

To argue that everything is ontologically and epistemologically subjective is just silly, as we can never agree on meaning.

EXACTLY!!!

[Vector]

I'm not saying that politicians should be immune to prosecution. I'm saying that if necessary they should be permitted to vote on the passage of legislation from their prison cells.

. . .

I don't hold politicians in such high regard that I think we can't get someone else to do a better job.

[Darkmere]

And I fucking despise the media for being incapable of using judgment, like grownups, to distinguish between important, relevant stories and fucking tabloid celebrity-gossip material that barely disguises a juvenile fascination with toilet humor. Is there not something going on with, say one of the two wars that we're in that wouldn't merit more screen time than somebody's damn dick?

Sex sells, and the media is all clamoring for ratings and a nice appearance.
Go watch the un-aired reporter footage of 9/11 if you don't believe me. Before the broadcast starts all of the reporters are fixing their hair up to look pretty while people die in the background. Would have sold well... but prominent media outlets refused to carry the story.

This is why I don't immediately trust everything that's said on the news. Have you ever seen that one story that you knew a little bit about, but the news "covered?" It's wrong every time. I'll give you an example:

Napster for all you whippersnappers was the first big peer-to-peer network. It was basically an indexing service that let anyone connected browse shared files on hard drives. (That's not meant to be condescending, I really don't know how prominent all this still is anymore)

The news coverage I saw of it directly stated that Napster was a website that people could download songs from. That was not the case. That simple erroneous sentence changes the entire parameters of the issue (Ask and I'll clarify if anyone's interested). This was a nationally debated topic, with a fundamental error in the basic premise of the story.

Regarding the Weiner case: The word "unsolicited" gets thrown out a lot. I've also heard at least one account that the exchanges aren't publicly available, and at least once the exchange was initiated by the woman photo recipient with a sexually loaded greeting. In the first contact between them.

Which of these accounts is true? I don't have access to the correspondence for every incident, so I can't say for certain. I know which one stands out more though, the implication that a big crazy politician is twitter-flashing people at random. That makes a better story than the one where it wasn't an isolated incident and is more of an embarasment for both involved parties.