Although I don't have HBO (too cheap), I've watched 4 seasons of Sex and the City on tape. I've even watched some episodes twice. It's television for adults. I love it like Carrie loves shoes. Although, I don't buy Manolos (I'm really cheap).
My favorite episode is "Where there's smoke..." from Season 3. Among the other story lines, Carrie meets a politician Bill, and well, you know the drill - he gets in her pants. Eventually, she gets around to asking him if there is anything he wants that she didn't give him. Of course there is - he wants her to pee on him. Finding this idea rather repulsive, Carrie never gets around to urinating on the councilman, but it doesn't matter because he dumps her....because she writes a sex column. That's right. The guy who wants a golden shower dumps her for being unseemly enough to write a column about sex.
Tucked amid the other news from this past week was a small story on a 78-year old retired school teacher from Los Angeles who claimed to be the daughter of retired senator and world class bigot Strom Thurmond.
Thurmond's family admitted this week that Essie Mae Washington Williams was the daughter of Thurmond conceived when he was 22 with Carrie Butler, the 16-year old African-American maid at his parent's home. Thurmond continued to see his daughter on occasion even as he fought mightily for segregation. At the same time Mr. Thurmond was electrifying segregationist rallies with statements like, "all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes," he was taking his hidden daughter into his home, in this case the governor's mansion. True to the spirit of the days, she came through the back door.
It was especially appropriate for Sex and the City writers to work in a story about a moralistic hypocrite using a campaigning politician. Politicians seem to have a special gift for hypocricy whether it's anti-abortion crusader Bob Barr paying for his wife's abortion or moralist Gary Condit voting to impeach Clinton while screwing Chandra Levy. It takes a special inhuman quality to lie that well.
I used to think it was hypocritical of Thurmond to fight for segregation while his daughter stopped by using the back door. Now I think it goes well beyond hypocrisy. I think it was intolerably cruel. I'll take a gambling blowhard Bill Bennett or a jonesing Rush Limbaugh any day over this. Those vices can easily be forgiven and understood.
For more on Strom's legacy, see Slate's excellent piece on Thurmond and Helms or Slate's Chatterbox piece on Strom's lack of remorse.
