On the morning of July 16 Republican Senator David Vitter appeared on a right wing New Orleans talk radio show and the conversation shifted to thoughts on how he and the hosts looked a long time ago. The exchange on Rush Radio 99.5 went as follows:

MALE HOST: I wonder if Senator Vitter is ever going to post, like, maybe the video of the first time he was on the floor of the Senate. If I have to show the way I looked the first time I was on TV, you should do that too.

VITTER: We should go further back than that, how about high school yearbook?

MALE HOST: Oh yeah.

VITTER: De La Salle marching band.

MALE HOST: That'd be cool. Well you know, with Rachel Maddow they had that picture of her...

FEMALE HOST: Looking like a woman.

MALE HOST: Yeah it was really bizarre.

VITTER: [LAUGHS]: Must have been a long time ago.

ALL THREE: [HEAVY LAUGHTER]

Some have suggested that the radio show’s co-hosts effectively ‘egged on’ Vitter to imply that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow looked like a woman ‘a long time ago’ in light of a photo from her high school yearbook recently circulating that shows her with long blonde hair as compared to her current close cropped look. This ‘egging on’ argument is irrelevant, however, if it’s assumed that we can expect a certain set of standards from a U.S Senator (particularly from one who is running for re-election). Sure enough, later that day amid growing public outrage Vitter wrote an apology to Maddow in which he asserted:

Regarding my remark during a radio conversation today, I apologize.

The hosts made their comment and I obviously chimed in. While we do not usually agree on the issues, I do not think you deserved that comment.

Interesting that within his curt apology Vitter felt compelled to add the softening qualifier of ‘while we do not usually agree on the issues’- as if the general public and Maddow herself were not already aware that a conservative Republican would often be in disagreement with a left wing political commentator.

An insult of a woman’s appearance disguised as a thinly veiled comment upon her sexuality is offensive enough, but in recent years Vitter has found himself in repeated trouble related to women. In 2007 he was embroiled in a prostitution scandal when his name appeared in the phone records of a Washington D.C area madam dated 1999 to 2001. That same year a New Orleans madam alleged that Vitter had also been one of her customers during the 1990’s. While Vitter held an inevitable confessional news conference -wife by his side- to beg the public’s forgiveness for past sins, he didn’t step down. This was undoubtedly in no small part due to the Republican Party’s prevailing view that New Orlean’s then Democrat Governor, Kathleen Blanco, would likely have replaced him with an interim Democrat. It’s also interesting that Vitter held onto his job even as in the past he had not only called for President Clinton’s resignation in light of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but also because Vitter himself had come to power after Republican Congressman Bob Livingston had resigned due to an adultery scandal.

Then, this past June, Vitter found himself once again under the spotlight when it was revealed from ABC News that one of his longtime aides assigned to oversee women’s issues not only had a criminal record dating back to the 1990’s, an outstanding warrant in Baton Rouge relating to a DWI charge, but in 2008 had plead guilty to a domestic assault in which he had attacked his girlfriend with a knife. Only after this information was made public by the media did Vitter –under scrutiny as to his judgment in selection criteria for hiring staff- ask for the aide’s resignation. Vitter later tried to deny –falsely- that the aide in question had ever been assigned to handle women’s issues.

Hypocrisy in politics is nothing new, and as galling as it can be when alleged ‘family values moralists’ find themselves contradicting their own preaching words, one would have to have been living in a cave for the better part of two decades to be in any way surprised by sex scandals in American politics –and sex scandals that are appearing on both sides of the political fence. From Clinton on, countless individuals have been caught up in trouble. Names like Larry Craig, John Edwards, Mark Foley, Eric Massa, Mark Sanford and John Ensign have all appeared in tabloids in recent years. There’s little doubting human nature though and that such scandals were likely just as common decades ago but merely hushed over (JFK, anyone?) and that the only reason we’re so acutely aware of them these days is due to the broader reach of an increasingly probing, sensationalist media, especially online. There is also something to be said of whether any of the ‘outcry’ against such behavior is somehow rooted in America’s historical semi-deification of her nation’s political offices, and in her conservative, puritanical roots. At times it would be hard to consider whether some of these alleged scandals would get much currency in countries like France and Italy.

In a similar vein, low-blow name-calling and mocking is also nothing new in the political arena, and for every comment by a Republican like Vitter against a left-winger like Maddow there have been just as many left-wing mud pies hurled across the aisle against frequent, favoured targets like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter (who MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann once famously suggested was living life as a transgender. I may well despise just about every word that comes out of Coulter’s mouth, but it wasn’t an especially classy comment from Olbermann).

One has to wonder if we should even waste space on the likes of Vitter, not least because we clearly can’t expect perfection from our elected officials, particularly when the individuals in question are such repeat offenders. Lately it seems the public don’t care as much about their politician’s private gaffes and missteps as they used to- and in Vitter’s case he seems to stand a very good chance moving forward of being re-elected later this year.

But even if there is a shift in interest among voters regarding the personal lives of their elected officials, it doesn’t necessarily make the sting of hypocrisy any less painful. Should I judge a man like Vitter solely on the basis of his political record? That’s what my gut has always told me –if he hadn’t been so vocally postulating his take on conservative family values I could have cared less about his private life- and in his case I’m encouraged to find solace in the traditional rout of using the ballot box to empower individuals I feel will better represent my interests and beliefs.

By the same token, another part of me tends to veer towards losing faith in the political system whenever another one of these hypocrisies is committed without consequence. I’m not talking moral consequences, I’m talking political consequences. Perhaps that’s just political fatigue and a little naivety on my part about the nature of the game. Either way it’s an issue I’ll continue to grapple with into the next political news cycle and beyond.

Ezy Reading is out every month.