Exodoxa
Red Hot Politics
In contrast to Sarkozy, Newt L. Gingrich has been battling much harder to get past voter prejudice about his various infidelities and serial marriages. When John King asked him a question about whether he’d asked an ex-wife for an open marriage on national television, he, like Hollande, lost it, saying: “I think the destructive vicious negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. I’m appalled you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.” But Gingrich's concerns are more serious than those of the French presidential contenders because many political commentators worry that his personal history will keep him lagging behind the more politically liberal Mitt Romney. It’s evident in this race, as in so many, that Americans are preoccupied with the personal peccadilloes of their political leaders in a way that doesn’t reflect concrete political concerns. Certainly, a politician’s private life reveals his character in many ways, but we focus more readily on private than public offenses. For example, pundits have happily noted that Gingrich led the charge against Bill Clinton’s adultery while undertaking his own. But he faced comparatively little heat for his accepting a large salary for work of a dubious nature from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Why do Americans care more about private hypocrisy than the kind that costs taxpayers millions of dollars?
Does Silence Serve?
The more philosophical issue at stake in such conversations is how to incorporate minority groups and the individuals who belong to them into the Harvard community. Filali’s article (to which he later tacked an apologetic addendum after a response from Kirkland House race relations tutors) implied that the best approach to diversity at Harvard is to value individuals apart from their minority status. Notice, for example, his concern that such policies “magnify the issue of race” and “make everyone self-conscious” about talking about it. The other possible approach would be to value minorities by acknowledging and even emphasizing minority status. Most people would probably choose a balance of the two approaches, but any such balance entails real contradictions.
