This story reminds me of the principle exemplified in a quote by Robert Fulghum: "Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." Remembering this keeps me in line.

If it is relevant to their job, that is the key. President Clinton never set himself up as a family values conservative. The same was true of JFK, whose dalliances were at least as bad and equally irrelevant. Therefore, outing him for his adultery and shaming America before the world was inappropriate. And by the value system of the Vietnam era, oral sex was not sex, so he did not even lie. Newt Gingrich, who led the impeachment effort and presented himself as a champion of those values while doing the same thing as well as dissing his gay sister, was particularly vulnerable to job-related outing.

Any time a politician shows personal character that goes against his public persona, he should be outed. Hypocrisy is the worst of sins.

I second that, twinkie1ct. There have been a number of situations where various self-proclaimed family values types who have been the biggest proponents of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) have themslves been married and divorced several times and cheated while married. Even worse are those closeted gays who make a big point of supporting blatantly anti-gay legislation such as DOMA. It's time to get the hypocrites out of government.

It is often difficult to know what is appropriate when reporting or reading a story. For example, if you look at JFK's life, many of his sexual dalliances probably should have been of no concern to most of us, but his relationship with a woman with mob connections very definitely was relevant to his position as President. And the sexual aspect of Bill Clinton's relationship with an intern may not matter to many people, but there are professions where someone could lose a professional license for having sexual relations with an intern. Surely, we should expect our President to maintain appropriate boundaries as well as a college supervisor is expected to maintain them. I don't think there are any easy answers to what reporters should report.

I agree with W, Thomas and Twinkie's posts: If it's not affecting the job performance or judgment, then it's irrelevant. I'd rather have an intelligent and articulate adulterer than an embarassing nitwit. For many years, Europeans were perplexed by our moral outrage at the various peccadillos (both financial and sexual) of our elected officials, and I believe the financial ones are much, much worse than the sexual. My late mother-in-law said, "We are electing Presidents, not saints. Cut 'em some slack!" Finally, Mr. Josephson has a very good point (as he usually does) about the inherent hypocrisy between what we say and what we do.

Thanks for being a moral compass for the rest of us. I appreciate the quote that it is never too late to start on that road to building our character (or something close to that). I take pleasure in listening to your commentaries, and I pass on, from time to time, the mails I receive. May God bless you with good health and long life.

Obviously if an inappropriate relationship or action compromises the security of our country, it should be reported. Too often, the focus is on personal and private lives of officials and public servants, and it misses the truly critical events that impact us. Our current financial woes might have been averted if Jack Anderson and other investigative reporters had researched what truly mattered and held policymakers and politicians accountable. The media seems to no longer report news; it creates the news based on sensationalism. In our current environment, people such as President Clinton will not be remembered in history for good contributions but for something that was none of our business. I wonder if many good people who could make a difference don't participate because they don't want their personal lives discussed and analyzed a zillion times by the media.

W. Thomas is way off base. There cannot be two separate standards depending on who you are. Typical liberal, trying to justify whatever they want to do and saying the normal standards don't apply to them.

What I'm hearing here is that it is better to have no standards than to have them and fall short--something we will all do at some time or another. Are we to teach our children to live by certain pillars of character but to not talk about those standards lest they fall short? In my mind, the breaking of a marriage vow is breaking just about all the pillars of character that Character Counts tries to teach....and that goes for anyone regardless of party affiliation or what kind of values they talk about. Actions have consequences. We will all reap what we sow, more than we sow and in a different season than we sow. Sowing seeds of deceit and deception in a marriage or office and then praying for crop failure just won't cut it. The laws of the harvest cannot be broken. Kids are very smart...and they see what is going on.

Whoa...yes, the media pushes sensationalism in our faces. However, we have a responsibility if we are in leadership positions. I believe Clinton had a track record that people overlooked because he was a good leader. But in the same breath, I believe he caused many people, including our children, to think it is all right to lack character as a leader. There have been so many leaders -- Hart, Clinton, Spitzer, the SC Governor, Rev Jesse Jackson and even Bill Cosby -- who have made bad choices that the public was informed about that made us say, "Hmmm." No one is perfect, judge not or be judged, but I believe character will always count if we do not compromise it under any circumstances. Our lives depend on it.

I find it very disturbing that so many would excuse Clinton’s actions while holding athletes to higher standards. Based upon the comments here, we should not criticize athletes for drugs, DUIs, spousal abuse, or nightclub fights because these are not relevant to their jobs. If we claim that just being an athlete makes them a role model, which is a well-supported theme in these commentaries, then doesn’t the same hold true for our elected representatives? Isn’t the President THE role model? Didn’t Clinton’s dalliances detract from his job performance or at the very least detract Congress from attending to other issues and the media from covering other stories?

