It is a simple formula for both comedy and political commentary:

Take a public figure (Sarah Palin) who holds disagreeable views (abstinence-only education). Zero in on an aspect of her personal life counter to those views (her own teen daughter, Bristol Palin, becoming pregnant). Reveal the comedic irony and/or hypocrisy of the public/private contrast. Repeat ad nauseam on blogs, 24-hour news channels, and late night talk shows.

We should all beware this construction. Though very easy to pull off—and often journalistically and comedically sound—it is a trap. And it will render us all hypocrites. Three lessons from history, after the jump.

SARAH PALIN

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DISAGREEABLE VIEW: Too many to count, but in this case, it's the abstinence thing.

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: When Palin's 17-year-old daughter Bristol became pregnant months before Palin rose to political fame as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, political commentators and comedians held up Bristol's pregnancy as evidence that abstinence is futile—even under the roof of your state's no-sex-before-marriage Governor.

IT'S A TRAP! The revelation came at the height of election season fervor, and liberal commentators ate Bristol's sexual activity up with a spoon. The term "knocked up" became par for the course. When the baby's father, Levi Johnston, told Tyra Banks that he and Bristol had practiced safe sex, Tyra et. al dismissed him as a liar. The late-night comedy cycle feasted on the Bristol-is-a-slut jokes. Even Palin family cheerleader Greta Van Susteren asked Bristol if she had been "lazy."

We forgot that even the most responsible of 17-year-old condom users don't put it on right every time. We forgot that condoms break. And we forgot that, when you're the governor's daughter in the small town of Wasilla, requesting birth control from your family doctor, seeking Plan B at a local pharmacy, or even buying condoms—anywhere—could cause such a shit-storm for you, your boyfriend, and your family, that it would have been hard to mount the courage to even approach the counter.

At some point, we forgot about why Bristol having sex was funny to begin with. The insane glee that we all derived from a teenage girl having sex before marriage became counter-intuitive—and downright creepy. We had crossed the hypocrisy bridge. We were no longer making a point about how young women should be free to choose to be sexually active. We no longer joked to show how bogus abstinence was. We joked to show that Bristol Palin was slutty, and that was enough to make it funny.

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CARRIE PREJEAN

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DISAGREEABLE VIEW: During the Q-and-A section of  the 2009 Miss USA pageant, Miss USA California Carrie Prejean described her views on same-sex marriage this way:

"I think it's great that americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage, and in my country, and my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be a man or a woman. No offense to anyone out there, but that was how I was raised, and that's how I think it should be. Between a man and a woman. Thank you."

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: After rising to blogosphere infamy—with the help of question-asker Perez Hilton's videoblog declaring her a "bitch"—Prejean's past modeling career caught up to her. When topless photos of the 21-year-old Prejean surfaced on the Web, Prejean was accused of both violating her pageant contract and preaching inconsistent moral views. Who is she to preach good Christian values when she's flaunting her assets for cash?

IT'S A TRAP! Wait a second—since when did we start caring about women upholding the contractual obligations of beauty pageants? Pageants are among the most sexist and anti-feminist of American traditions. They encourage patriarchal views about the traditional roles women and men should hold in society. And guess what—gays don't have a place there.

But the patriarchy is also responsible for one of the most damaging of all hypocrisy constructions: the virgin-whore dichotomy. Shaming Carrie Prejean—a woman we've elevated through beauty pageants—for taking topless modeling photos is a very short leap for shaming gays and lesbians for expressing their sexuality. That's why this whole thing was hypocritical in the first place—but perhaps we're all too distracted by Carrie Prejean's boobs to remember. We may keep posting them in the interest of "revealing hypocrisy." But we all know the real reason they're on the Web: It's not hypocrisy anymore; it's hotness.

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LARRY CRAIG

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DISAGREEABLE VIEW: As a Republican Senator from Idaho, Craig often championed conservative moral values. William Saletan got specific in 2007, pointing out that Craig "helped to enact the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," revealing his "anti-gay hypocrisy."

HYPOCRITICAL MOVE: In June of 2007, Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from a male undercover cop in the Minneapolis airport:

According to the report filed by the officer who arrested Craig at the Minneapolis airport in June, Craig stood outside the officer's bathroom stall for two minutes, repeatedly looked at the officer "through the crack in the door," sat in the stall next to the officer, tapped his foot, and gradually "moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot … within my stall area." Craig proceeded to "swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds" three times, palm up, using the hand farthest from that side of Craig's stall. Most of these gestures, the officer explained, were known pickup signals in a room known (and hence under surveillance for) public sex. When the officer took Craig outside and told him so, Craig claimed he had been reaching down with his hand to retrieve a piece of paper from the floor. The officer wrote that no such paper had been on the floor.

