Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the new sex scandals involving Democratic politicians is the way the media and politicians are conflating very different types of behavior. If you didn’t know their back stories, you would think that San Diego Democratic Mayor Bob Filner and New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner were guilty of the same, equally reprehensible thing. Rachel Maddow, for instance, grouped together Filner and Weiner, saying they “recalibrate for us as a nation the depths of shame that we are supposed to accept from people who are in positions of public leadership.” During a press conference last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi was asked about her “take on former congressman Weiner’s latest transgressions, having repeated the same action that occurred for his resignation in Congress.” Though asked only about Weiner, Pelosi replied by linking Weiner to Filner: “I think I have spoken and acted in terms of Anthony Weiner, in terms of when he was in the Congress of the United States. In his case, in the case of Mayor Filner, clearly, they have both admitted they need therapy. I think maybe that therapy could better be accomplished in private … the conduct of some of these people that we are talking about here is reprehensible. It is so disrespectful of women.” And in an article titled “Are Anthony Weiner and Bob Filner and Their Ilk Politically Redeemable?” the Los Angeles News Group explicitly equates the behavior of the two men, calling them “Politicos Behaving Badly” and “Old Boys Gone Wild.”

Read more at Salon