Today I want to talk about something rather different from my recent posts, which have focused on politics and books. This is more of a writing style and editing issue, but one that comes up quite frequently here in Taiwan. It is the problem of how to write Chinese names in English texts. I'm not so much concerned here with the particular type of romanization (for those who don't know the term, this refers to spelling words from languages like Chinese, Thai, and Arabic using the Latin-based English alphabet) used, but the order in which the names should be written. This arises because in Chinese names the family name comes first, followed by the given name. This is true in most East Asian countries, including Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
Actually, the answer is quite simple: Romanized Chinese names should be written the same way they are written in Chinese, with the family name first. Thus we write Ma Ying-jeou (the president of Taiwan), Tsai Ing-wen (the leader of the opposition DPP), Hu Jintao (the president of China), and Mao Zedong (the former leader of China), and to be brief refer to them by their family names only, i.e., Ma, Tsai, Hu, and Mao. This is quite straightforward, but unfortunately many Taiwanese still end up confused, partly due to misguided attempts to adapt their names to English conventions.
Many Taiwanese have the idea that because in English names the family name comes last, they should also put their family name last when they write their name in English. But this is incorrect, unless they are using an English given name. For instance, the former vice president of Taiwan, Lu Xiulian, uses the English name Annette, so she is generally called Annette Lu in English-language news reports. But Chinese names are always written in the Chinese order, whether they are written in Chinese characters or in the English alphabet. Ma Ying-jeou does not use an English name, so his family name is written first. No respectable news organization writes it as Ying-jeou Ma. Unfortunately, many Taiwanese are not aware that this is an error; I even had my romanizations of a number of Taiwanese names appearing in my translation of the liner notes of Story Island (an album that won a number of awards and a Grammy nomination for design packaging) reversed by a Taiwanese editor, which infuriated me when I discovered it (especially since it makes it look like I myself made the errors).
The same principle applies to Korean names, so the president of South Korea is Lee Myung-bak (family name Lee) and the leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-il (family name Kim). Vietnamese names are likewise written family name first, so the prime minister of Vietnam is Nguyen Tan Dung (family name Nguyen). The only frequent exception to this rule is Japanese names. In Japanese, the family name also comes first, but it has become common practice to reverse this when the name is written in English, so the prime minister of Japan, whose name reads Kan Naoto in Japanese, usually appears as Naoto Kan in English news (though I have seen Japanese names written in the proper Japanese order in some places, and I prefer to write them that way myself).
Another common error Taiwanese make in writing their names is to leave the order alone but to put a comma after the family name. This incorrect and ugly (aesthetically-speaking) habit is particularly common among academics and people who have pursued advanced degrees, and seems to derive from the use of the comma in English names found in bibliographies, indexes and similar lists. But the reason for the comma in English names in such situations is simple; since in bibliographies and indexes we list names alphabetically by last (family) name, we reverse the usual order and use the comma to indicate this. So Barack Obama becomes Obama, Barack and Hillary Clinton becomes Clinton, Hillary. If a Chinese name appears in an index or bibliography, of course the family name comes first, but for Chinese names this is already the usual order, so no comma is necessary. Even for English names we only write something like "Obama, Barack" in specific situations. But some Taiwanese stick commas in their names on business cards and documents, and in the building housing the offices of Taiwan's legislators, the name plates on their doors actually have commas after their family names, which looks ridiculous.
One reason some Taiwanese have offered me for either writing their names backwards or sticking a comma into them is a fear that Westerners won't realize which name is their family name. I'll admit that if a Taiwanese writes his name as Lee Teng-hui, some Westerners might mistakenly call him "Mr. Teng-hui" rather than "Mr. Lee", though frankly I can't see how anyone who ever reads the international news could have a problem (everyone who does should be aware that Hu Jintao is "Mr. Hu" and Deng Xiaoping was "Mr. Deng"). But even if a few foreigners are ignorant, there is no reason for East Asians to mangle their own names to accommodate them. Perhaps on business cards or name tags they might want to capitalize their family name (e.g., TSAI Ing-wen), but that's as far as they should go.
