c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The one who takes the sword will perish by the sword. Those who turn adultery into a political crime risk being accused of the crime.

And those who print Ken Starr’s smut have no right to criticize Larry Flynt’s smut. Sam Donaldson, symbolically representing the elite national media, has no right to pretend to moral superiority over Flynt. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the national TV networks have no claim to moral superiority over The National Enquirer or Hustler.

I make no case for either Flynt or his magazine. I despise both. Similarly I despise elite media for playing the scandal game and then looking down their self-righteous noses at Flynt.

For most of the country’s history both parties have been reluctant to play the adultery card because they knew very well it could be used against them.

The elite media did not play it either, because of something once called good taste. However, the ’60s generation, now running things in the media, never found the time to acquire good taste. Sexual liberation for them means you can do almost anything you want sexually and at the same time turn private sexual matters into public issues.

Inconsistent? Sure, but who cares. It attracts readers and viewers and enables one to be self-righteous, not to say hypocritical.

It started with Gary Hart. He was asked about adultery on the grounds that it was an indicator of character. There was a superb irony in the question: the quintessential ’60s politician caught in the quintessential ’60, in-your-face style of journalism.

The assumption behind the question was that marital fidelity was a requirement to run for public office and that the public had the”right to know”about the private sexual lives of public people.

The journalists who raised that issue knew full well how destructive it could be. Fidelity is not especially popular in the Beltway, either among journalists or politicians. Power, as the great moralist Henry Kissinger once remarked, is the great aphrodisiac. If adultery becomes a political issue a lot people should never have been elected or should never be re-elected. The”New Journalism”in fact meant the old Calvinist Puritanism.

Then the Miami Herald took it upon itself to spy on Gary Hart and convict him of adultery. It thereby proudly revealed Hart didn’t have the”character”to be president. The journey from”outing”Gary Hart to Hustler outing a”string”of hypocritical,”family values”Republican members of Congress has been a short one.

While good taste restrained the elite media from revealing what it had learned about the sex lives of President George Bush and Sen. Bob Dole, they abandoned all pretense and taste when Bill Clinton came under attack from sleaze journals. Different rules, you see, apply to Democrats.

The hypocritical argument for a time was that the elite journals would never carry a story about the private sex life of a politician, but would have to report such stories when they appeared in journals like the National Enquirer.

They thus decided to hold themselves captive to the lowest common denominator of sleaze. Hence, even today, while they decry Larry Flynt, they report his”outings.” The greatest surprise of this sorry tale of”dumbing down”integrity and good taste is the reaction of the public. Far more sophisticated than either the media elite or congressional leadership, a large majority of the public saw political partisanship and media sensationalism for what they are and rejected both.

The media kept hoping that the”next”revelation would shake the public’s faith. Right-wing Republicans kept hoping that when the”whole story”was told _ now with Monica Lewinsky in the well of the Senate _ the people would turn against the president and he would be removed from office. That hasn’t happened and won’t happen, so now we have the question of what happens if you have an impeachment and no one comes. Congressional leaders of both parties still don’t get it: scandal politics doesn’t work any more _ if it ever did.

How will all of this end? It might not. Out of force of habit politicians and the media may continue to criminalize politics and politicize private behavior. The public may continue to tune out. Eventually it could all end not with a bang but a whimper.

DEA END GREELEY