IT'S A TRAP! I'll admit it—this is rich, fertile ground for the hypocrisy construction. Craig blows Palin and Prejean out of the water with this Perfect 10 hypocritical move: enacting anti-gay policies in law, and being gay in private. Jokes at Craig's expense were easy, valid, and very popular.

Conservatives, when not denying that any of this happened, joined in the shit-throwing. After all, this is the stuff homophobes' nightmares are made of—strange gay men attempting to have sex with them while they're taking care of business in a public restroom. For them, Craig reinforced the idea that homosexuals are sick and disgusting individuals just waiting to pounce on your unsuspecting bare penis. In other words, gays can pose a very real threat to their heterosexuality, and Craig proved it.

And yet, those who railed against Craig's institutionalized homophobia were the ones who took the most immense joy in the gay jokes. So—again—reveling in jokes about Larry Craig being gay began to lose their hypocritical anchor. On some level, the hypocritical construction allows people with pro-gay political views to indulge in some homophobic ribbing of their own. They see a rare window where making fun of gay sex is politically acceptable, and they sieze it. It's the same tale with Sarah Palin: People who support progressive sexual health policies, like comprehensive sex education, sieze the opportunity to make jokes about sluts. It's the same tale with Carrie Prejean: People who rail against patriarchal values, like "opposite marriage" and beauty pageants, sieze the opportunity to make sexist jokes.

So, let's all try not to descend too deeply into the hypocrisy construction's rabbit hole. Fall too far, and we become ripe for ironic commentary ourselves.

Last month, Greg Hambrick at the Charleston City Paper wrote a story resurrecting the Lindsay Graham gay rumors—and the renewed effort to out him. It's largely a non-story: Graham is still single, still maybe gay, still saying he's not, and there's no more evidence to suggest he is, still. But that hasn't stopped Michael Signorile, noted gay writer and committed outer of closeted gay politicians:

"Let's have a real investigation of the rumors about South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who … has been rumored to be gay for years," Signorile says. "Like Larry Craig, Graham has voted antigay — including for the federal marriage amendment — while people in South Carolina and Washington have discussed what some say is an open secret for a long, long time."

Signorile claims that "the homosexuality of public figures—and only public figures—should be reported on when relevant to a larger story (and only when relevant)." That means that a politician's private sexuality is fair game only when he or she has spoken against it publicly. But as Hambrick notes, it's not just liberals who are working to out gay politicians—it's, duh, the Republicans, too. Writes Hambrick:

With rampant calls for a primary opponent to challenge Graham next year, it likely won't be the Dems that Graham has to be concerned about with the gay-baiting. While many in the Democratic Party have reveled at the scandalous exit of Sen. Craig, a long-standing opponent of gay rights, the most vocal calls for his ouster came from his own party, including presidential candidate John McCain, Graham's Senate BFF.

These Republican gay witchhunts don't pass Signorile's stink test. Republicans don't like gays, and they don't like Republicans who are secretly gay, so there's no real hypocrisy to be remedied here, just plain homophobia. When Republicans begin to take up Signorile's cause, I wonder if it begins to become counter-productive. Should liberals really be working to shun all Republican gays from political life because they disagree with their politics?

Most of all, though, I think Hambrick fails to pass the news test here. There's no new evidence that Graham is gay. There's no real mobilized effort to prove he is. All Hambrick has is "former Ninth Circuit Solicitor David Schwacke," outed by the Republican party, and Charlie Smith, an openly gay realtor who ran for office a couple of times. Neither have any real perspective on Graham. Why not make the story about one of them, and not about Graham, who has nothing to do with any of it?

And we're back!

* Larry Craig's Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport bathroom stall isn't getting any more traffic from camera-toting tourists—or from anonymous sex-seekers.

* Tiger Beatdown has found your new female role model: In defense of Veronica Mars.