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts and the advice of style manuals (not to mention the example of sites like Wikipedia and numerous news reports and articles from major international media organizations), Taiwanese still write their names all sorts of ways. I have even seen names written backward and with a comma (e.g., Ying-jeou, Ma), which combines the worst features of the two more common incorrect ways of writing names without even retaining the dubious virtue of clarifying which is the family name (though I suppose in a certain sense the comma is more logical here, because the normal ordering has really been reversed -- though this still doesn't explain why one would want to reverse it in the first place). While there is only so much I can do, I try to at least make sure the people I come into regular contact with learn the correct way of writing their names in English. Hopefully that will make at least a little bit of a difference.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Some interesting articles
Here are a couple of interesting articles I've come across in the past few days. The first is one by Fareed Zakaria entitled How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch With Reality. The criticism of today's conservatives is completely accurate, and many have noted how even in the Reagan era ideas such as taxes can never be raised under any conditions (even when they are already low and the country has a huge debt) were not standard among conservatives. Reagan himself raised taxes more than once, and I have already cited his budget director David Stockman's scathing criticism of this mentality. In comparison with today's leading right wing politicians and talking heads, the conservatives of previous generations do seem more rational. That's not to say that I agree with George Will, or with a number of the other assertions in the first part of the piece.
For one thing, while I agree with the criticism of Marxism as not being well grounded in reality (as I noted in my recent post which discussed The Communist Manifesto, among other books), not all aspects of traditional conservatism were firmly grounded in reality (for instance, as I mentioned in the same post, the capitalist economic theory regarding international trade). Furthermore, liberalism (as opposed to Marxism) can and often is fairly well grounded in reality. Certainly I and many other sensible liberals would agree that "to change societies, one must understand them...and help them evolve" (though we would disagree about "accept[ing] them as they are". Also, most conservatives, whether now or in the past, have not really been interested in changing society or helping it evolve. They want it to stay the same, or go back to some mythical golden age.
For that matter, George Will himself, while fairly intelligent and rational (certainly when compared to people like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin), has made assertions that were not very well grounded in the real world, such as in a recent column where he criticized Obama for not knowing history by picking on a few misstatements (yes, Obama's statement on Texas was incorrect, but the southern Democrats of four decades ago were essentially the same as the Republicans of today), but himself displayed a rather simplistic and misleading view of history. He seemed to imply that getting rid of or weakening programs like Social Security or Medicare would simply return the US to the conditions that existed before the New Deal -- as if the country had not changed in any other ways. Obama was completely right to say that Ryan's budget proposal would lead to an America that would be "fundamentally different than what we've known throughout our history", because even aside from the existence of programs like those Ryan wants to kill, America is a fundamentally different place from what it was 80 years ago. It's a country of close to 300 million people rather than 120 million, it's urban rather than rural, it's closely tied to a global system rather than being isolationist, it's far more ethnically and culturally diverse, and its communications are dominated by television and the Internet rather than radio and letters. It is also a place in which a lack of a safety net would mean even more suffering than was the case in the pre-New Deal days, and one in which (I would hope) people would be far less content to see others suffer, as many did before those social programs existed (not that they eliminated all suffering -- far from it -- but they did alleviate much of it for the most vulnerable segments of the population). While Will's view of history as given in his column lacks the blatant inaccuracies of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, it does share with them a rather myopic view that refuses to acknowledge that things have changed a great deal in America and the world since the early 20th century, and it is impossible to go back, even if we wanted to (I sure wouldn't).
There was a time, back when I was young and ignorant, that I would have agreed with Will's statement about conservatism being true. When I was in secondary school, I considered myself a conservative. Even then though, when I read about modern European and American history, I noticed how at virtually every point in the past, I agreed with the liberals. It was the liberals who wanted religious tolerance, an end to absolute monarchies, the abolition of slavery, labor laws, the breaking up of monopolies, women's suffrage, and civil rights. My assumption at the time was that modern liberals were simply trying to push things too far, as if we'd reached an ideal society and it should be kept the way it was. Of course later I learned that there were still many problems and inequalities, and more importantly I learned to empathize better with the situations faced by more disadvantaged people. This didn't mean given up rationality, or coming to insist on any particular means for solving all these problems. For instance, where properly regulated private enterprise is more efficient than government (and there are many areas where that is the case), I am in favor of it. The purpose is to create an open, tolerant equable society where all people have their basic needs met. George Will's brand of conservatism won't do that, and the completely irrational brand of conservatism Zakaria criticizes certainly will not do so.
