Double lives

The attorney general of New York State has resigned following the publication yesterday of a magazine story accusing him of physically abusing women. Eric Schneiderman denies the charges but concedes that they make it impossible for him to carry out his duties effectively. It seems to come down to rough sex that he says was consensual and spiced with role play, while I'll wait until my New Yorker comes in the mail to see how the other side describes it. In any event, it looks like another case of liberal "hypocrisy," given how prominent a crusader Schneiderman has been, but what's really going on here? Ironically, the newspaper in which I read the story also had an op-ed by Cynthia Tucker recalling her shock at discovering that Bill Cosby, a crusader in his own right, apparently lived a vile double life of his own. Such stories continue to surprise, shock and disappoint because we take for granted that respect for women is part of the liberal value package, despite generations of disappointment by liberal politicians and celebrities. There's always a greater feeling of disappointment than when conservatives are discovered in arguably greater hypocrisy, however. While that may just show that our feelings differ when "our side" is damaged by scandal, it may also show that sexual morality of any sort, whether the biblical morality espoused by conservative hypocrites or the egalitarian feminist morality espoused by liberal hypocrites, simply doesn't matter that much for the left, compared to "social justice" issues where people like Schneiderman presumably would remain reliable regardless of what went on in his bedroom. Schneiderman may seem especially hypocritical given his role in the fall of Harvey Weinstein, but he clearly doesn't see his own indulgences as the same sort of abuse of power the movie mogul reputedly practiced. That may be part of the perception problem, too. The left doesn't see "power" on its own side, and so leftists presume their own innocence when they behave similarly to powerful people or conservative hypocrites. That probably won't change even when, as many feminists and some liberals probably wish more strongly now, we let women run everything.