* The New Gay talks courtship tactics—are you a cheetah or a gazelle? In the straight scene, Michael writes, men are generally cheetahs, women gazelles. In the gay scene, it's a little different:

My boyfriend, he's a cheetah. He's always been the pursuer. So much so that he never realized that gazelles existed. He assumed that guys just went out there pursuing one another until two of them pursued one's dick into the other's ass. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

* The L.A. Times has a nice obit on a woman you've never heard of: Martha S. Putney, historian, feminist, and one of 40 black women chosen to serve in the Women's Army Corps in World War II, died earlier this month in Washington, D.C. She was 92.

* Slate's Melinda Henneberger says sorry, Carolyn: are the Kennedy's a dynasty without an heir?

Photo via trialsanderrors.

According to a press release issued today by Rogers' org, the closet-opening crusader has had his sights set on McConnell for some time, and has "taken six trips to Kentucky in the last several months to investigate long-standing questions about McConnell's military service."

The press release says Proud of Who We Are "encourages closeted, anti-gay politicians to serve proudly as gay Americans, regardless of their political party." Personally, I don't agree with Rogers' brand of forced outings; while I would pressure all politicians to support GLBT-positive legislation, I find implicating the politician's own sexual orientation in that fight creepy and unnecessary. Every lawmaker on the national stage publicly supports some issue that they don't themselves embody or believe; that's politics, not news. But the drudging up of personal details of these politicians is somewhat justified by the "anti-gay" part of the equation; conventional political wisdom states that a politician's sex life should be off-limits unless it implicates him in unlawful activity, or worse, hypocrisy. With McConnell, Rogers has got the anti-gay part down: The release notes that "The Human Rights Campaign has given McConnell a zero rating for his anti-gay rights voting agenda in the Senate."

What Rogers doesn't exactly have is the "gay" part. He alleges that McConnell enlisted in the army during the Vietnam war but was "abruptly discharged four months later for a minor medical condition." McConnell's excuse, that "he needed to be released quickly to attend New York University," doesn't pan out, Rogers claims: "NYU records indicate that McConnell never applied to the school, and at the time of his discharge he had already earned a law degree from the University of Kentucky."

Maybe Rogers is just waiting to drop the big gay bombshell, but at this point I'm not convinced that elaborate draft-dodging proves that someone is a homosexual. You've got the anti-gay, Rogers. Now: Where's the gay?

* Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville says a cat's place is in the cleavage:

this morning, after [the cat had] been driving me bananas for about an hour with this new routine, I tucked the bottom of the tanktop I was wearing up under my boobs to create a little pouch, then stuck her inside, where she promptly fell asleep for about three hours.

And yes, there is a photo.

* Over at The New Gay: A David Foster Wallace obit, from the perspective of someone who's never read a book by David Foster Wallace.

* The District cracks down on clubs that have different age requirements for men and women, the G.W. Hatchet reported last week. Metro News Editor Alexa Millinger writes that it's "not uncommon for bars and clubs to advertise events with a minimum entrance age of 18 for females and 21 for males," and writes that ABRA community resource officer Cynthia Woodruff-Simms "said she knows of a few places in Adams Morgan, U Street and the Southeast Waterfront that use these practices"—all of which seems unnecessarily vague. Can we get the skinny on the effect on those "few places"?

* Via Feministing via Boing Boing: Sexist men make more money. Writes Vanessa:

Most of my friends who make a lot of cheese (finance, technology – all male-dominated fields mind you) seem to have experienced or witnessed more sexism than others. (The corporate world alone is enough to make one nauseous.) And what is there to be said for women who believe in traditional gender roles making less money than women who don't?

* Via Slate: How the "Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood" made the case that "Bratz" dolls—along with "explicit music," "rap videos," and M&M flavored "lip gloss," contribute to "eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression and poor sexual health."

* Larry Craig is back: The Idaho senator has started a legal defense fund to aid in his attempt to overturn his guilty plea from a June 2007 "misdemeanor disorderly conduct" charge, the Idaho Statesman reports. Last February, the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Craig for spending over $200,000 of unused campaign funds to try to reverse the plea; now, he's accepting donations after the fund, dubbed "The Fund for Justice," was OK'd by the Ethics Committee.