Speaking of issues where leading conservatives are not only irrational but even downright immoral in their treatment of hardworking, innocent people, the New York Times Sunday Magazine recently published a long article by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, about how he came to the US from the Philippines at the age of 12 as an undocumented immigrant (i.e., an illegal immigrant) and has lived under the shadow of possible discovery and deportation since. This is exactly the kind of person who the US should want to have here, and the kind who the Dream Act would help. And yet the right wing not only prevented its passage, but continues to demonize all illegal immigrants as criminals no better than murderers and thieves. While there is little hope for the unrepentantly racist and hardhearted among the anti-immigrant crowd, perhaps a few of the relatively open-minded ones could learn something from Vargas's story, or a recent film called A Better Life.
For one thing, while I agree with the criticism of Marxism as not being well grounded in reality (as I noted in my recent post which discussed The Communist Manifesto, among other books), not all aspects of traditional conservatism were firmly grounded in reality (for instance, as I mentioned in the same post, the capitalist economic theory regarding international trade). Furthermore, liberalism (as opposed to Marxism) can and often is fairly well grounded in reality. Certainly I and many other sensible liberals would agree that "to change societies, one must understand them...and help them evolve" (though we would disagree about "accept[ing] them as they are". Also, most conservatives, whether now or in the past, have not really been interested in changing society or helping it evolve. They want it to stay the same, or go back to some mythical golden age.
For that matter, George Will himself, while fairly intelligent and rational (certainly when compared to people like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin), has made assertions that were not very well grounded in the real world, such as in a recent column where he criticized Obama for not knowing history by picking on a few misstatements (yes, Obama's statement on Texas was incorrect, but the southern Democrats of four decades ago were essentially the same as the Republicans of today), but himself displayed a rather simplistic and misleading view of history. He seemed to imply that getting rid of or weakening programs like Social Security or Medicare would simply return the US to the conditions that existed before the New Deal -- as if the country had not changed in any other ways. Obama was completely right to say that Ryan's budget proposal would lead to an America that would be "fundamentally different than what we've known throughout our history", because even aside from the existence of programs like those Ryan wants to kill, America is a fundamentally different place from what it was 80 years ago. It's a country of close to 300 million people rather than 120 million, it's urban rather than rural, it's closely tied to a global system rather than being isolationist, it's far more ethnically and culturally diverse, and its communications are dominated by television and the Internet rather than radio and letters. It is also a place in which a lack of a safety net would mean even more suffering than was the case in the pre-New Deal days, and one in which (I would hope) people would be far less content to see others suffer, as many did before those social programs existed (not that they eliminated all suffering -- far from it -- but they did alleviate much of it for the most vulnerable segments of the population). While Will's view of history as given in his column lacks the blatant inaccuracies of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, it does share with them a rather myopic view that refuses to acknowledge that things have changed a great deal in America and the world since the early 20th century, and it is impossible to go back, even if we wanted to (I sure wouldn't).
There was a time, back when I was young and ignorant, that I would have agreed with Will's statement about conservatism being true. When I was in secondary school, I considered myself a conservative. Even then though, when I read about modern European and American history, I noticed how at virtually every point in the past, I agreed with the liberals. It was the liberals who wanted religious tolerance, an end to absolute monarchies, the abolition of slavery, labor laws, the breaking up of monopolies, women's suffrage, and civil rights. My assumption at the time was that modern liberals were simply trying to push things too far, as if we'd reached an ideal society and it should be kept the way it was. Of course later I learned that there were still many problems and inequalities, and more importantly I learned to empathize better with the situations faced by more disadvantaged people. This didn't mean given up rationality, or coming to insist on any particular means for solving all these problems. For instance, where properly regulated private enterprise is more efficient than government (and there are many areas where that is the case), I am in favor of it. The purpose is to create an open, tolerant equable society where all people have their basic needs met. George Will's brand of conservatism won't do that, and the completely irrational brand of conservatism Zakaria criticizes certainly will not do so.
