The Wages of Sex

[Editor's note: An update on this issue can be found at the end of this column.]

People wonder why I haven't commented on Monicagate (aka: flytrap). 

After all, it contains three of my favorite subjects: politics, sex and religion.

Okay, if you insist.

First off, despite what some people would have us believe, a lot of people have gained over this.
 

• Now that certain sexual behaviors have come to light, many parents have had to face up to providing a bit of long overdue sex education.

• The religious right has been able to  inflame passions about the wages of sin...again...and raise a lot of money...again.

• We've looked at the sex lives of a few famous people and found that they too were human. (But you'd be amazed at how much interesting history is still prudishly buried.)

• The Internet was really put on the map by Ken Starr's semi-pornographic materials...
  
  ...by some of the same people who were trying to keep this kind of stuff off the Internet.(True values surface!)

• The tabloids (newspapers and TV news) made a lot of money.

• We were subjected to a bevy of new sex jokes by people uncomfortable with sex.
   
•  The women sexually linked to Clinton have became rich.(Not to mention a few dozen lawyers.)
  
  

• And through it all there was a boomerang political effect: the President and First Lady's popularity immediately improved.
   

...that, contrary to what they see in our media, an awful lot of Americans have blue noses.

Yes, Virginia, despite comments to the contrary, all this is mostly about sex. (Okay, if you insist, denials related to sex.)

Over the years numerous high officials have lied under oath—with minimal consequences...

...although not-so-minimal for thousands who lost their lives as a result of various illegal conflicts and causes hidden through lies and deception from Congress and the American people.

Does the statement "I lied and I am proud of it," by a high-ranking government self-appointed patriot a few years back ring a bell? 

All "sleazebag" elements aside, in the impeachment trial no killing was mandated, no torture was sanctioned, no hotel break-ins were ordered, and the FBI and IRS weren't used to coerce anyone's silence. (Are you up on this decade's history?)

Yes, this does go back to sex and things that aren't supposed to happen...

...but always do...

...especially among politicians...

Things that normally go unmentioned...

...and denied...

...at least until some faction decides they want to settle some political scores...

...and drag it all into the public spotlight.

History books will undoubtedly put the hoopla surrounding the Clinton impeachment into a footnote that a more enlightened era will have trouble understanding.

Fact is, some of us have trouble now.

Editor's update. In March of 2003, the final report on the Clinton affair was released. Ken Starr's investigation cost taxpayers $70-million dollars and, although it may have created political fodder, it resulted in no indictments. Could this money have been better spent?

Consider this: $70-million dollars could have sent 120,000 tons of food to starving children in numerous parts of the world, or it could have paid a year's salary to 1,400 teachers in cash-strapped states.

Instead, we have a few thousand pages of legal documents that, in the end, are essentially worthless.

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