I have zero affection (or respect) for the Labor Party in NSW but, for the life of me, I cannot understand the hysterical puritanism that has driven the resignation of John Della Bosca from its state government ministry. Nor do I understand the more recent sentiments suggesting he might be ‘rehabilitated’ and reinstated into the ministry.
My limited understanding of the facts suggests that Della Bosca had an affair with an attractive 26 year old female and this woman went to the press and dobbed him in. This should be as irrelevant politically as the information that President Clinton got a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky. In both cases the press should have ignored the affair and concentrated on the real issues of politics. Sexual liasons are private matters and there is no law against having them whether or not you are married.
We live in such a sexualised culture and yet there is a streak of sexual puritanism that persists particularly in the sensationalist media. You notice the same type of society-wide hypocrisy in the US.
Many people enjoy gossiping about ‘who is having it off with who’ and I see no great problems with that. But forcing a man from his job because he was lucky enough to enter into a mutually happy liason with a young attractive woman is a throwback to the sexual puritanism of the 1950s. Society has moved on and good riddance to the foolish sexual mores of the past.
On a happier and more humorous note, Peter Ruehl in today’s AFR (subscription required) makes the pointed obsevation that Della Bosca should have adhered to two lessons: (i) Don’t have affairs with people who will run to the tabloids if things don’t work out and; (ii) if you are going to have an extra marital affair don’t be married to Belinda Neal! I heartily concur on both counts but emphasise that it is the tabloids who behaved disgracefully here not Della Bosca.
Harry, DB wasn’t sacked. He resigned. He would not have been sacked if he didn’t resign. Why did he not claim that it was a private matter and refuse to resign? He’s not saying.
As far I can tell, no one has condemned him for having the affair. The only politicians who get so condemned nowadays are those who have affairs and take a strong ‘family values’ line, which DB has not. The sin in that case would be hypocrisy, not breaking the vows of marriage.
None of this means that there is more to this matter than meets they eye. He is probably just another middle aged bloke who thought with a part of his body that was not his brain, and got caught. Perhaps he’s had enough of being in the public spotlight, constantly held up to ridicule because he was a minister in a terminally bad government and because of his wife (as per Ruehl today).
If he was a minister in another government with an anonymous wife no one in the media would have cared.
The word ‘sacking’ used in the last para was a slip – I meant ‘forced’ both buy media and political pressure – and have changed it to that. My reading of editorials (particularly that in The Australian) was that Della Bosca had disgraced the party and needed to go. I think this is wrong. The resignation was a product of the media disclosures.
Harry, he could have toughed it out.
“My reading of editorials (particularly that in The Australian) was that Della Bosca had disgraced the party”
I thought they were beyond disgrace.
Harry, might I suggest that your angst against “puritanism’ is somewhat misplaced. What made reporting his marital infidelity so delicious was his wife’s history of histrionic difficulty with managing anger. I think it was to a very large extent the degree of ridicule in the public mind (due to anticipation of his wife’s reaction) that led him to resign and avoid it.
You really do carry on with a lot of nonsense about sexual ethics. The generic nature of sexual jealousy means that even the average middle class atheist/agnostic of modern Australia usually has a problem with aging husbands having affairs with younger women (or vice versa), regardless of the fact that said agnostic is well past the sexual hypocrisy of the 1950′s. (In reality, the hypocrisy you lament was mainly confined to the fake shock and horror that pre-marital sex happened at all. But actual infidelity after marriage was frowned upon then, just as it is now.)
If you think no one should ever be ashamed of affairs, including you, just tell us so. It would be good to know where exactly your anger at ‘puritanism’ is coming from.
Finally: in the commentary since this happened that I have heard, there is almost universally the reaction “well, that was odd, wasn’t it: that he should resign as if people cared that a politician was unfaithful to his wife”. This undercuts your concerns about “puritanism” somewhat, doesn’t it?
I don’t think sexual liasons are a public concern. I don’t think it is my role to express a moral view on the sex lives of others. It is not my concern.
hc September 5th, 2009 at 11:59 am
So if Rudd started to carry on like Berlusconi, you would not have a problem with that? Admittedly it would initially be comedy gold. But that kind of joke wears thin after a while.
