Last week’s posts all address the difficult issue of the relationship between public appearance and private beliefs and actions.

Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Gays and Lesbians are unlikely to become President, Michael Corey reports. Large percentages of Americans would be unlikely to vote for these minorities for the highest office in the land according to a recent Gallop poll. This contrasts with other groups that have historically been objects of intolerance. Only small percentages of the population reveal an unwillingness to vote for a Hispanic, Jew, Baptist, Catholics, woman or African American. Given the definitive role that racism has played in American history, it is striking that of these historically excluded groups, the least amount of prejudice is directed toward African Americans. This represents significant progress. That Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, gays and lesbians don’t fare so well shows that progress is a slow and uneven process. To be sure, even in the case of African Americans and women, the taboo against the expression of prejudice may depress the numbers, as Felipe and Andrew maintained in their replies. There is private prejudice, public denial.

Corey proposes two special reasons for the persistence of prejudice against Mormons, true belief, i.e. ideological certainty, and “know-nothingism,” i.e.  intentional ignorance. Michael Weinman explores how these are produced and reproduced in Israel, not only as a matter of official public policy, but more significantly in the naming of a picture book character, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. The project of official policy to Hebraize the names in East Jerusalem is transparent. Every day practices and expectations about in group and out group relations are more fundamental than the official project of exclusion, resulting in more durable effects. The public project to disappear Arab Jerusalem is strongly supported by the intimate working of primary socialization, turning a difficult political conflict into an impossible one.

The passage of the marriage equality law in New York is a milestone. Changes in everyday practices preceded the event. With gays and lesbians in their diversity more visible, their exclusion from marriage (and the military) became harder to sustain. The way we lived suggested one legal framework. The way we live mandated another. The official public is catching up with private everyday practices.

And as the legal framework changes, so do everyday practice: thus, Americans have become accustomed to have access to public support of medical care in their old age. Even conservative Republicans, who initially denounced Medicare as the beginning of the end of freedom in America, now must maintain their support, as they are proposing fundamental changes to the program, which Democrats see as a dismantling. With this in mind, Gary Alan Fine expects such Republican support of Obamacare, in the long run.

President Obama is a reluctant supporter of gay marriage. While he applauded the passing of the New York law last week, he carefully didn’t openly endorse change in Federal policy. Republicans say they support Medicare, while they propose policies that may dismantle it. Even the casual observer can read between the lines. Obama’s opposition to gay marriage is insincere, as is Republican support of Medicare. Americans, further, may indeed be more prejudiced against blacks, less prejudiced against Mormons than the Gallop poll indicates. Personal conviction may contrast with public appearance and expression.

But note how important appearance and expression are. If a person is afraid to utter openly racist conviction, it is less likely that the person will be willing to engage in overt racist action. The hypocrisy constitutes a social control. When Obama publicly supports gay marriage, it will be a big deal (my guess before the next elections). It will help extend the normality of equality for those with various sexual orientations. While Republican direct attack on Medicare is unlikely (no matter how they feel about it), when they stop attacking Obama’s healthcare reform and start suggesting ways to improve it (perhaps still wanting to undermine Obamacare) it will also be a big deal. How one is hypocritical matters.

But please only two cheers. Sometimes hypocrisy deserves its bad reputation, as in the Strauss-Kahn affair. Charged with rape in New York, DSK is likely to get off here. He appears to be innocent, though he may not be, but in such a case appearance is enough. As we discussed in the replies to my report on Daniel Dayan’s reaction to the affair, Strauss-Kahn may even have a significant political life in France. Yet,  a can of worms was opened, and despite some valiant attempts to get those damn worms back in by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy, there are still important questions that arise from the case concerning the relationship between public appearance and private belief and actions. Lévy pretends that the private actions of Strauss-Kahn are not at issue and that the biggest scandal has been his  public humiliation. Yet, it is clear to me that the private life of public men sometimes should be examined. DSK stands accused of rape in another case, in France this time, not by a lowly chambermaid, but by a member of the French cultural-political elite. An official public appearance of innocence may or may not be supported by private witness. This is and should be a public issue. The public prerogatives of power should be subjected to critical examination. I hope they are not hidden by a resurgence of anti-Americanism in France, as has been reported by The New York Times. No cheers for xenophobia and chauvinism. Only two for hypocrisy. Because sometimes, it should be revealed, with consequences.

Wouldn’t Baudrillard have loved it? For him, it would have indicated the presence of yet more proof that actual people do suffer from hyperrealitis! According to Jean Baudrillard, consumers had long ceased to need originals. Thus, in a world where the simulated version has conquered the real, how many people will have principled issues with the mix up of the person and the parody? Or taking it one step further, how many people have concerns about the authenticity of the real Palin in the first place?

This brings me to the genuineness of political performers. During a recent show, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow served up 12 male politicians whom she placed on a “post-Clinton modern American political sex scandal consequence-o-meter.” Depending on the creepiness of their behavior and the extent to which they might be prosecuted, Maddow measured the cases of Florida Representative Mark Foley, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign, VP candidate John Edwards, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and of course, New York Representative Anthony Weiner, and a couple of others. (For more on Weiner, read Gary Alan Fine’s post.) Did all these gentlemen think they could get away with extramarital affairs, prostitution, lewd conduct, and other such activities? While some of these activities may not be downright illegal, they all reveal little or no moral standards. In many cases, the behavior was not only hypocritical, but also naïve, as the compromising position in which these politicians pushed themselves would one day trip them up. To make matters even more complicated, the hypocrisy is a common element. Among the politicians who are the most vocal about the need for punishment and resignation of the sinners, are those who are guilty of some nasty sins themselves. How many others still think that their secret lives will not become public?

