Preaching virtues from glass houses

“What goes around comes around” sometimes is an accurate description of human affairs, but for anyone with a decent sense of their own fallibility, it’s seldom a comforting one.

That’s one reason it’s as hard to gloat over Bill O’Reilly’s problems as it was over the fall not so long ago of that other merchant of virtue, William J. Bennett. For all their commandeering of the public stage, for all their incessant scolding over the purported absence of virtue from our communal life, there is something joyless, lonely -- and rather sad --about their private conduct.

Once they were, the pair of them, as big a brace of bullies as ever bestrode the electronic pulpit. Nowadays, when Bennett shows up at all, it’s as a kind of booker’s afterthought on some third-tier chat show. But not so many years ago he was the right wing’s hulking point man in the culture wars. It was virtually impossible to flip the channels without encountering Bennett -- the one-time philosophy professor turned Republican activist -- wearily stringing together snippets of Plato, Aquinas and Burke to make the case that the country was going to hell in a handbasket and it was all the Democrats’ fault.

Like O’Reilly he was a great defender of traditional values -- the sturdy, good old-fashioned virtues -- and an unforgiving judge of anyone who offended against them. Both Bennett and O’Reilly, for example, had a field day beating up on Bill Clinton.

“Virtue is a word we need to recover,” Bennett rumbled at one interviewer. And, to that end, he made himself a wealthy man as author of “The Book of Virtues” -- a compendium of thoughts on traditional stories and maxims that sold more than 2 million copies -- and “The Children’s Book of Virtues,” which even spawned a PBS kids’ show.

Some in the GOP spoke of him as a potential presidential candidate, and he collected $50,000 a pop for speaking engagements in which he gravely reminded his audiences that we “need to set definite boundaries on our appetites.”

All that, you will recall, came to a halt when Newsweek and the Washington Monthly reported that Bennett was a compulsive gambler who had lost $8 million over the previous decade at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. There was not then, nor is there now, any evidence that the former federal drug czar’s avocation had led him to neglect his family or stiff his creditors, but it’s a little hard to peddle moderation when you’re dropping $500,000 a weekend at the Bellagio.

O’Reilly, meanwhile, was hit recently with a suit alleging that he sexually harassed a 33-year-old producer of his show just as he embarked on a publicity tour to promote his latest book, “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” modestly described on its dust jacket as “a code of ethics by which to live.” The book contains advice on dealing with friends, bullies (they’re losers), money, smoking, alcohol (he doesn’t drink), drugs, TV and sex -- among other things. There’s even a prim admonition to girls against dressing in a fashion that suggests they are “sexually available” and a helpful hint to young men that crisp white shirts are irresistibly sexy.

There are your traditional values for you.

Private and lonely

Given the events of the last two weeks, it’s hard not to turn to page 72 and the chapter on “Sex.” There readers are advised that “healthy sex is a combination of sensible behavior and sincere affection.... I am going to tell you to look for love. For most of us, it’s a lengthy search, but the challenge is fun and the result, when you do find someone you respect, care about, and can laugh with, is the best. Some people think that’s why we’re here. Maybe so.... Remember, good sex occurs between two human beings, not between two objects.”

In the lawsuit filed against O’Reilly last week, Andrea Mackris alleges that the Fox News personality repeatedly subjected her to phone calls in which he recited explicit sexual fantasies and accounts of other sexual experiences while masturbating at the other end of the line. The verbatim transcripts of these alleged phone sex sessions contained in her complaint strongly suggest that the calls were recorded. In fact, though they accuse Mackris and her attorney of extortion, neither O’Reilly nor his lawyers have denied that such calls occurred. This week, amid reports of settlement overtures, O’Reilly’s legal team went back to court to demand that Mackris turn over any tapes in her possession.

Whether or not whatever passed between O’Reilly and Mackris was illegal, as she alleges, is something for a court to sort out -- or, money being the measure of all things these days, for them to settle privately.

But phone sex? This from TV news’ self-styled all-American, red-blooded man’s man? Phone sex? Whatever happened to having an affair or good old traditional forms of harassment, like making a pass? They, at least, involve actual physical contact. It’s hard to imagine something more distant, detached, lonely and sort of pointless than phone sex.

It’s interesting that there was a similar quality to Bennett’s gambling. All of it, it should be noted, was perfectly legal. Nor is there anything necessarily immoral about even high-stakes gambling, if your family is adequately cared for and you’ve got the means. But gambling -- like sex -- is supposed to be fun, something you do with other people. Playing the ponies is like participating in a grand spectacle; draw poker is inspiring intellectual combat; craps can be an exhilarating communal performance.

But Bennett’s games of choice were high-stakes slot and video poker machines, the kind casinos maintain in isolated rooms or alcoves for the handful of high rollers willing to pay $500 or $1,000 for each pull of the lever.

Bennett, in fact, subsequently told interviewers that he usually played between midnight and 6 a.m., so that he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else.

It’s hard to summon up a stranger -- or lonelier -- image than that of a man who spent $8 million over 10 years, sitting alone in the middle of the night, pulling a lever and watching fruit spin -- unless, of course, it is that of the most-watched man in cable news on the telephone with a woman young enough to be his daughter talking about vibrators, luffas and the size of his ... well, you get the picture.

At the end of the day, what makes O’Reilly and Bennett such a melancholy -- even pitiable -- pair is that the private vices that ultimately undid them were as sterile and inauthentic as their promotion of public virtues.