* Larry Craig extra: While perusing the Senator's Web site, I came across this page, wherein Larry Craig debunks common Internet rumors for his constituents. The page features a totally creepy photo of Craig who, through some feat of dark magick, appears to be balancing a man-sized Fabergé egg in his palm. My favorite of Craig's "fact or fiction" crusades for truth, filed under "Tax on email":

Some folks have contacted me about a possible five-cent tax on email. This is a hoax that began circulating on the Internet several years ago. An email message warns people that "House Bill 602P" will levy a five-cent surcharge on every email sent. It goes on to say that the bill is sponsored by Congressman Tony Schnell, and the funds would go to the U.S. Postal Service. Further, it refers to an "editorial" in the "March 6 issue" of The Washingtonian supporting the tax. . . . Let me assure you, there is no Bill 602P. There is no Member of Congress by the name of Tony Schnell, and the United States Postal Service has nothing to do with delivering email. The Washingtonian is a monthly magazine, and does not even have a "March 6" issue. It is highly unlikely that a measure like this will ever come to the Senate floor for debate.

Glaring omission: That pesky Larry Craig gay rumor.

The inspiration for Dupont Circle resident Jeremy Trylch’s new D.C.-based web series came in the hot, steamy contents of a stove-warmed tortilla.

“In January of last year, I was eating a chicken quesadilla and thinking about camgirls, as I often do,” says Trylch, a 36-year-old writer and cameraman. “You always hear about scandals where guys get involved with these girls, but I thought—as I was eating—I started thinking of it from the other point of view: the camgirls who get involved with those guys.”

Long after the quesadilla was consumed, the camgirls stuck with Trylch. Soon, he had recruited three writer friends from Johns Hopkins; together, they began hammering out a storyline about online strip-teasers and the bureaucrats who love them. The show, called “Dirty4U,” centers around the online and real-life exploits of five twenty-something District archetypes: Craig, the Hill staffer; McKenzie, the secret camgirl; Jonto, the armchair misogynist; Ashley, the goth; and Neville, the scandal-hunting journalist.

“This story couldn't be told anywhere else. It's purely D.C.,” says Trylch of his sex scandal series. “Nowhere else do you have the mix of morals that you find here. On one side, you have a group of people who come here as idealists, and on the other side, you have people just trying to survive, who are trying to make a dollar to be a part of that high-priced lifestyle.”

Count Trylch and company in the ‘idealist’ camp. “This is the greatest plan to not get rich quick,” says Trylch. “Or at all.” The team wrote the show over the course of last year under less-than-glamorous conditions: “We had these meetings in the middle of the night when our families were sleeping,” says Trylch. Some days were better than others: “There's also a pool at my building," says Trylch. "Sometimes we would meet at the pool.” In addition to penning the script, Trylch also gathered a local cast and crew—including director T.H. "Stone" Lyons—and recruited local indie rockers Exit Clov to compose the theme song, "Game Over."

Trylch hopes the free web series will appeal to both Washington insiders and outsider voyeurs interested in seeing a personal side of below-the-Beltway scandals. “The East Coast is a very different culture than middle America,” says Trylch. “People think it’s sleaze, that it’s Hollywood East, Hollywood for ugly people.” At the same time, "politicians are extremely repressed, because they have the same private desires and activities as anyone, but they live completely in the public eye,” he says. “In Washington, it's ‘Breaking News: Senator Had Sex.’”

During the show’s production, Trylch and company found inspiration in D.C.’s real-life sex scandals, from Larry Craig’s bathroom visits to Eliot Spitzer’s Mayflower rendezvous to John Edwards’ Rielle Hunter affair. “Those really pushed us to continue on with the project,” says Trylch. “We kept saying, ‘See! See! It's not that absurd!’”

Still, Dirty4U’s online sexploits will likely prove a bit tamer than D.C.’s non-fiction affairs. “That is probably going to be the let down,” admits Trylch. “[The characters] don't really do anything that sexy in the show. It’s an edgy romantic comedy. There's no sex or nudity.”

The PG-13-level webisodes will be available at dirty4u.org beginning Friday, October 3. Trylch originally sought out a different URL, dirty4u.com—but found it had already been filled with more explicit content. “Be sure not to go to dirty4u.com, because that's actually a porn site,” advised Trylch in an e-mail. “We knew we were spot-on, but that's a little close for comfort.” Still, Dirty4U’s crew has invented a new catchphrase to help spice up their staid .org tag: "The .org stands for orgasm."

“Dirty4U” will consist of 24 to 25 five-to-seven minute webisodes which will be released each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from October 3 until November 21.

Photos, from left: Melissa McConnell as McKenzie; Devin Rumer as Craig; Christina Borders as Ashley.