Speaking of issues where leading conservatives are not only irrational but even downright immoral in their treatment of hardworking, innocent people, the New York Times Sunday Magazine recently published a long article by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, about how he came to the US from the Philippines at the age of 12 as an undocumented immigrant (i.e., an illegal immigrant) and has lived under the shadow of possible discovery and deportation since. This is exactly the kind of person who the US should want to have here, and the kind who the Dream Act would help. And yet the right wing not only prevented its passage, but continues to demonize all illegal immigrants as criminals no better than murderers and thieves. While there is little hope for the unrepentantly racist and hardhearted among the anti-immigrant crowd, perhaps a few of the relatively open-minded ones could learn something from Vargas's story, or a recent film called A Better Life.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Sex Scandal Redux
There have been a lot of significant things going on in the world during the last few weeks that I could write about. The Arab revolutions are still ongoing, and there have been new developments in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Bahrain. I would like to comment at some point on the various positions taken by politicians in the US and Israel on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There was an important election in Turkey. There has been unrest in China, including protests by ethnic Mongolians in the Chinese-occupied part of Mongolia. But rather than talking about any of these things, I'm going to comment on another tempest in a teapot, namely the troubles of Representative Anthony Weiner, who was forced to resign after being caught sending racy pictures and messages to various women over the Internet. I don't want to talk about this because it deserves even half the attention it got from the American media, but because it shows some interesting and mostly depressing things about the way a lot of Americans think (or don't think), and because the questions involved are related to those I discussed in my earlier post on other recent sex-related scandals.
But before I get started, let me repeat a point I made in a post a long time ago about another supposed scandal (though in that case the only real scandal was the lengths some people tried to go to in an attempt to discredit legitimate science). One of the most irritating habits journalists, commentators and other such people have is randomly attaching the suffix "gate" to every scandal or controversy that comes along. Whoever first started referring to the Anthony Weiner scandal as "Weinergate" should be forced to eat a complete transcription of the Nixon tapes, as should anyone who sticks a "gate" onto the name of any future scandal.
I'm not going to go over all the details of Weiner's supposed deeds, how they came to light (though I hope some journalist will be able to dig up more on the group of people on Twitter who were practically stalking Weiner in an effort to catch him), and his handling of the affair. Here's an analysis of the political aspects of the affair from relatively early on (though I have a few problems with this one, as I'll point out), and here's a slightly more detailed look at how Weiner supposedly interacted with these women online. This latter point is actually important, not because of any thrills people may get from reading the salacious details (there's a lot of far more erotic stuff online, for those who want it), but because if people are going to try to pass judgment on Weiner's actions, they should be taken into account.
With the recent scandals about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn still fresh in the public memory, and other scandals involving prominent American politicians to provide parallels (Chris Lee, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Foley, Bill Clinton), it is not too surprising that many commentators have tended to lump them all together, as if they all fit into the same moral category of "male politicians' sexual misbehavior". The analysis linked to above, for instance, refers vaguely to Weiner having "behaved badly towards women". But is what Weiner did equivalent to the alleged actions of, say, Strauss-Kahn? For that matter, are there no differences between Weiner's case and those of, say, Craig, Foley, and Spitzer?
The first of the above questions is easy to answer. As I said in my other post, if Strauss-Kahn is guilty of what he has been accused of, his actions were reprehensible and there is no excuse whatsoever for them. If he really did commit sexual assault of the sort he is being charged for, he should go to prison. If Weiner sent erotic photos of himself and sexually charged messages to women who had not indicated any interest in such things, he was at the least extremely foolish, considering his position. At most, if any of the women had clearly expressed that they were not receptive to such messages and he had persisted in sending them, he may have crossed the line into harassment. However, while this is rather a fine line, it's not clear that he really crossed it. It's true that sending even one picture to a woman who it turned not did not welcome receiving it might be considered sexual harassment by many, but it's quite possible that he honestly, though mistakenly, believed she would react positively, in which case I wouldn't really call it harassment (though, as I said, he was very foolish to do it without being absolutely sure). If she had indicated disapproval and he had nevertheless sent more (something he didn't do, from what I've read), that would more obviously constitute harassment, though even then I don't think it would be as serious as, say, a manager doing the same to an employee. After all, none of these women had any contact with him other than online, and it seems they weren't even constituents, so they could simply break off contact if they didn't like what he did. What's more, it seems that a number of the women did in fact reciprocate and engage in sexual banter with him. In those cases, he can hardly be accused of having "behaved badly towards women".
