Pence and Prudence

One thing that strikes me is that I’ve seen a number of articles asking if one would be comfortable having dinner with someone of the opposite sex, and the pictures used almost inevitably show the lady with a shirt that doesn’t even have buttons until it gets down by the bosom, and what buttons there are are, shall we say, strained because she’s really a size or two bigger. And yes, in such a situation, I would be reluctant to sit down to eat.

This is especially the case in DC, where a political meal can end up on the front of the WaPo or NYT if you’re not careful—and so I would guess people can be a little more stringent about privacy than otherwise. This, in turn, would make a business meal more like a date than it ought to be.

And really, after 1998, one would have figured that people in DC would appreciate those who take steps to avoid being tempted to sexual sin—even unbelieving Na-Tehisi Coates admits that his faithfulness to his wife does not consist of stopping just short of getting a room, but rather when he might be tempted. So the whole kerfuffle is weird. It is as if the left wants more waitress sandwiches, as long as the perpetrators are reliable liberals like Kennedy and Dodd—or as long as they are conservatives who can be induced to resign for their sins.