Two disconnected thoughts:

1) Maybe one reason that Vitter hasn’t been more forcefully and widely condemned is that our law and culture don’t treat prostitution as simply “illegal,” like drug dealing. You can’t advertise for drug deals in the yellow pages, but you basically can for prostitution. And it’s not clear to me that anyone has the will to step up enforcement.

2) Ruth Marcus, whose column on the Vitter scandal has been much praised, argues that prostitution is different from adultery on moral as well as legal grounds. “One is demeaning to a particular woman, the second to all women.” How far do we want to take this line of reasoning? Would Marcus be less hostile to a female politician who went to a male prostitute?