I subscribed to my first 2 magazines (that I'm paying for) today. It was quite exciting.

1. The New Yorker
I'm a liberal and I'm an English major (redundancy rocks), so having a script to one of the most clever, erudite, and all around high-falootin' magazines in America is almost a degree requirement. Honestly I'd argue that the cartoons are reason enough to dish out the cash. The New Yorker does have a pretty sturdy reputation as one of the best literary magazines in the history of the genre. J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Anne Sexton, David Sedaris, Milan Kundera, Stephen King, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath and Vladimir Nabokov all contributed to the magazine, so it can't be that bad. If you've never picked up a New Yorker and read a little, you should. The fiction is good, the editorials are cutting, and the cartoons are clever (sometimes too clever).

2. Playboy
I firmly believe that every American male should both own a Corvette and have a subscription to Playboy at least once in his life. Sadly enough much of society still views Playboy as smut magazine, which it is absolutely not. Are there pictures of naked women? Yes. Good. I like looking at naked women, I'm normal. But that's not why one buys a Playboy. You buy a playboy because it probably has one of the highest journalistic standards in printed journalism today. You buy a Playboy because you will learn from every edition. Writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, and Margaret Atwood have all been published in Playboy, and the fiction is pretty top notch still. My dad has his collection of Playboys from college, including the first issue with a certain Marilyn Monroe, and I could spend hours reading the interviews with people who I learn about in history classes today.

I'm hoping both of these magazines will expand my outlook a little.

Now it's off to buy that Corvette...

Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
-Barry Goldwater

Every few months we'll find out that another powerful leader has porked (or at least tried to) another woman, man, or child, and sad hilarity will ensue. Right-wing Americans will get morally outraged when it's a left-wing politician, and visa-versa. Resignation will be "suggested" by colleagues and bloggers, and in most cases the men will either spout their innocence or apologize a few dozen times. No matter what road they choose, chances are they won't go anywhere.

Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton, John Ensign, John Edwards, Mark Foley, Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, Jack Kennedy, the list goes on and on and on.

To this day I don't understand why people are a. surprised when this happens and b. so upset when it does. It's disappointing, sure. But we live in America, the country where 55% of married men and 40% of married women will have an affair sometime during their marriage. If anything, these men are simply average.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a big deal, because it should, but should it end a political career? In most cases I'd say no.

Before I provide some examples, I have to go get my soapbox to stand on.

Most members of the so-called "Moral Majority" is, in fact, neither. Republicans like to imply that Democrats are not realllllly Christian because they believe in things like a woman's right to choose, gay rights, and helping the poor.
And yet, while acknowledging their obvious moral superiority, many of their top political and religious leaders tend to, er, fuck like rabbits. Here are a few examples of people who define hypocrisy: Ted Haggard, John Ensign, Mark Foley, Mark Sanford, etc. etc.

I'm not saying that the Democrats who cheat are any better. I don't approve of any cheating. Let's take Bill Clinton, the most obvious example.
What he did was wrong. He shouldn't have cheated on his wife, and I'm glad America found out about it. The President of the United States represents all of us, whether we approve of him or not. But did it hinder his ability to lead the country? I don't think so. Whether or not you support his policies, it'd be tough to claim that his getting blown by Monica really affected his political decisions. Did he lie? Yes, and that pisses me off. I don't appreciate being lied to by anyone, but it's especially annoying when it's the person who owes all the power and influence they have to the public. Is this an impeachable offense? I don't think so. If he had lied about something a little more relevant to America's interests, maybe, but not when he lied about his personal life.

Should Mark Sanford be impeached? Well, that depends on who you ask. He lied to the country about his whereabouts, and spent taxpayer money (despite the fact that he's supposedly all about fiscal responsibility) to fund a trip to Argentina to visit his mistress. Sounds impeachable to me. You think it would sound pretty impeachable to all the people who put tons of effort into trying to kick Bill Clinton out of office, like John Ensign. We'll see what happens, it should be interesting.

"I think we are dealing with a very serious problem here. With what we know and what we already knew, to me, the honorable thing [For President Clinton] to do would be to resign."
-John Ensign

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson