Senator David Vitter - Hurricane of Sex and Hypocrisy

Original Link: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2007/07/senator-david-vitter-hurricane-sex-and-hypocrisy

By Jonathan Stein

We might feel bad about blogging a plain old sex scandal — I criticized FOX News for sucking at the teat of the Anna Nicole story — but when a sex story comes buried under mountains of hypocrisy, that's more than any blogger can resist.

First the basics: the infamous "DC madam" is a Heidi Fleiss clone who sent call girls to DC's elite. Now that she's being charged with racketeering (not a particularly successful racket, by the way, netting her $2 million in 13 years), she's on a helter-skelter campaign to generate media attention and make money while she can — and sink a few semi-famous people along the way.

She put a list of clients' phone numbers on her website yesterday and Senator David Vitter's number was on it. Vitter (R-LA), who is best known for misleading the public in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and then criticizing the feds response to the disaster, immediately owned up. "This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," he said in a statement to the press. He added that he has already made peace with his wife and his God.

But let's get to the hypocrisy, shall we? In 2004, when Vitter was a congressman running for a seat in the Senate, Vitter campaigned with a promise of "protecting the sanctity of marriage." He went on to become a co-author of the "Federal Marriage Act" that sought to prohibit courts from interpreting same-sex marriage laws, and said of marriage, "I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one."

Thought we were done? Nope. Vitter once compared same-sex marriage to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The first line of his official biography reads, "David Vitter is dedicated to making life better for his young family and all Louisiana families."

But then, hypocrisy runs across Vitter's "young family." After extramarital affairs by Louisiana rep and now-you-see-him-now-you-don't Speaker of the House Bill Livingston were revealed, Vitter's wife was asked how she would react if her husband had been caught in an affair, like Livingston and Bill Clinton. "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary [Clinton]," she said. "If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Whoa! David Vitter's wife is awesome, even though she doesn't stand by her word. Actually, maybe she does and we just don't know about it. That would mean Vitter has paid for this more dearly than any of us know...

Oh, and PS — Vitter is the Southern Regional Chair of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Man, Rudy is having a tough time down south. Considering the man's own sordid past, I guess it comes as no surprise that they aren't terribly serious about vetting people at his campaign.