you could post this:
Andrew has made himself a public figure, and has made his presumed sexual behavior part of that public persona and part of his arguments in favor of various stands. Sometimes, indeed, his self-report is just about the ONLY evidence he puts forward: he takes testosterone and uses his one-man sample to make all sorts of ridiculous assertions about innate male-female differences. Lots of writers--most writers -- don't use their autobiography so freely, or so tendentiously. If, for instance, Doug or I--or, for that matter, Philip Roth or Anne Tyler -- had been discovered advertising for sex partners on the Internet few would care. But because Andrew has publicly attacked free-floating sex, and ridiculed gay culture in a fairly spectacular way, while cozying up to cultural conservatives from Pat Robertson to the Pope, it is indeed newsworthy that his own personal life resembles the lives he disapproves of so deeply.
As for bill and monica, I am aware that their affair was tenuously attached to a ridiculous lawsuit, thanks to millions of dollars of free legal counsel paid for by rightwing zillionaires. That may have put their behavior in the public domain -- although nothing they did was illegal, either, and Monica surely did nothing that deserved the Starr report. But the supposed sexual harrassment of paula jones does not mean everyone had to pile on bill and monica as they did. for example, andrew could have written a thousand columns SYMPATHIZING with pres clinton's sexual drivenness,which he shares, or wondering why it is so hard for people, gay and straight, to stay faithful. it would have been a good moment for him to wonder whether gay marriage was going to achieve the transofrmation of gay sexuality he had argued it would. ETC. But instead it was all attacking and bemoaning -- because Andrew wanted the republicans to win. That's all it was.
As for the 'right to privacy' -- rights have to do with laws, not gossip. That's all this is. You might just as well argue that because abortion is covered under the right to privacy I don't have the right to talk about anti-choice pundits who've paid for their girl friends abortions.
katha
>>
>>> Just this past sunday Andrew went on and on in London times about
>>> clinton's 'sexual recklessness' and supposed psychological
>>> problems--about the thousandth piece he's written along these
>>> lines. he certainly didn't think Pres C or monica had a right to
>>> privacy! One thing you can say for old Bill, he didn't give Monica
>>> any fatal diseases, and he didn't troll for sex partners by filling
>>> out questionnaires on the internet!
>>
>>
>> Distinctions, please. If you buy the line, Bill and Mon only didn't
>> have the right to privacy b/c it's possible he broke the law. You
>> don't have to buy that line, but then if you don't, you're no longer
>> arguing about privacy, you're talking about the legitimacy of the
>> charges against him.
>>
>> By the way, from everything I could tell from Monica's testimony and
>> the Starr report, Bill was a psychological adolescent with a little
>> dick and a narcissistic streak a mile wide. He may have never
>> claimed to be anything different, but, if you believe Andrew's story
>> half as much as you evidently believe Clinton's, then he hasn't
>> claimed to be anything he isn't either.
>>
>> While you might not have to "troll" the internet or demean yourself
>> by filling out a questionnaire (heavens!) to find partners, doing so
>> isn't a crime. (And neither, btw, is having sex if you're HIV+ if
>> you inform your partner.) This is precisely the kind of clean sex
>> brigade crap that you accuse Andrew of being so good at. Takes one
>> to know one, I guess.
>>
>>> Finally, I think anyone who is a practicing Catholic, anti-choice
>>> AND pro-welfare reform deserves to have their sexual peccadilloes
>>> widely known. The hedonism he has belatedly decided is all right
>>> for himself is not an activity he would make possible for women.
>>> Where's women's right to privacy in his scheme of things? In the
>>> back alley or the obstetrics ward. The heck with him I say -- what
>>> goes around comes around.
>>
>> The problem with this is that, even if the story is true, Sullivan's
>> hypocrisy isn't a good argument in favor of the right to privacy--or
>> the right to choice. It's a good argument not to lend him
>> credibility, but there are a hundred Andrew Sullivan's waiting to
>> pop up where that one falls.
>>
>> Christian