Talking Trash

Now that Anthony Weiner is gone and we await the next sex scandal--which will arrive as surely as summer follows spring--I find myself wondering why these events have to occupy so much space. Every time a scandal erupts, I ask myself the same troubling questions: What was he thinking? Why didn't he expect to get caught? Where did he find the time? Why do we invade others' privacy so relentlessly? And what about the children, who should never have to learn such details about their dad?

In the end, these events make me sad, and I felt even sadder when I watched Anthony Weiner resign. For as he spoke that day, a heckler shouted him down, calling him "a pervert" and talking trash that had no place in public discourse. Which is what these events do: they cheapen the public discourse.

You might say, as my husband did, that Senator Weiner "deserved this." I understand the sentiment, and I don't defend Weiner. Yet such spectacles involving private behavior--particularly when no laws have been broken--coarsen our already shallow and mean-spirited society.

Maybe we'll get a break this summer, and it will be too hot for anyone to act out. Or maybe our press will miss the next big story. For every time we obsess about the latest sexual transgression among us, we lose sight about what really matters: the health and well-being of all of us, the humanity we share, and the urgent need to take care of each other and of our planet.