‘Defining deviancy down’

Note to Elizabeth Esty and Diana Urban: be careful what you wish for.

First a bit of history: For decades the Democrats and their media enablers aided and abetted their champions, Franklin Roosevelt, John and Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton to name a few, in covering up their peccadilloes.

More recently these self-righteous ethics police sought to catch Donald Trump, a man whose lifestyle and sexual foibles were thoroughly reported prior to his presidential campaign, in the web of wickedness.

Unfortunately, before launching this new agenda they failed to look in their own closet to see who would be snared by the new morality. They were shocked (we weren’t) when the first casualties of raising the bar of behavior included sanctimonious fellow elected officials, media heroes, and co-conspirators — John Conyers, Al Franken, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and now Elizabeth Esty.

So let’s stop the retroactive handwringing, false regret, and hypocritical support for the victims and recognize that no one has the monopoly on virtue or corruption. And let’s agree that our elected officials, Republican and Democrat, are merely a reflection of the mores of a society that, in the words of Senator Daniel Moynihan, persists in “defining deviancy down.”

John A. Rodolico Ledyard