Personally I find Berlusconi’s sexual antics to be embarrassing. I am half-Italian and I would prefer the leader of Italy to conduct himself in a more decorous fashion. Not like a man indulging in a life-long mid-life crisis. It also reinforces unfortunate ethnic/gender stereotypes about the Italian males God’s-gift-to-womanizing tendencies.
I tend to think we should expect our leaders to follow a higher standard of sexual behaviour than celebrities or even ourselves. That means that if they make a vow with someone then they should stick to it or have it formally dissolved.
Carrying on affairs whilst married is not a good look in a minister. Ministers have considerable powers of patronage. So it opens up the temptation towards nepotism for mistresses.
Also, if the public loosens the leash on Alpha-male aggrandisement then we will start to develop a very retro-grade social structure. The gang at the top monopolising all the privileges of power and pelf, doling out a few crumbs to their hangers-on and camp followers and sticking it to the rest of the public.
Does that sound familiar to you Harry? Yes, its a pretty neat profile of the NSW ALP. Think Graeme Richardson et al.
If you want to see what a liberal attitude towards official hanky-panky leads to then I invite you to consider the affairs of Zuma, the President of SA. Seven wives, god knows how many mistresses a dozen or more children. That sort of set-up leads to Alpha-male nepotistic-kleptocratic dynasties.
We like to make fun of the Victorians with their prudery and priggishness. But they more or less invented the modern system of responsible representative government. Perhaps they knew something that we have un-known in the lapse of time.
For an Alpha-male: polygamy is to women as plutocracy is to wealth.
Try to imagine the NSW polity if the better part of the public did not enforce stricter sexual mores on its public officials.
It would be like crossing the NSW ALP, the NRL and Fox studios. These institutions are bad enough already without giving a green light for open slather.
Jack, Quite frankly my main reaction to Della Bosca is one of envy that he scored so decisively and scorn that he didn’t cover his bases in terms of offering his partner the opportunity to blab to the press.
I think Berlusconi should keep things discreet to avoid offending those who don’t appreciate the idea of an important man getting a root on the side – important in politics. I couldn’t care less what he does myself. I don’t see the sex act between consenting adults (with or without spouses) as an immutable sin.
The point is that these issues are private matters between a man, his wife and perhaps their family. I am very reluctant to lay down the law on a basic human drive.
Older men who deny the attractiveness of younger women are either deluded or liars. This attractiveness is a part of the sadness of aging.
hc September 11th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Harry,
With respect, your feelings about personal morality are neither here nor there. What matters in public affairs is what best serves the public. The public is best served by high officials who at least pay lip service to personal proprieties.
I agree with all of what you have said with regard to the morality of private citizens. But Della Bosca is a public official.
In some ways its harder to meet prudish standards these days than it was in the old days, owing to the ubiquity of the media and the prurience of the paparrazzi. Thats a pity, perhaps, because all men have feet made of clay.
OTOH, it is vital that a bourgeois democracy such as ours maintains bourgeois standards for its leaders. That is because in a democracy it is felt that public officials should be exemplary in their behaviour – role models to use the fashionable idiom.
Moreover public officials should not stray too far in their personal life from the life of the people they rule. In a way this is the moral analogue of the legal Rule of Law.
This is a tradition in public life that goes back as far as the Romans. The Censor’s job was to enforce private moral standards on public officials.
Look what happened to Rome when the public elite gave themselves over to private pleasure. The decadent emperors were widely held to have ruled unwisely.
Our civilization rose to world dominance, in part, by adhering such high standards. We abandon such traditions at our peril.
Jack, I am not a fan of Crikey.com but I liked this piece:
“The affairs (may we use the plural?) of Labor politician John Della Bosca betray again how the dark ages of morality and sentiment have not quite left Australia’s appraisal of politics and sex. Prurient details are digested like a fatty English cholesterol-laden breakfast (more sausage please), and no act, to cite an old quote, is left un-stoned. The expectation that an officer of the Crown remain somehow moral is one of those absurd sentiments that should have been ditched centuries ago, but remain in provincial cultures easily vexed by matters of the flesh”.
“…instead of focusing on details that affect his office, we are treated to the cries of the sexually starved who live vicariously through public figures who “get it” all. Let us, as members of the public, ignore the soiled sheets and get on with the business of criticising governance”.