Hah. So Mika Brzezinski complained about the old sex scandal double standard, and then when she had Rudy Giuliani in the studio to talk about Mark Sanford, she forgot to ask him about his own business.

Remember how Rudy's been married three times, and how each time he's gotten divorced it was because he was already seeing his next wife romantically? Mika doesn't!

While talking about the politics of extramarital affairs, Mika just let Rudy talk about Bill Clinton instead of, like, asking him about his own extramarital affairs.

Giuliani "Let's look at Bill Clinton."

Brzezinski: "Yeah."

It might very well be true that Republicans who sleep around face a bigger shitstorm than Democrats. Though, you know, Clinton was impeached and John Edwards is universally reviled and Eliot Spitzer resigned right away. And John McCain and Newt Gingrich and apparently even Rudy Giuliani get to appear on TV without anyone bringing their messes up. But maybe sometimes, in the media, the Democrats are not castigated as much? It is hard to prove this either way, beyond just basing it on a gut feeling, as Mika does.

But Mark Sanford himself identified why this might be the case, back in 1998, when he was complaining that no one wanted to impeach Bill Clinton anymore:

"In politics you can get away with anything as long as it's what's expected," says Representative Mark Sanford, a Republican from South Carolina. "If people expect you to be a rascal, you can be a rascal. That he is a rascal has been discounted. But he is also an engaging personality - and things can't get better than this in the economy."

"If people expect you to be a rascal, you can be a rascal." And maybe the party of conservative Christian family values is held to a higher standard because they hold everyone else to a higher standard! And also maybe it is just funnier when one of those guys is caught doing this than when some godless liberal secularist is! These are all pretty simple concepts.

[Photo: AP]