The Other Side of the Republican Macho Posturing

This piece on the BuzzFlash GOP hypocrite of the week made me think about the media coverage of politicians who get caught trying to commit sexual crimes such as preying on underage children or who get caught in embarrassing sexual situations, embarrassing given their political stances. I have not done a proper study of these phenomena, but it sure looks like the vast majority of such politicians are Republican ones and a sizeable number of them belong to the Christian fundamentalist wing of the party. Now, it could be that newspapers only report it when the politician is a conservative and not when the politician is a liberal. But I doubt that.

On the other hand, with the exception of some lefty blogs I have not seen much analysis of why it seems that so many of those apprehended are Republicans and especially Republicans of the pro-family type who publicly believe in red-meat-heterosexuality, the dominance of men and so on. In a way this is the soft underbelly of the conservative gender wars, the side hidden from view, behind those tall and fatherly conservative figures who will take care of us against the evil terrorists. It is also not a pleasant topic to explore.

But I think it might be worth exploring. From a psychological point of view, at least.