Cheating, scandals, lies and manipulation. No this isn't "The Jersey Shore," this is American politics.
Anthony Weiner is the latest of many politicians to join this reality show. Yes, showing lewd pictures is unbecoming for any political figure, but the thing that sticks out to me (no pun intended) is the unfaithfulness of our supposed leaders. Weiner has been married for almost a year before the "sexting" scandal began. Marriage is supposed to be the ultimate trust in one another, a bond that a husband and wife will always be faithful to each other. So as Americans, how can we put our faith in our political leaders, if they made the mistake of betraying the ultimate trust?
This has become a disturbing trend, with the most newsworthy being the President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal. From there, you can add names like Spitzer, Craig, Schwarzenegger and now Weiner to that list. Trusting politicians has always been a problem for Americans. In a recent Gallop poll, less than half of the American public trust the men and women in our public office and only four percent trust them a great deal. In a free and open country, where we depend on our congressmen and women to make the right decisions, only four percent of its people trust them wholeheartedly.
Politicians are human like the rest of us, but when they take the oath of office they are representing the American people, right or wrong. Everyone is entitled to their privacy, but when you make mistakes as blatant as Weiner made, you are asking for criticism. Coming with being elected, all of our politicians lives are an open book.
Not only is it sad that we have people in Washington who think they are immune to this, but we may have come immune to this and take the news with a grain of salt. You turn on the news, or visit the Internet, and most of the headlines involve the words, "another political sex scandal." Most of us probably read that as, "How could they?" or "Another one?" or maybe even get a laugh out of it. I'm not going to lie; all of those questions and thoughts have come through my head. However, when you read between the headlines, you should start to think about it. No, we're not surprised by it, because we've become numb to it, which is wrong. It's one thing to read it in a pop culture magazine or see it on MTV, but it's another to see a political figure betray someone; which whether you like it or not, is the representation of our government today.