Some might object that he also acted interested in some girls who were under 18. But from what I read there was only girl under 18 that he was confirmed to have had contact with, and he, the girl and her family all emphasized that in that case there was nothing sexual in the messages they exchanged. For that matter, I've always found it a bit odd that Americans get all excited about any hint of sexuality in people under 18, as if 16 and 17 year olds are children in the physical sense, and any adult who acts even remotely interested in a 17 year old sexually is a pedophile (except in music, as few people seem bothered by songs like "Sweet Little Sixteen", "You're Sixteen", or "I Saw Her Standing There"). But really, there's not a huge difference between a middle aged man flirting with an 18 year old and doing the same with a 17 year old. Girls of that age are physically speaking adults, so it's not abnormal for men to be interested in them (while a serious sexual interest in any girl or boy obviously younger than 16 or so is another thing altogether, and is certainly not normal or healthy). Of course a line has to be drawn somewhere, and a man with any sense of decency will at least keep in mind that the average 17 year old (or 18 year old) is not mature emotionally and so he shouldn't take advantage of her (or him). But even if Weiner had done some mild online flirting with a high school girl (and again, there's no real evidence that he did), it would fall far short of what Strauss-Kahn is accused of (or even some of the things Schwarzenegger has been accused of).
In fact, while I have serious problems with French talk about American prudishness in the Strauss-Kahn case, where we are talking about assault, in Weiner's case the criticism is right on. So a US congressman, like a billion other men on the planet, has a strong libido and engages in foolishly risky behavior. Why should anyone else care? Maybe his wife should care, but if all the relationships were online and he didn't actually neglect her in order flirt with them, I'm not even sure that she should care that much either. Certainly it shouldn't matter to anyone else. The only reason Weiner perhaps should have had to resign is because when he was first confronted with the evidence he lied about it. This was his real "sin", if we want to use that word; the same can be said in Bill Clinton's case. But to be perfectly honest, while I think they were wrong and, well, stupid (despite being otherwise very intelligent men) to get themselves tangled up in convoluted denials which they should have known would not work, I have to admit that if I were in that kind of situation, I'd be strongly tempted to lie too, and I think the same would be true of many if not most people. As such, if I had been in the Democratic leadership, I wouldn't have been calling for Weiner to resign. Unfortunately, in this kind of situation a kind of mob mentality takes over, and Weiner was a victim of it.
Ah, but wait, I hear some say, you only say that because Weiner was one of the leading liberals in the House. It's true that I find it a particular shame to lose him because from what I know he was good at his job, and fought hard for good causes. But to take a similar case, I didn't think the Republican Chris Lee should have been forced to resign for sending shirtless pictures of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist either. Sure, I am happy with the ultimate result, since a reasonably progressive Democrat managed to win that seat, despite it being a Republican district, and so someone better than Lee ended up in the seat (though to give Lee credit, he did say some things that showed he was at least more moderate on a few issues than most Republicans). But I didn't think he should have had to lose his seat for that reason (not when all sorts of crackpots, bigots and corporate lackeys are able to keep theirs).
I have a somewhat different view of cases like those of Larry Craig and Mark Foley. Craig in particular deserved to be kicked out (though he ultimately was stubborn enough to stay till the end of his term), not so much because he was actually arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, or even because he also tried to make all sorts of convoluted explanations of his action and made ridiculous attempts to backtrack on his guilty plea, but because he was a hypocrite. He was arrested for soliciting sex with a male undercover officer, yet his voting record was very anti-gay. The same could be said of Foley, who was caught sending sexually explicit email messages to a young man who was a former Congressional page, though Foley's record was not as totally anti-gay as Craig's and he has come out as homosexual since resigning. To extend the analogy to non-politicians, any of the various conservative Christian leaders who have been caught having affairs or paying for sex with either female or male sex workers also deserve condemnation mainly for hypocrisy.
On the liberal side, despite generally liking his politics, I had to conclude Eliot Spitzer pretty much deserved to be driven out of office, again for hypocrisy. I didn't think it was a big deal that he had paid for sex with a call girl, but then I read that, along with his prosecutions of Wall Street crime as NY Attorney General, he had aggressively pursued several call girl rings, even making his usual outspoken statements about how he was going to nail them. I will say that if the rings he prosecuted were involved in human trafficking (rather than being made up of women who voluntarily got involved in sex work, like the one he actually had a transaction with), then he would not be a hypocrite, but I don't recall reading anything indicating that was the case. But if it weren't for the hypocrisy involved, I wouldn't think that Spitzer (or the majority of the other politicians discussed here) should have been forced to resign. On the contrary, my own opinion largely matches that expressed by American philosopher and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum in this piece on the Spitzer affair -- parts of which apply equal well to Weiner's case.
