We're not spending tax dollars on prostitutes, we're paying a representative. Once that happens, it becomes his money, to spend on whatever he wants (and sex work seems like a perfectly reasonable expenditure, though it's probably illegal).

Of course, he's also a big fat hypocrite as a result of this stuff, so it's relevant (no charges of sexual harassment or slut-shaming here?).

Actually, the slut-shaming comment is a bit disingenuous coming from me: because of extant gendered systems of privilege, slut-shaming happens in a different context for women than it does for men. Identical treatment/action is actually only equality if it happens in an identical cultural context, which is something many people don't consider when talking about equality (and actively ignore when deploying the language of equality to reinforce oppressive vectors, as with "reverse racism", "reverse sexism", etc.). This is why people doing theory about this stuff have changed from a discourse of "equality" to one of "social justice": once one realizes how systems of privilege operate, it rapidly becomes apparent that "equality" (as equal treatment with equal results) is impossible in our current cultural context.

I still think politicians make legitimate the discussion of their sex lives as a campaign issue when they campaign on their sex lives or those of others. None of the "family values" candidates can defensibly deploy charges of sexism or assertions of privacy as a shield for their own heterosexism, sex-negativity, and hypocrisy.

@10: Tru dat.

It's really starting to bother me a lot that Dems seem to be going after "Conservative" voters, because their ads make me cringe as much as the Rep ads. Prostitution is bad? Sinning? Ugh. This is why we have an "enthusiasm gap": Dems are deploying messages aimed at Republicans and alienating their bases in the process. The whole thing swings the discourse to the right, so what's seen as the "center" is really solidly to the right or center, center-right is now seen as "center-left", actual centrists are seen as solidly "left" of center, center-left politicians like Obama are "socialists", (Social) Liberal Democrats are seen as far-left radicals, and actual socialists and far-left radicals have fallen completely off the map.

Did no one see that article on discursive framing that Democracy Now! put out this summer? You can't really use the opponents' rhetoric to discredit them, because using their rhetoric validates their discourse and reinforces their frames. A much more effective strategy is to subvert their rhetoric or avoid it completely, re-framing issues within a counter-discourse. The Republican Propaganda Machine took some lessons in postmodern anthropology, psychology, advertising, and socio-linguistics after WWII, and it's allowing them to consistently stomp all over the Democrats in the advertising department. The only time we regain ground is after they spend 8-12 years destroying our economic infrastructure by siphoning money from the rest of us into the coffers of the top 3%. Unfortunately, it seems that many people's memories only go back 1.5-2 years, so as soon as the Dems get into power, they're ousted again, because it takes more than two years to fix a decade's worth of damage to our social and economic systems.