There is a popular theme in movies about cheating husbands: if he lied to me about that, what else is he lying about? It wasn’t the act itself that created the furor with Clinton, it was the denial and attempted cover-up. When Clinton lied, he brought into question his honesty on any issue. And this WAS relevant to his job. His affair can be excused as a weak moment, but his continued denials displayed poor character. And the fact that others do likewise is no defense.

I’m not sure when twinkie1ct grew up, but I don’t remember oral sex ever being removed from the sex list as a result of the Vietnam era. In fact, it was never even a question until the Clinton fiasco. So, yes, Clinton not only lied, but he alone is responsible for the classification questions regarding oral sex, not Vietnam.

JoJo:
I take offense to the term "typical liberal" as used. There are just as many "typical conservatives" using the same type arguments. To resort to name-calling instead of simply refuting their individual opinions just shows lack of character.

Frankly, I'm appalled at the wholesale editing of comments that seems to be a result of the Jesus Christ issue a few months ago. How can we be sure that relevant portions aren't being deleted which radically change the desired opinion or emphasis on a point? I know it's happening to my comments, so it must be happening to others. Reminds me of the sanitization by the Nazis or, more recently, North Korea. Just a horrible demonstration of lack of character by the Josephson Institute.

Mr T,
The Josephson Institute blog is moderated daily to ensure that our online community is informative, beneficial, and respectful.

We edited and deleted some of your recent comments because we deemed them personally derisive to other blog posters, not because of religious content. As you haven't until this posting listed your e-mail address, we were unable to send you our standard warning in such cases. To help guide you in the future, below is what we do not allow in our blog postings:

Participants may be warned or material may not be posted if Josephson Institute deems a comment to be off-topic, verbose, inaccurate, illegal, libelous, defamatory, derisive, threatening, hateful, dangerous, vulgar, discriminatory, a personal conversation, promoting services or products for financial gain, invading someone’s privacy, or overly political or religious (the Institute is nonpartisan and non-sectarian).

Thank you for treating the website responsibly and with respect in the future.

Interesting that you are choosing your own definitions to justify wholesale editing. Check out many of the postings that you have let slip by containing religious preaching and verbose commentary, most recently in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People 627.5. It would seem you are more tolerant of the religious zealots than others. Maybe your own religious bias is showing in spite of claims that you are non-sectarian. Or maybe you’re just too afraid to offend the people that originally objected to the “Jesus Christ” complaints, since you so readily agreed to delete such references in the future.

Further, if a person such as twinkie1ct can make the claim that “Hypocrisy is the worst of sins” why are we not allowed to respond to her statement by showing her own hypocrisy? That is not derision, it is simply outing her as she demanded others to be. Should she not be treated in the manner she requested? Taken in context nothing I said was derisive. How can we expect to take any character advice from an organization that won’t even follow their own teachings?

Monitoring blog postings is a subjective exercise and done on a case-by-case basis. Although we have general guidelines of what we prefer not to see on the site, it's always a judgment call as to whether we feel a comment has strayed over the line or not. We understand there will be differences of opinion regarding our decisions, such as the ones concerning the comments to which you refer.

As to why we didn't let you respond and "out" another blog poster, we prefer to let bloggers' viewpoints speak for themselves and to encourage readers to address the issues discussed rather than engaging in personal comments bordering on provocations, which can only escalate. There are other sites that allow and encourage that. We don't want this to be one of them.

As someone who in the past worked for the late Jack Anderson, I want to point out that Jack was one who indeed did gravitate to stories -- and there are many in our nation's capital -- that carry elements of the sensational, but he and his staff also regularly exposed corruption and shocking abuses that the rest of the Washington media couldn't or wouldn't report. For one of the posts above to assert that "Our current financial woes might have been averted if Jack Anderson and other investigative reporters had researched what truly mattered and held policymakers and politicians accountable" shows deep ignorance of the journalist's profession and the contributions that this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist made over decades of work that exemplified high principle and a love of our imperfect democracy. And Jack was a family man of Mormon faith, and also a political conservative.

To excuse Jack Anderson's sensationalist stories by pointing out the good works he did is much like excusing Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust because of the good works he did. Morality is much like being pregnant: You either are or you aren't. You can't be kinda pregnant, just as you can't be kinda moral. The world is in the shape it is because too many people have accepted P Marks' interpretation of morality. Further, the fact that Jack Anderson was a family man, a Mormon and a political conservative is irrelevant. History is littered with immoral and unethical family men, Mormons and political conservatives.

Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!
Pett

Charactercounts.org - da best. Keep it going!
Thanks

Everything dynamic and very positively! :)
Thank you

Hello,
Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!

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