The argument that a politician’s so-called private life should be made public is, in my opinion, based on several argumentative flaws. In his opinion piece, Nik Antovich argued that the need to “hide” a politician’s personal life is bad for politics as well as America in general. He gave shaky evidence from neuroscience stating that one’s brain goes through the same process when it has the will to power in political office as it does when it desires the sex and/or love of an affair.
Inherent in arguments like Antovich’s is the idea that it is not one’s private life in general, but only certain aspects of one’s private life of which the public should be aware. For example, let’s say we agree with the journalists that the L.A. mayor’s affair is relevant to public knowledge, which, I might add, the majority of L.A. citizens apparently thought it was not. Why exactly would the contents of this personal decision be more important than the contents of the decision concerning whether he keeps his kitchen clean? Perhaps he hired a maid to clean his kitchen for him, would this be as important as an affair? I mention these issues because we often hear about love and sex, but rarely about things like cleanliness. After all, keeping his kitchen clean might make a statement about the cleanliness of his political life, right?
An affair is not illegal according to U.S. law. Maybe it could be relevant based on a world history of extreme and unbalanced punishment for affairs. Maybe we could defer to a religious institution’s set of laws, although this is certainly illegal. Maybe the knowledge of an affair could help us better understand “what kind of person” this mayor is. So it seems like an affair would be important to the public because of the personal values citizens might have, and possibly no other reason. What happens to our government when personal values lay at the core of our lawful decisions? I certainly don’t think it would be a democracy.
Switching to the maid example, we see also that this so-called private decision is not illegal. However, this decision relates to many questions constantly debated in politics. If the maid is a woman, and she is likely to be, this relates to questions of women in professions that have been relevant to our government since its beginnings. While it may be illegal to pay workers like maids under the table, this is an extremely common practice and so relevant for discussion. Finally, the profession of cleaning houses is often filled by those who are undervalued in society. Maybe the maid this politician hired was an immigrant? The question of immigration has been heated in American as far back as the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882. But why is it that we hear so often about the affairs and not the maids, for example? Whose agenda is being acknowledged when we hear about one issue and not the other? Is it the agenda of the religious right, the scandal-seeking journalism crowd, or the “American public?” It is essential, then, to look further into our assumptions before we denounce the public opinion and state what should be.
Melissa Ruhl is a student at the University
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