In conclusion, I just have to say that I hope Americans can grow up a bit about sex, and that they'll start caring a little less about what kinds of sexual activities their leaders engage in and more about what kind of policies they support. For some of them, at least, their voting records and public statements contain plenty of things more reprehensible than anything Anthony Weiner did on Twitter or Facebook. If Weiner has to go, then why should they all get to stay?
But before I get started, let me repeat a point I made in a post a long time ago about another supposed scandal (though in that case the only real scandal was the lengths some people tried to go to in an attempt to discredit legitimate science). One of the most irritating habits journalists, commentators and other such people have is randomly attaching the suffix "gate" to every scandal or controversy that comes along. Whoever first started referring to the Anthony Weiner scandal as "Weinergate" should be forced to eat a complete transcription of the Nixon tapes, as should anyone who sticks a "gate" onto the name of any future scandal.
I'm not going to go over all the details of Weiner's supposed deeds, how they came to light (though I hope some journalist will be able to dig up more on the group of people on Twitter who were practically stalking Weiner in an effort to catch him), and his handling of the affair. Here's an analysis of the political aspects of the affair from relatively early on (though I have a few problems with this one, as I'll point out), and here's a slightly more detailed look at how Weiner supposedly interacted with these women online. This latter point is actually important, not because of any thrills people may get from reading the salacious details (there's a lot of far more erotic stuff online, for those who want it), but because if people are going to try to pass judgment on Weiner's actions, they should be taken into account.
With the recent scandals about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn still fresh in the public memory, and other scandals involving prominent American politicians to provide parallels (Chris Lee, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Foley, Bill Clinton), it is not too surprising that many commentators have tended to lump them all together, as if they all fit into the same moral category of "male politicians' sexual misbehavior". The analysis linked to above, for instance, refers vaguely to Weiner having "behaved badly towards women". But is what Weiner did equivalent to the alleged actions of, say, Strauss-Kahn? For that matter, are there no differences between Weiner's case and those of, say, Craig, Foley, and Spitzer?
The first of the above questions is easy to answer. As I said in my other post, if Strauss-Kahn is guilty of what he has been accused of, his actions were reprehensible and there is no excuse whatsoever for them. If he really did commit sexual assault of the sort he is being charged for, he should go to prison. If Weiner sent erotic photos of himself and sexually charged messages to women who had not indicated any interest in such things, he was at the least extremely foolish, considering his position. At most, if any of the women had clearly expressed that they were not receptive to such messages and he had persisted in sending them, he may have crossed the line into harassment. However, while this is rather a fine line, it's not clear that he really crossed it. It's true that sending even one picture to a woman who it turned not did not welcome receiving it might be considered sexual harassment by many, but it's quite possible that he honestly, though mistakenly, believed she would react positively, in which case I wouldn't really call it harassment (though, as I said, he was very foolish to do it without being absolutely sure). If she had indicated disapproval and he had nevertheless sent more (something he didn't do, from what I've read), that would more obviously constitute harassment, though even then I don't think it would be as serious as, say, a manager doing the same to an employee. After all, none of these women had any contact with him other than online, and it seems they weren't even constituents, so they could simply break off contact if they didn't like what he did. What's more, it seems that a number of the women did in fact reciprocate and engage in sexual banter with him. In those cases, he can hardly be accused of having "behaved badly towards women".
Some might object that he also acted interested in some girls who were under 18. But from what I read there was only girl under 18 that he was confirmed to have had contact with, and he, the girl and her family all emphasized that in that case there was nothing sexual in the messages they exchanged. For that matter, I've always found it a bit odd that Americans get all excited about any hint of sexuality in people under 18, as if 16 and 17 year olds are children in the physical sense, and any adult who acts even remotely interested in a 17 year old sexually is a pedophile (except in music, as few people seem bothered by songs like "Sweet Little Sixteen", "You're Sixteen", or "I Saw Her Standing There"). But really, there's not a huge difference between a middle aged man flirting with an 18 year old and doing the same with a 17 year old. Girls of that age are physically speaking adults, so it's not abnormal for men to be interested in them (while a serious sexual interest in any girl or boy obviously younger than 16 or so is another thing altogether, and is certainly not normal or healthy). Of course a line has to be drawn somewhere, and a man with any sense of decency will at least keep in mind that the average 17 year old (or 18 year old) is not mature emotionally and so he shouldn't take advantage of her (or him). But even if Weiner had done some mild online flirting with a high school girl (and again, there's no real evidence that he did), it would fall far short of what Strauss-Kahn is accused of (or even some of the things Schwarzenegger has been accused of).