Even though these men have differences, they do share some similarities. Significantly, they all confuse the authentic and the fake. They all jazzed up their real lives with lies and may have found some moments of reality in their lives as cheaters. To find oneself in this muddle of real and unreal must be bewildering to any mere mortal, but unsettling on a whole other level to political representatives. While survival on the political stage demands a high degree of showmanship, a politician’s moral credibility and integrity are his or her lifeblood. Or, at least, it used to be.

Of course, deceit and pretense have long been a part of the political profession. But in a society where there already exists an overwhelming amount of posing and parades, the show element of politics seems to be only increasing. As the lines between reality and imitation have become blurry in society in general, political society has followed suit. Concern about the authentic and the fake has diminished during our travels from real life to reality shows. There is an insufficient concern about the mixing up of the authentic and fake in the movements from real-life politics to pure political spectacle. Amidst all the gaming and faking, it would be good to realize that real decisions have an impact on real people.

Silly season comes early in Washington, along with the steamy weather. It is just barely June, and we are already watching the meltdown of Congressman Anthony Weiner, an outspoken liberal Queens Democrat and a one-time candidate for Mayor of New York City. This disgusting and delightful episode began innocently enough with the question of whether the Congressman sent a photo of his filled-out jockey shorts to a West coast co-ed. She assured us that she was not offended by such japery. Stranger things have happened, even in the New York Congressional delegation. The episode seemed like a pleasant, if erotically-charged, diversion. As Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out in another vein, it was “good to think.” Now we learn that the Congressman has checked himself into the Eliot Spitzer wing to deal with a whimsical mental illness that the DSM-5 might label “cad-atonia.” Weiner may be needy, but psychiatry is not likely to provide a cure.

At the time I marveled at how Weiner made such a hash of his own defense. If he did Tweet young women, admit it as ill-conceived teasing and move on. Taking seriously Weiner’s (at first) plausible assertion that his Twitter account was hacked, I worried about the prevalence of Candid Camera politics. I spoke of those luscious gotcha moments in which politicians were upended by trickery of which conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart and his associate James O’Keefe of the famous NPR-Arab donor sting have become so expert. In this case my suspicions of Breitbart were unfounded. Despite being an articulate defender of progressive policies, it has become clear that the Congressman was a fully engaged politician.

Here is yet another instance in which the cover-up proved far worse than the crime. Early on Weiner was accused of sharing lewd pictures of himself. “Lewd” seemed to be something of a term of art, although apparently there is a photo that is more explicit in the mix. Still, the original photo of filled out briefs, the basis of the scandal, would hardly qualify as foreplay in most cultures. Whatever. Still, such sharing is a venial sin, but straight-out lying to blame others edges toward a mortal one. Weiner’s decision was something of a Prisoner’s Dilemma. Had he lied and gotten away with it, that would have been the best of all possible Weiner worlds. The problem is that the worst of those worlds is what happened. Lying and getting nabbed. He made fools of his colleagues and that is unforgivable in politics, and he directed our attention away from pressing matters for more than one wet dream news cycle. The fate of Congressman Weiner is in play, and public attention will not fade until it is resolved through a resignation, through boredom, or through a new crisis. (Pray for a tsunami, Anthony!).

The hysteria is such that now a seemingly innocent connection between the Congressman and a 17-year old Delaware maiden is being questioned by the police. Let’s admit it, the truth is that Anthony Weiner can say with a straight face, “I did not have sex with any of those women.” All the tsuris, none of the tingle.

The dispiriting reality is that discussing policies, even as our nation teeters on the brink of insolvency, is not sufficiently engaging. This is not a new phenomenon. Civil society has never been a seminar room. A careful discussion of the “issues” is not to be found in our history and not in any other society that has an open public sphere. Politics is often a slightly elevated form of gossip. We engage in the personalization of policy, understanding issues through the character – and hypocrisy – of their proponents. And it is here that Weiner is doing so much damage to the progressive cause. He personifies the swamp that Nancy Pelosi once promised to drain. As a friend said, rather than drain the swamp, Weiner swamps the drain.

Perhaps it is unreasonable to think that a large and robust public will ever have a profound debate on the debt ceiling or on Medicare reimbursements. We are not experts, after all. Still it is dismaying that so often the discussion zips to whose zipper is undone, ignoring our collective futures.

Today the Congressman has a choice: will he resign or will he be a punchline? Perhaps he can tough it out (as Barney Frank, David Vitter, and Bill Clinton did), but he harms his cause. As long as he is in Congress, Republicans will not let Democrats forget. Democratic leaders from Nancy Pelosi on down, now calling for Weiner’s resignation, realize this all too well.

Weiner’s fundamental flaw was in embracing the “I’m so special law.” After his New York Congressional colleague Representative Chris Lee was forced to resign over his own hunky photo, one might imagine that politicians would recognize that at least that deviance was off-limits. But now, Anthony Weiner knew, just knew that the rules didn’t apply to Queens.

Neither Lee nor Weiner quite reach the charmed scandal circle of Arnold or Dominique, much less the Sultan of Slime, John Edwards, but they rank high on the ick scale. While ickiness has its appeal in a gossip economy, it distracts us from the business at hand. What might be comic relief becomes slapstick.

The worst deception is that one can have it all. This is the belief that one can create policy and have a rockin’ good time. Weiner apparently thought that he could be in a graduate seminar and a happy home at the same time he was in a junior high locker room. Fantasies of omnipotence have their charm, but they also have their price.