In fact, while I have serious problems with French talk about American prudishness in the Strauss-Kahn case, where we are talking about assault, in Weiner's case the criticism is right on. So a US congressman, like a billion other men on the planet, has a strong libido and engages in foolishly risky behavior. Why should anyone else care? Maybe his wife should care, but if all the relationships were online and he didn't actually neglect her in order flirt with them, I'm not even sure that she should care that much either. Certainly it shouldn't matter to anyone else. The only reason Weiner perhaps should have had to resign is because when he was first confronted with the evidence he lied about it. This was his real "sin", if we want to use that word; the same can be said in Bill Clinton's case. But to be perfectly honest, while I think they were wrong and, well, stupid (despite being otherwise very intelligent men) to get themselves tangled up in convoluted denials which they should have known would not work, I have to admit that if I were in that kind of situation, I'd be strongly tempted to lie too, and I think the same would be true of many if not most people. As such, if I had been in the Democratic leadership, I wouldn't have been calling for Weiner to resign. Unfortunately, in this kind of situation a kind of mob mentality takes over, and Weiner was a victim of it.
Ah, but wait, I hear some say, you only say that because Weiner was one of the leading liberals in the House. It's true that I find it a particular shame to lose him because from what I know he was good at his job, and fought hard for good causes. But to take a similar case, I didn't think the Republican Chris Lee should have been forced to resign for sending shirtless pictures of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist either. Sure, I am happy with the ultimate result, since a reasonably progressive Democrat managed to win that seat, despite it being a Republican district, and so someone better than Lee ended up in the seat (though to give Lee credit, he did say some things that showed he was at least more moderate on a few issues than most Republicans). But I didn't think he should have had to lose his seat for that reason (not when all sorts of crackpots, bigots and corporate lackeys are able to keep theirs).
I have a somewhat different view of cases like those of Larry Craig and Mark Foley. Craig in particular deserved to be kicked out (though he ultimately was stubborn enough to stay till the end of his term), not so much because he was actually arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, or even because he also tried to make all sorts of convoluted explanations of his action and made ridiculous attempts to backtrack on his guilty plea, but because he was a hypocrite. He was arrested for soliciting sex with a male undercover officer, yet his voting record was very anti-gay. The same could be said of Foley, who was caught sending sexually explicit email messages to a young man who was a former Congressional page, though Foley's record was not as totally anti-gay as Craig's and he has come out as homosexual since resigning. To extend the analogy to non-politicians, any of the various conservative Christian leaders who have been caught having affairs or paying for sex with either female or male sex workers also deserve condemnation mainly for hypocrisy.
On the liberal side, despite generally liking his politics, I had to conclude Eliot Spitzer pretty much deserved to be driven out of office, again for hypocrisy. I didn't think it was a big deal that he had paid for sex with a call girl, but then I read that, along with his prosecutions of Wall Street crime as NY Attorney General, he had aggressively pursued several call girl rings, even making his usual outspoken statements about how he was going to nail them. I will say that if the rings he prosecuted were involved in human trafficking (rather than being made up of women who voluntarily got involved in sex work, like the one he actually had a transaction with), then he would not be a hypocrite, but I don't recall reading anything indicating that was the case. But if it weren't for the hypocrisy involved, I wouldn't think that Spitzer (or the majority of the other politicians discussed here) should have been forced to resign. On the contrary, my own opinion largely matches that expressed by American philosopher and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum in this piece on the Spitzer affair -- parts of which apply equal well to Weiner's case.
In conclusion, I just have to say that I hope Americans can grow up a bit about sex, and that they'll start caring a little less about what kinds of sexual activities their leaders engage in and more about what kind of policies they support. For some of them, at least, their voting records and public statements contain plenty of things more reprehensible than anything Anthony Weiner did on Twitter or Facebook. If Weiner has to go, then why should they all get to stay?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
